Dante POV
I woke up in my bed.
The sheets were cool silk against my skin. The air was conditioned to a perfect sixty-eight degrees. Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city of New York hummed with its indifferent morning rhythm.
For a second—just a split second—I was allowed to forget.
Then I turned my head, instinct seeking the warmth that should have been there, and saw the empty pillow beside me.
The memory of the morgue hit me like a sledgehammer.
I sat up, gasping for air as the room spun into a sickening blur.
I needed to see her things. I needed to smell her perfume. I needed to touch the books she read, to prove she had been here, that she was real.
I stumbled out of bed, my feet tangling in the sheets, and ran to her vanity.
It was bare.
No perfume bottles. No silver hairbrush. No stack of dog-eared fashion magazines.
I ripped open the drawers. Empty.
I ran to the closet, tearing the doors open. Her side was cleared out. Her dresses, her coats, her shoes. Gone.
Panic tightened around my throat like a noose.
"Giovanni!" I roared.
The heavy oak doors burst open. My head butler, Giovanni, rushed in. His face was pale, but as he took in the scene—the open drawers, my heaving chest—his expression settled into a mixture of pity and fear.
"Where are her things?" I demanded. I grabbed him by the lapels of his suit, hauling him close. "Who took them? Was it Sofia? Did that bitch touch her things?"
Giovanni did not flinch. He looked me dead in the eye.
"You did, sir."
I froze. My hands went slack on his jacket, the fabric slipping through my fingers.
"What?"
"Three weeks ago," Giovanni said quietly, his voice steady despite the chaos. "You ordered the staff to box up Mrs. Moretti's belongings. You said her presence was disturbing Miss Sofia's recovery. You said... you said you wanted the house clean of the past."
I stepped back, as if struck. My legs hit the edge of the bed, and I nearly collapsed.
"I did that?"
"Yes, sir."
I looked around the room. It wasn't a sanctuary. It was a tomb. I had erased her before she was even dead. I had prioritized the comfort of a liar over the existence of my wife.
"Where are they?" I whispered.
"Storage, sir. In the basement."
"Bring them back," I said, my voice breaking into a jagged shard. "Bring everything back. If a single hairpin is missing, I will kill everyone in this house."
Giovanni nodded. He turned to leave, then hesitated at the threshold.
"Sir."
"What?"
"The coroner delivered the urn this morning."
He gestured to the small table by the door.
I hadn't seen it. A simple marble box. Cold. Heavy.
I walked over to it, my movements stiff, mechanical. My hands hovered over the lid.
This was Elena now. Dust and bone fragments.
I fell to my knees. I pulled the urn against my chest, curling around it as if to shield it from the world. The marble was freezing against my bare skin.
I rocked back and forth. I whispered her name into the stone. I begged the dust for forgiveness.
But the dust did not answer. The room remained silent. And in the corner, Giovanni watched me, his eyes judging the monster who was weeping over the destruction he had caused.
