The next morning, I was pulled from sleep by a commotion rising through the floorboards of the Falcone estate — voices, the grind of something heavy being dragged across flagstone, a hollow metallic clang that didn't belong in the manicured quiet of this household.
Still groggy, I sat up in the narrow guest room they'd given me. The sheets smelled faintly of starch and someone else's perfume, as though the linens had been pulled from Serafina's closet and tossed my way without laundering. A dull headache sat behind my eyes. Before I could orient myself, knuckles rapped against the door — three crisp, evenly spaced taps. The way the staff knocked here: neither warm nor cold, just efficient. Just enough to say they'd done their job.
"Miss, Mr. Falcone has arranged a fire performance troupe in the courtyard. He asked me to let you know you're expected downstairs."
I pressed my thumbnail into the inside of my wrist, felt the half-moon of pressure form against the bone. Expected. Not invited. Expected. There was a difference in this world, and the Falcone household enforced it without needing to explain.
I straightened my clothes — the same ones from the night before, wrinkled and stiff at the collar — and stared at the closed door, disbelief pooling in my chest like something cold and heavy. A fire performance. Did Dante Falcone genuinely believe that spectacle and showmanship could paper over what had been done to me? That I could watch flames leap into the air and somehow forget the way his family had discussed my future like a shipping manifest, every line item negotiable, every cost already absorbed? I had never liked these kinds of performances. The heat, the noise, the forced gasps of admiration. It was always Serafina who craved spectacle — the louder and brighter, the better. Not me. I had always preferred silence to applause.
I opened my mouth to refuse, the word already half-formed on my tongue, but the door swung open before I could speak, as though my consent had never been part of the equation.
Serafina entered first, her arm looped through Dante's with a possessiveness so practiced it looked like muscle memory. She wore a pale silk blouse unbuttoned one notch lower than modesty required, her hair swept into a careless knot that had probably taken twenty minutes to arrange. The sweetness on her face was instant, automatic — a smile that bloomed like something painted on porcelain, bright and hard and completely hollow. Her lower lashes fluttered once too quickly as she crossed the room toward me, and I knew before she opened her mouth that every word out of it would be performance.
She grasped my hand with both of hers, squeezing just hard enough to make the gesture feel like restraint rather than affection, and her voice dropped to that coaxing, honeyed register she reserved for moments when someone was watching.
"Bianca, come on. Just come downstairs. Dante's been planning this for a long time — all for you. If you don't go, he'll be hurt."
Dante stood behind her, framed by the doorway's heavy molding. His gaze fixed on me with a faint, cautious glimmer of anticipation, as though this circus in the courtyard were some grand peace offering and all I had to do was accept it for everything between us to reset. He rolled the signet ring on his right hand absently, one slow rotation over the knuckle, and his jaw was set the way it always was when he wanted to appear generous but couldn't quite hide the calculation beneath it.
"Let's just go take a look," he said. His voice carried the quiet authority of a man accustomed to having suggestions treated as orders. "Alright?"
The two of them were perfectly in sync — their timing, their expressions, the angle of their bodies toward me — like a well-rehearsed duet performed so many times the performers no longer noticed the artifice. I felt as if a heavy stone was pressing down on my chest, suffocating me. Each breath cost more than the last. But with Serafina's fingers locked around my wrist and Dante's gaze pinning me in place, I had no choice but to follow. I was dragged downstairs like a prisoner being walked to a verdict already decided.
The Falcone courtyard had been transformed. A makeshift stage of blackened iron and fireproof canvas occupied the center of the flagstone yard, surrounded by a cordon of rope and weighted stanchions. The morning air was already warm, but here, close to the performance area, the heat pressed against my skin like a living thing. A fire-breather stood at the stage's edge — bare-chested, scarred along the ribs, the kind of man who looked like he'd served time and found his talent afterward. He inhaled, tipped his head back, and sent a blazing column of orange-red flame shooting high into the grey sky. The heat reached me from six paces away, fierce enough to tighten the skin on my cheeks and dry the moisture from my eyes.
Serafina positioned herself at Dante's side with the ease of someone who had claimed that spot a thousand times. She leaned into him, whispering something against his collar, her lips brushing fabric, and then laughed — a soft, musical sound engineered to carry just far enough for me to hear. Dante responded without thought, the gestures instinctive and damning: he wiped a sheen of sweat from her forehead with his thumb, tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear, let his fingers linger on the curve of her jaw a beat longer than necessary. They moved together like a couple deeply, effortlessly in love, and every tender motion was a blade slid between my ribs.
I stood off to the side. Completely forgotten. Just a silent observer, my thumbnail pressed into the crescent already forming on my wrist, watching the man who was supposed to be mine gentle another woman's face as though I didn't exist.
Then Dante's phone rang — a sharp, vibrating buzz against his jacket pocket that cut through the roar and crackle of the performance. He leaned close to Serafina, murmured something against her temple, and she nodded once with that practiced look of patient understanding. He stepped away, moving toward a shaded corner of the courtyard to take the call, his voice dropping into the low, clipped register he used for Family business.
And I was left with her.
I couldn't help but stare at the raging flames. The fire-breather had switched to a spinning baton, twin heads of fire carving arcs through the air, and the heat pulsed outward in rhythmic waves that I could feel against my breastbone. There was an uneasy feeling creeping over me — a cold, animal awareness that had nothing to do with the performance and everything to do with the silence at my side. My instincts screamed that something terrible was about to happen. The way the courtyard staff had drifted toward the far gate. The way no one stood between me and the cordon. The way the morning felt suddenly, deliberately empty.
And then I met Serafina's gaze.
The sweet, sisterly smile she had worn moments ago had vanished. In its place was a strange, twisted smirk — the corners of her mouth pulled tight, her eyes flat and bright and utterly without warmth — that sent chills racing down my spine. It was the expression of someone who had already decided what was going to happen and was merely waiting for the moment to arrive.
Before I could react, she lunged forward and grabbed my arm with a grip like iron, her manicured nails digging into the soft flesh above my elbow. The force of it stunned me — Serafina, who played at fragility, who let Dante carry her bags and hold doors — suddenly had the strength of someone driven by something far uglier than performance. She shoved me toward the flames, past the safety line, and the heat hit me like a wall.
"Ah!" I screamed. I struggled desperately to pull free, twisting my arm, planting my feet against the flagstone, but her fingers were locked around me and her weight was behind the push and the fire was right there, leaping and snarling and reaching for my skin with tongues of white-edged orange. The searing heat rushed against my face, my neck, the bare skin of my arms, and I felt something beyond pain — a raw, primal terror that turned my bones to water.
Then Serafina let go of me in a single, deliberate motion. And with a loud, pitiful cry that could have won her a theater award, she flung herself even closer to the fire, stumbling against the cordon, throwing her arms up as though she'd been the one shoved.
"Help me! Dante!" she screamed.
Dante's head snapped up the instant he heard her voice. The phone dropped from his hand, clattering against the flagstone, and he charged across the courtyard through the cordon like a man possessed. In one swift move, he scooped Serafina into his arms and stumbled back to safety, his body between hers and the flames, shielding her with every inch of himself.
After he managed to keep his balance, his face changed. The concern drained away and what replaced it was something colder, something rigid and grim that hardened every line of his jaw. He turned to me. His eyes blazed with fury — not the hot, impulsive kind, but the deep, settled rage of a man who had already decided the verdict.
Without warning, his hand struck my cheek with a sharp crack that echoed off the courtyard walls.
He shouted at me through gritted teeth, his voice shaking with a violence barely leashed. "Why did you push Serafina? Do you want to kill her?"
My ears rang. My whole body went still, stunned into a silence so complete I could hear my own pulse thundering behind my eyes. I stared at him, utterly bewildered, unable to comprehend what had just happened — how the world had inverted itself in the space of a heartbeat, how the victim had become the accused and the liar had become the wounded. Dante didn't wait for an answer. His expression twisted with disgust, and he shoved me hard with the flat of his palm against my shoulder.
I lost my balance and fell backward, hitting the ground. The flagstone was hot beneath me, baked by the radiant heat, and my shoulder struck the edge of the spreading flames — close enough that I felt fabric catch, felt the instant searing bite of fire against skin.
Immediately, I screamed.
The sound made Dante freeze. He looked down at me lying on the ground, my arm clutched to my body, smoke curling from the scorched fabric of my sleeve. For a brief second — one single, fractured moment — a flicker of heartache flashed in his cold eyes. Something human, something that remembered who I was to him, surfaced and then was smothered.
Because Serafina clutched at his chest, her fingers curling into his jacket, and weakly said, "Dante… Bianca looks more seriously hurt than I am. Take her to the hospital first…"
The performance was flawless. Her voice trembled at exactly the right pitch. Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. Her lower lashes fluttered once — just once — and Dante looked at her as though she were the most selfless creature ever born.
Without further deliberation, he glanced back at me with visible disgust. Then he looked at the fragile woman in his arms, and his voice went cold and commanding — the voice of a man giving orders to soldiers, not tending to someone he'd once promised to marry.
"Take her too," he ordered the Soldiers. "We're going to the hospital."
Then he carried Serafina to the waiting car like she was the most precious thing in the world, cradling her against his chest, his hand cupped protectively over the back of her head. He did not glance back at me. Not once.
I lay on the courtyard ground. The pain in my shoulder deepened with each breath, spreading outward in waves that turned the edges of my vision white and then grey. The flagstone was rough beneath my back. Somewhere above me, the fire-breather had stopped his performance, and the silence that replaced the roar of flames was worse — a hollow, ringing emptiness that seemed to confirm what Dante's retreating back had already told me. I was nothing.
Just as the Soldiers' hands closed around my arms to lift me, the grey at the edges of my vision rushed inward, swallowing everything — the courtyard, the pain, the smoke, the sound of the car pulling away — and everything went black.
