Serena POV
I hung up the phone.
There was a calm in my heart as profound and silent as a sworn vendetta. The well of my tears had long run dry.
I walked back to the kitchen and stared at the empty cake box on the counter. The ghost of its sweetness had been scraped away, leaving nothing but a sticky, ruined smear—the collateral damage of his rush to save someone else.
I picked up my encrypted phone and retreated into the bedroom. Reaching up, I pulled my black canvas go-bag from the top shelf of the closet and began to pack in the encroaching silence.
It was not until the following afternoon that the private elevator chimed again.
Dominic stepped into the penthouse, already loosening his dark silk tie. A rare, tense shadow of guilt flickered across the sharp angles of his jaw.
"I am sorry I forgot your birthday," he said. He swallowed, the granular friction of his vocal cords visible along the hard line of his jaw.
Closing the distance between us, he pulled a set of heavy keys from his pocket and tossed them onto the glass coffee table. They landed with a sharp, dismissive clatter that echoed in the cavernous room.
"I bought you a custom, bulletproof armored SUV. Top of the line," he stated. "A compensatory gift."
I stared at the keys, making no move toward them.
"Elena reminded me this morning," Dominic continued, unbuttoning his cuffs with casual precision. "She helped select the vehicle. It is a good color."
He pulled out his encrypted burner phone and stepped closer, invading my space.
"Look," he murmured, holding the bright screen toward me. "She chose a custom pink finish."
I dropped my gaze to the screen. It was not a picture of the car. It was a picture of Elena.
She was sitting in the driver's seat, beaming, her blonde hair a perfect, unruffled halo.
My eyes caught the faint grid of an open photo gallery at the bottom of his screen.
"Her phone died," Dominic explained casually, swiping to the next photo. "She used my secure device to take some pictures of the interior while we were inside."
Without a word, I reached out and plucked the heavy phone from his hand. He did not resist.
I began to scroll.
There were one hundred and twenty selfies of Elena. There were exactly three photos of the armored SUV.
A cold, hollow numbness spread through my limbs, making my hands feel as if they belonged to someone else.
Dominic despised digital footprints. He was pathologically paranoid about operational security. There were no photos of me on his phone. He did not even save my contact information.
He had once told me he memorized my number so no trace of it would ever exist, claiming it was the ultimate mark of a Don's protection.
Acting on a sudden, masochistic impulse, I backed out of the gallery and tapped open his encrypted messaging app.
Elena's number was pinned at the top. She was not a number; she was saved under the single, cryptic initial E. It was a secure alias, but the profile picture—a candid, brightly lit shot of her smiling—left no doubt.
I stared at the screen. It mocked me in glaring white text against the dark interface.
Dominic chuckled, a low, dangerous sound that seemed to deaden the air in the room. His dark eyes flashed with an arrogant amusement.
"Daring to question my authority and check up on me, Serena?" he asked. His tone was laced with dark humor, but the weight of his dominance was unmistakable.
Before I could reply, a new message notification dropped down. It was from the pinned contact.
"Elena: The pink looks so much better on me. You always play favorites with her. I want this car, Dom. Tell her to wait."
In that instant, I lost all interest in the toxic politics of his phone.
I handed the device back to him. My hand was perfectly, terrifyingly steady.
Dominic glanced down at the screen. A faint, exasperated sigh escaped his lips.
His thumbs moved in quick, practiced strokes.
"Dominic: The front-business funds are tied up in the port deal. I owe you a vehicle for now."
Locking the phone, he slid it back into his pocket. He rubbed the back of his neck, his gaze dropping away from mine for a brief, telling second.
"There is a minor security threat near her apartment," Dominic stated, his voice shifting seamlessly back into the cold, authoritative tone of the Boss. "It is best we give the armored SUV to her first. Until the threat is neutralized."
He was giving her my car. The compensatory gift—the apology for forgetting my existence—was already being redirected to the woman who had reminded him to buy it in the first place. I looked at the keys on the glass table, still lying where he had tossed them, and I did not pick them up. They were not mine. They never had been. And neither was the man who had just handed them to me as an afterthought.
