Elara POV:
"Dante, watch out!" I screamed, my voice tearing through my throat as I watched the out-of-control heavy truck barreling straight toward the right side of the Maybach.
My hand shot out, a desperate, ingrained reflex. He was the man who had pulled me out of the slums seven years ago. My brain was wired to seek his warmth, his protection, the absolute safety of his presence whenever death loomed. My fingertips brushed the cold leather of the seat between us.
He wasn't there.
In the millisecond before the impact, Dante lunged across the console. He threw his massive frame over the passenger seat, wrapping his arms around Seraphina. He shielded her entirely with his broad back. It was a blind, instinctual reaction to protect the woman he believed had saved his life all those years ago.
He left me completely exposed in the back seat.
The deafening crunch of tearing metal ruptured my eardrums. The impact hit like a bomb. A jagged shard of ballistic glass exploded inward and sank deep into my forehead. Hot blood gushed instantly, blinding my left eye.
The physical agony was blinding, but the image of my husband's back, curled fiercely over another woman, severed something vital in my chest.
The Maybach flipped on the slick, rain-soaked Manhattan pavement. My body was tossed like a broken ragdoll against the reinforced roof. The airbags deployed with bone-crushing force. The sheer pressure squeezed the oxygen from my lungs. A sickening crack echoed in my ears as my ribs gave way.
The world spun in a chaotic blur of shattered glass and screeching steel until the vehicle finally slammed to a halt, upside down in a puddle of dirty water.
The thick, suffocating stench of leaking gasoline filled the crushed cabin.
I forced my heavy eyelids open. Blood coated my lashes, stinging my eyes. I tried to call his name. I needed him.
Only a wet, gurgling hiss escaped my throat. I was choking on my own blood.
From the front, Dante's voice roared, frantic and cracking with a terror I had never heard from him. He was kicking the crumpled door, the metal groaning under his brute strength.
He didn't look back. Not once. He just held a limp Seraphina tight against his chest.
Sirens wailed in the distance, cutting through the drumming rain. Pedestrians were shouting, their boots splashing in the puddles outside.
I marshaled every ounce of strength left in my shattered body. I twitched my fingers, reaching through the gap in the crushed seats, trying to touch the hem of Dante's tailored suit jacket hanging near the console.
He jerked away. He kicked the door open and dragged Seraphina out into the night.
My fingers grasped empty air.
Freezing rain poured through the shattered windows, soaking my blood-drenched clothes. The flashing red and blue lights of the New York EMS ambulances arrived, casting a hellish glow over the wreckage.
Paramedics rushed the car, their boots crunching on glass. Two of them aimed their flashlights into the back, their eyes widening when they saw me pinned under the crushed roof.
"We need the jaws of life! Back seat is critical!" a medic shouted, reaching in to stabilize my neck.
Before his hands could touch me, Dante collided with him. Dante shoved the paramedic back with the force of an enraged lion.
"Get your hands off her and look at Seraphina!" Dante roared, his eyes bloodshot, pointing at the woman in his arms who had nothing but a scrape on her elbow.
"Sir, the woman in the back is bleeding out. Her vitals are—"
Dante's bodyguards swarmed the medic, pinning him against the side of the ambulance. Dante reached into his waistband, pulled his custom Glock, and pressed the cold steel barrel directly against the doctor's forehead. The Volkov syndicate heir didn't care about rules or triage. He only cared about his obsession.
"I said," Dante snarled, the hammer clicking back, "treat her first."
The crowd gasped. Cell phone cameras went up, recording the billionaire holding a doctor hostage.
Trapped in the mangled steel, I heard those words. *Treat her first.*
The final, pathetic illusion I had clung to for seven years disintegrated into dust. The naive girl who scrubbed his blood out of his shirts, who endured his family's cruelty just to be near him, died right there in the wreckage.
Through the edge of my blurred vision, I watched Dante strip off his ruined suit jacket and carefully, tenderly wrap it around Seraphina's shoulders to shield her from the rain.
The freezing cold of massive blood loss swallowed my consciousness. The darkness rushed in like a tidal wave.
Right before I went completely under, I heard his voice, cold and absolute.
"Don't worry about the back, drive to the hospital right now!"
