Seraphina's POV
The penthouse I'd paid half a million dollars for smelled like stale beer and Isabella's perfume.
I'd driven here on autopilot, my stitched-together composure fraying at the edges. The building's doorman had given me an odd lookwasn't I supposed to be at my wedding?*—but he'd let me through. The elevator ride to the thirty-second floor took an eternity.
The door was unlocked.
The living room looked like a frat party had detonated inside it. Empty bottles crowded every surface. The leather couch was shoved crooked against the wall. Someone had knocked over the floor lamp I'd found at that vintage shop in Brooklyn—the one Dominic had said was "too expensive for something that just stands there."
And my wedding planning binder. Three hundred pages of fabric swatches, seating charts, menu tastings, flower arrangements. Ripped apart. Pages scattered across the floor like dead leaves, boot prints smeared across the cover.
Dominic was sprawled on the couch. Isabella was draped across his lap like a trophy. She was wearing my diamond tennis bracelet—the one I'd left in the wall safe, the one my grandmother had given me on her deathbed.
They both looked up when I walked in.
Isabella smiled.
Dominic didn't.
"Seraphina." He made no move to push her off. His arm stayed looped around her waist, possessive and casual. "Thought you'd be at the venue by now. What, you forget something? Need me to grab your lipstick?"
"There's not going to be a wedding."
He arched an eyebrow. The same eyebrow I'd kissed a hundred times. "No? Why's that?"
I held up my phone. Rachel's photo blazed on the screen—Dominic on his knee, ring extended, the fountain sparkling behind him.
Isabella's smile flickered. Just for a second. Then it was back, bright and sharp as cut glass.
Dominic leaned back into the couch cushions. He looked bored. "That was this morning. Old news." He tilted his head, studying me the way you'd study a broken appliance—mildly inconvenienced, already mentally replacing it. "You're always the last to know, Seraphina. It's one of the things I'll miss about you."
The words landed in my chest like a stone dropping into still water. Ripples of pain spreading outward, slow and cold.
"Was any of it real?"
He considered the question. Actually considered it—cocked his head, rolled his tongue over his teeth, took his time. "The first year, maybe. You were fun. New. You had that thing where you'd laugh at everything I said like I was the funniest guy in the room." He shrugged. "Then you got comfortable. Started talking about flower arrangements and guest lists and whether we should get a joint bank account." He gestured at Isabella, who preened. "She never got comfortable. That's the difference."
My hands were shaking. I pressed them flat against my thighs, fingernails digging into denim.
"The money," I said. "My half of the penthouse. The forty thousand I put into your first shipment. The ten I gave you for Marco's legal fees. Every cent. I want it back."
Dominic laughed.
The sound filled the room—genuine, from the belly, the laugh of a man who'd just heard the funniest joke of his life.
"You want your money back?" He stood up, walked to the wall safe, spun the dial with practiced ease. "Let me show you what your money bought."
The safe door swung open.
He stepped aside.
Packs of sanitary pads. Stacked neatly in rows, cheap plastic packaging gleaming under the track lighting. Where the velvet box of my grandmother's jewelry should have been. Where the deed to my half of this apartment should have been. Where five years of my life should have been worth something.
"Go on." Dominic's voice was soft, almost gentle. The voice he used when he was being cruelest. "Take what you came for."
His crew—I hadn't even noticed them gathering in the hallway—burst into laughter. Marco's laugh was the loudest. I'd picked Marco up from the emergency room at 3 a.m. after a stabbing. I'd sat with him until the sun came up.
I stared at the safe. At the cheap plastic. At the man I'd spent five years believing in.
Something inside me—something I hadn't known was still alive—gave a small, quiet death rattle and went still.
I turned to leave.
My hip caught the edge of the glass coffee table.
The sound of it shattering was louder than it should have been—a crystalline explosion that silenced the laughter. I went down hard, no time to break my fall, and my right hand landed in the shards.
The pain was immediate. A white-hot bolt that shot up my arm and detonated somewhere behind my eyes. Blood welled between my fingers—so much blood, impossibly red—dripping onto the white rug I'd spent three weekends picking out.
The room went quiet. The kind of quiet that means something has shifted.
I looked at my hand. At the glass embedded in my palm. At the blood running down my wrist, soaking the sleeve of my sweater, pooling on the rug.
I looked at Dominic.
Something flickered across his face. There and gone—a muscle jumping in his jaw, a brief crack in the mask. Surprise, maybe. Or the first cold finger of guilt. But he crushed it before it could take root.
"You should get that looked at." His voice was flat. Clinical. Like he was advising a stranger.
I pushed myself up with my left hand. Blood ran freely now, dripping off my fingertips. I looked at him—really looked, the way you look at a door you're walking through for the last time—and I felt the final thread between us snap.
"We're done." My voice came out steadier than I'd expected. "Under Omertà, our bond is dead."
I walked out.
Through the hallway. Past his silent crew—men I'd fed, men I'd bandaged, men who were now pressing themselves against the walls to let me pass. Down the elevator. Through the lobby. Out into the freezing night where the wind cut through my sweater and the blood kept dripping and I didn't look back, not once, not even when I heard someone call my name from the thirty-second floor.
A black SUV was waiting at the curb.
Two men in dark suits stepped out. Their faces changed when they saw my hand—years of training cracking for just a moment to reveal something human underneath.
"Principessa." The older one's voice was tight. "You're bleeding."
"Get me out of here."
He opened the door. I climbed into the back seat, leather cold against my skin, and the door closed with the solid, final thunk of a vault sealing shut.
The city skyline slid past the tinted window. The SUV accelerated toward the private airfield.
I didn't look back.
