Elena POV
They offered us the guest room, but sleep was elusive.
The silence of the countryside was deafening.
I craved the sirens of New York. I ached for the knowledge that armed guards were patrolling the perimeter.
Unable to bear the stillness, I walked out onto the porch.
The wooden boards creaked softly under my boots. The night air was cool, biting at my exposed skin.
I leaned against the railing, looking up at the stars. They were brighter here, unpolluted by the city lights.
Did Dante look at these same stars and wonder who he used to be?
Or was he so content in this small, simple life that he never looked up at all?
The screen door opened behind me.
I didn't turn.
"Couldn't sleep?"
It was Mia.
She was wearing a thick robe, her hand resting protectively on her belly. She moved with the heavy, careful gait of late pregnancy as she joined me.
By all rights, I should hate her.
She was the other woman. She was living the life I was supposed to have.
But looking at her face, open and guileless in the moonlight, I couldn't find the hate.
She hadn't stolen him. She had saved him.
I helped her sit on the porch swing.
"Thank you," she sighed, rubbing her lower spine. "My back is killing me."
"You're far along," I said.
"Seven months. It's a boy."
A son.
An heir.
Dante had always wanted a son. He used to tell me that our son would rule Chicago and New York.
Now his son would be... what?
A mechanic? A simple farmer?
"I don't hate you," I said suddenly.
The words slipped out before I could check them.
Mia looked surprised. "Why would you hate me?"
"For finding him before we did."
Mia looked down at her hands.
"I found him on the riverbank," she whispered. "He was... it was bad, Elena. He was shot. Three times."
I flinched at the image.
"I dragged him to my car. I stitched him up on my kitchen table because the nearest hospital is an hour away and he was bleeding out."
She looked up at me, her eyes glistening.
"He didn't speak for weeks. He just stared at the door like he was waiting for someone to come kill him."
"He was," I said.
Mia shivered.
"I didn't know who he was. I still don't, really. But I know he's dangerous. I've seen the scars. I've seen how he looks at strangers."
She paused.
"If I had known..."
She trailed off.
"If you had known?" I pressed.
"If I had known he was someone important... someone with a past like that... I might have run," she admitted. "I'm just a nurse, Elena. All I ever wanted was a quiet life."
She looked at the door where Dante was sleeping.
"But then he woke up. And he looked at me. And he wasn't a monster. He was just... lost."
I gripped the railing until my knuckles turned white.
He wasn't a monster to her. Because he had forgotten how to be one.
"You saved his life," I said. "For that, I owe you a debt."
"You don't owe me anything," Mia said. "I love him."
The words hung in the air between us.
Simple.
True.
And devastating.
She loved Arthur. And Arthur loved her.
Dante Moretti was dead.
And I was the widow who had come to drag his corpse back to the throne.
