"Oh right, remember the day you begged Dominic to send the helicopter to take you to the hospital to see your grandmother one last time?"
"Wanna know why he didn't take you?"
"Because he had promised to take me to the beach to watch the sunset. Look, the photo of us kissing on my phone screen was taken during that moment."
The room went very still. The kind of stillness that precedes violence in houses like this one.
Unable to endure it any longer, I slapped the phone out of her hand and grabbed her by the throat.
The black bottle in her hand slipped and fell. Glass shattered against the hardwood floor.
The sharp, acrid stench of gasoline instantly filled the air. It soaked into the slashed remains of my clothes, pooled between the floorboards, and the guest room became something else entirely. Not a room. A trap.
In the chaos, Daniela hastily lit the gasoline on the floor.
Thick smoke filled the air, and flames erupted violently, climbing the curtains, devouring the bedframe, turning the guest room into an inferno that roared against the old walls of the Valente estate. The fire moved with a hunger that felt almost personal.
Having just been discharged from the hospital, I quickly succumbed to the fumes, my body growing weak as I collapsed to the ground. The smoke was everywhere. In my lungs, behind my eyes, pressing down on my chest like a hand.
Through the haze, I heard Dominic's voice.
"Seraphina!"
Then came the sounds of soldiers and household staff trying to stop him.
"Boss, it's too dangerous! Wait for the extinguishers, we've got men coming from the south wing—"
"Move! Seraphina is still inside!"
His voice cut through the chaos like a blade. For one moment, one fraction of a second that I would carry with me across an ocean, I heard something in it that I had not heard in nine years. Something raw. Something real.
In the end, he ignored their warnings and rushed into the flames.
What he didn't expect was to find Daniela inside too.
"Dominic... help..." Her voice was thin and trembling, and her hand found her stomach again, the choreography flawless even through smoke and fire. The gesture that had shielded her for months. The gesture that had rewritten the hierarchy of this house.
She hadn't even finished her sentence before he scooped her up in his arms, never once glancing at me.
Without hesitation, he turned and walked away. The flames closed behind him like a curtain falling. And I lay on the floor of the guest room, alone, the heat pressing against my skin, watching the doorway where he had stood. Where he had chosen. The way he had always chosen.
Thirty minutes later, after calming Daniela down, he searched the entire house, but I was nowhere to be found. Every room. Every hallway. The wine cellar, the east wing, the garden perimeter where the soldiers kept watch. He sent Marco to check the cameras. He called the gate. Nothing. I had vanished from the Valente estate like smoke clearing after a fire, and the house felt different without me in it, though he would not have been able to say how.
Late that night, at the airport.
After mailing a package at the terminal counter, I boarded a flight to the UK, coughing as I made my way down the aisle. My lungs still burned from the smoke. My throat was raw. The bruise on my wrist from where I had dragged myself across the floor was already darkening. But my passport was in my hand, and the documents were in my bag, and the ring finger on my left hand was bare.
Just before the plane took off, my phone buzzed with a text from Dominic.
[I don't have time to play hide-and-seek with you.]
[Daniela has a prenatal check-up tomorrow at 10 a.m. Come with her, and get your lungs checked too.]
I didn't reply. Instead, I removed the SIM card and powered off the phone, dropping it into my coat pocket like something dead.
'Dominic. From this day forward, you and I are done. We will never see each other again.'
The next day, at the Family's private clinic on the Upper East Side.
"Dominic, is our baby okay?"
Meeting Daniela's pitiful, anxious eyes, Dominic immediately pulled her into his arms, speaking to her in a soft, reassuring voice.
"The doctor said the baby is perfectly healthy. No signs of trauma from what happened yesterday."
"That's such a relief," she breathed out, her voice trembling slightly. Her hand drifted to rest over her stomach, fingers splayed in that careful, practiced way she had perfected, always when he was watching.
