Dante Vitiello POV
I sat on the unforgiving plastic chair in the hallway. My shirt was a ruin—stained with mud from the grave and blood from where I had bitten through my own lip.
My phone buzzed against my thigh. It was Sofia's father.
I answered, my voice a hollow scrape.
"Dante, where is my daughter? She's not answering her phone. The wedding planner is waiting for the deposit."
"There will be no wedding," I said.
"Excuse me? You can't just call off a wedding with the Moretti family. We have contracts. We have—"
"Sofia is currently in surgery," I said, staring at the sterile white wall opposite me. "She decided to donate a kidney. She is finally making the lie she told three years ago the truth."
Silence stretched on the other end.
"If you ever call me again," I said, my tone dropping to a lethal whisper, "I will burn your house down with you inside it. Do not test me. I have nothing left to lose."
I hung up and crushed the phone in my hand until the screen shattered into a spiderweb of glass, slicing my palm.
I stood up and walked back to the morgue.
Elena was still there. She looked small. Abandoned.
Dr. Aris had finished his work. He had closed the incisions. She was dressed in a simple white hospital gown.
"The funeral home is on the way," Aris said gently. "They can prepare her for cremation."
"No," I said.
"Dante, you have to let her go."
"No fire," I said. "And no dirt."
I couldn't put her in the ground. The ground was cold. The ground was full of worms and rot. And fire... fire was what I had put her through for five years. I couldn't burn her again.
"Get the cryo-casket from the storage facility," I ordered Lee.
Lee blinked, stunned. "The one we bought for... for high-value asset transport? For the organ shipments?"
"Bring it."
An hour later, they wheeled it in. It was a sleek, glass-topped pod designed to keep organs or bodies in perfect stasis. It looked like something out of a science fiction movie, stark and clinical against the gloom.
I lifted Elena myself. She felt weightless, like a bird with hollow bones. I placed her on the velvet lining inside the pod.
I arranged her hair, fanning it out like a halo. I folded her hands over her chest, covering the scar.
"Close it," I said.
The glass lid hissed shut. The temperature gauge dropped rapidly. Frost began to form on the edges of the seal, blooming like intricate lace.
She looked like she was sleeping. Like Snow White waiting for a kiss.
But I wasn't the Prince. I was the Witch. And my kiss was poison.
"Take her to the estate," I said, never taking my eyes off her face. "Put her in the wine cellar. Clear out the vintage collection. That room is hers now."
"Boss," Lee said, his voice trembling. "This isn't healthy. You need to grieve."
"I am grieving," I said, placing my hand on the cold glass over her face. "This is my grief. It doesn't end. It just freezes."
I walked out of the hospital into the night air. It was raining again. The city lights blurred into streaks of neon pain.
I had won. I was the Don. I had crushed my enemies. I had the truth.
But as I walked toward my car, I realized I was holding my breath, waiting for the familiar hum of her LVAD pump.
Silence.
It was the loudest silence I had ever heard.
