The New York rain was a freezing slurry of ice and gray slush, a biting cold that soaked instantly through the thin fabric of my dress.
We were at the cemetery. Ahead, the Vitiello family mausoleum loomed against the slate sky, a dark palace for the dead.
"Get out," Dante ordered from the climate-controlled warmth of his armored SUV.
I stepped onto the wet asphalt, my legs trembling. My body was a tapestry of bruises from the kitchen, my lungs rattling with the fluid congestion of pneumonia earned in the walk-in cooler.
"Your father denied my father his life," Dante said, rolling down the window just an inch to let his voice carry over the wind. "You will pay respects."
He pointed to the path leading to the crypt. It wasn't paved. It was covered in crushed gravel and, for today, scattered with hot coals he had ordered his men to lay down. A 'Walk of Fire'—an old Sicilian penance.
"Crawl," he said.
I looked at him, panic seizing my chest. "Dante, please. My machine..."
"Crawl, or I turn off the battery right now."
He held up the remote.
I dropped to my knees. The sharp gravel sliced through my skin instantly, mingling with the biting cold of the rain. The heat from the coals radiated up, singeing the hem of my dress before I had even moved.
I began to move.
Every inch was agony. The stones gouged. The coals seared. I could smell the acrid scent of my own skin scorching. Blood mixed with the rain, leaving a diluted red trail behind me.
Dante drove the car slowly beside me, matching my torturous pace. Sofia was in the passenger seat, laughing at something on her phone. She held a cup of hot chocolate, the steam rising mockingly in the cold air.
"Look, Dante," she giggled, gesturing vaguely at me. "She looks like a dog."
Dante didn't laugh. He just watched, his face a mask of stone. "Dogs are loyal. She is the daughter of a traitor."
I kept crawling.
*Whir-click-whir.*
The machine embedded in my chest was my only companion. I focused on the mechanical rhythm. If it stopped, I stopped.
I reached the grave. My knees were shredded meat. My palms were blistered burns.
Dante got out of the car. He walked over to me, grabbed the back of my neck in a vice grip, and slammed my forehead against the cold marble of his father's tombstone.
*Crack.*
Warm blood trickled down my face, mixing with the rain and blinding one eye.
"Apologize," he hissed into my ear.
"I'm sorry," I sobbed into the stone. "I'm sorry."
"Louder."
"I'M SORRY!" I screamed, my voice tearing raw through my throat.
Dante released me. I slumped against the grave, a broken doll discarded in the mud.
"Get up," he said, wiping his hand on a silk handkerchief. "We have a party to plan."
I looked up at him through one swollen eye, vision blurring. "Party?"
"Sofia's birthday is coming up," he said, wrapping an arm around Sofia as she stepped out of the car, stepping delicately over my blood in her designer heels. "She wants a grand celebration. A wedding theme."
My heart—the metaphorical one, the soul I still possessed despite the plastic pump in my chest—shattered.
"But..." I whispered, my voice barely audible over the rain. "We were supposed to get married on her birthday."
"Exactly," Dante said, a cruel smirk twisting his lips. "You already did the planning. The flowers, the venue, the music. It’s all ready. We’ll just change the name on the card."
He opened the car door for Sofia.
"You can walk back," he said.
They drove away, taillights fading into the mist. I lay on my parents' grave, the rain washing away my blood, realizing that my dream wedding was now the celebration of my torture.
