Chapter 3

The first two years, Dante was the kind of husband other women invent in their heads.

He'd trace my eyebrows with his thumb while I was still half asleep. He walked out of sit-downs when I had a cold. When I got pregnant with Lily, he turned into a different person entirely — softer, careful, like I might break if he breathed too hard.

I thought: this is it. This is what forever feels like.

And then one afternoon, I knocked over a picture frame in his study.

It had been facedown on the shelf. I figured it had fallen. I picked it up.

An old photograph. Sera — maybe fifteen, sixteen. Standing in the back courtyard of the estate. Wild grin. A pistol in one hand, aimed at the sky like she'd just fired it. And Dante beside her. Young. Unguarded. Laughing — this open, reckless laugh I had never once seen on his face.

I was still staring at it when the door opened behind me.

"Who told you to touch that?"

I froze. Not because of the words — because of the voice. Cold. Hard. A voice he had never once used with me.

He crossed the room in two steps, almost knocked me out of the way, and snatched the frame from my hands.

I caught myself on the desk. Stood there. Staring at his back.

He was checking the glass for cracks. Running his fingers over the frame. Holding it the way you hold something irreplaceable.

"Get out." He didn't turn around.

"Who is she?"

Silence. A long time.

"Someone I grew up with. Serafina."

And then it came out. All of it.

Sera's parents were family allies. Good people. They were killed when she was eight — a Volkov hit. Don Moretti took her in. Raised her under his roof. And gave his son one order: She's your responsibility. You protect her. You train her. You keep her alive.

So Dante did. He taught her to shoot. To fight. To read people. To survive in a world that eats little girls whole. Day after day. Year after year. She was his shadow, and he was her shield.

"She told me she was in love with me." His eyes were closed. His voice was barely there.

"I shut her down. Told her it was never going to happen. My father put her life in my hands — crossing that line would've been the worst kind of betrayal."

That night, Sera left the compound alone. Got drunk. The Volkovs picked her up off the street.

She was gone.

Dante's voice broke when he told me the rest.

"Three years. I tore the whole Northeast apart looking for her. Called in every favor. Burned every bridge. Everyone told me she was dead."

He turned around. Took my hands. He looked wrecked.

"Meeting you — that's when I finally stopped looking. You're the reason I stopped drowning, Elena."

We fought that night. The worst fight of our marriage. I screamed until my throat was raw — if he never stopped loving her, why the hell did he come after me? Why drag me into this? Why let me fall for a man who was already gone?

He couldn't answer. Not really.

In the end, he grabbed the photograph and threw it into the fireplace. Right in front of me.

I watched the flames eat her face. Her grin. That reckless, wild-girl joy.

He pulled me close. Whispered I'm sorry until the words lost their shape. Said there was only me now. Only us.

I believed him. God help me, I believed him.

After that, he was even better. More attentive. More gentle. Like he was trying to prove something — to me, or maybe to himself.

Everyone in the city envied me. Elena Moretti. Luckiest woman in New York.

I thought the photo was ash. I thought the past was dead.

Then Sera walked through our front door. Said his name once. And three years of marriage went up in smoke.

That's when I finally understood something I should have known all along:

Some things don't burn. They just go underground. And they wait.