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The dining hall of Vane Manor was a cathedral of excess. Crystal chandeliers hung like frozen tears from the vaulted ceiling, casting a jagged, fractured light over the long mahogany table. My father sat at the head, a man trying to ignore the fact that he had invited a wolf to live in his sheepfold.
I sat to his right, draped in a gown of charcoal silk that felt like cold water against my skin. To my left was Dante. To my right, across the narrow expanse of the table, was Julian Thorne.
The seating arrangement was a tactical error.
Dante didn't eat. He spent the first three courses staring at Julian with a lethal, concentrated silence. He held his steak knife with a white-knuckled grip, the silver gleaming under the candlelight. Every time Julian looked at me—every time Julian reached for his wine glass—Dante's jaw would tighten until the muscle pulsed in his cheek.
"He touched her."
The thought was a repeating loop in Dante's mind, a jagged piece of glass grinding against his brain. He had seen them in the garden. He had seen the way the rain-slicked leather of Thorne's jacket had draped over Elena's shoulders—shoulders that belonged to a Rossi.
Dante looked at Julian. He didn't see a mercenary. He saw a thief. Thorne was a man who lived outside the rules of the Families, a man who didn't fear the Rossi name. And that lack of fear was an insult Dante couldn't stomach.
"I should have killed him in the garden," Dante thought, his fingers tracing the edge of his wine glass. "I should have carved his silver eyes out and fed them to the hounds." He looked at Elena. She looked so fragile, so beautifully broken. She was picking at her food with a vacant, distant stare that made him want to shake her until she screamed his name. He wanted to drag her back to the East Wing, to lock the door and remind her body—if not her mind—exactly who she belonged to. The jealousy wasn't just about Thorne; it was about the fact that Elena seemed more at peace in the mercenary's shadow than in Dante's arms. It was an intolerable audit.
Bianca sat next to Dante, her plate untouched. She was dressed in a gown of shimmering gold, a desperate attempt to reclaim the "Golden Girl" title, but she might as well have been invisible.
Dante hadn't looked at her once. Not when she brushed her thigh against his under the table. Not when she whispered a joke about the vintage. His entire universe had shrunk to the size of the woman sitting next to him—the woman Bianca had tried to kill.
"Why won't she just die?" Bianca screamed internally. "I did everything right. I gave him the accounts. I gave him my body. I gave him the silence of the grave."
She watched the way Dante's hand occasionally strayed to Elena's arm, his fingers digging into the silk, a possessive, unconscious claim. Bianca felt a surge of nausea. She realized then that Dante didn't want a partner. He wanted a ghost he could dominate. And the more Elena drifted away into her amnesia, the more Dante was willing to burn the world down to fetch her back.
Bianca reached for her wine, her hand shaking. She looked at the heavy silver knife at her setting. "If she won't die by a bullet, maybe she'll die by a 'clumsy' accident in the bath."
Julian ate with the clinical efficiency of a soldier, but his silver eyes never left the head of the table. He could feel Dante's murderous intent vibrating across the mahogany. It was a scent he knew well—the smell of a man who had lost control and was trying to buy it back with blood.
He looked at Elena. She played the part of the "Lost Princess" perfectly, but Julian saw the way her pulse thrummed in the hollow of her throat whenever Dante touched her. It wasn't the heartbeat of a lover; it was the staccato rhythm of a survivor counting the seconds until the strike.
"Hold on, Elena," Julian thought, his hand resting near the hidden blade strapped to his thigh. "Just a little longer. I'll get you out of this cage, even if I have to step over Dante's corpse to do it."
"You aren't drinking your wine, Elena," Dante said suddenly, his voice cutting through the clatter of silverware like a gunshot.
"I... I don't like the taste of it," I whispered, my eyes downcast. "It tastes like... copper."
Dante froze. Copper. The taste of blood.
He reached out, his hand covering mine on the table. His grip was far too tight, his rings biting into my skin. "You used to love this vintage. We shared a bottle the night I asked your father for your hand. Surely, your body remembers the warmth of it?"
"My body remembers many things, Mr. Rossi," I said, finally looking up. I let my gaze wander to Julian, then back to Dante. "But most of them feel like shadows."
Dante's eyes flared with a dark, violent jealousy. He saw the way I looked at Julian—the way my expression softened for a fraction of a second. He let go of my hand, pushed his chair back with a screech of wood on marble, and stood up.
"The air in here is stagnant," Dante announced, his voice tight with a suppressed rage. "Elena, come with me. We are going to the conservatory. You need the scent of fresh air to clear these... 'shadows' from your head."
"Dante, she's still eating," my father protested weakly.
Dante didn't even look at him. He walked around the table, grabbed my arm, and hauled me to my feet. His grip was an iron shackle. He didn't wait for an answer. He dragged me out of the dining hall, his stride long and furious.
The conservatory was a glass-walled jungle of exotic ferns and humid heat. The smell of damp earth and blooming orchids was suffocating. Dante slammed the heavy glass doors shut and spun me around, pinning me against the humid glass.
Outside, the rain was a torrential downpour, blurring the world into a grey smudge.
"What was that?" Dante hissed, his face inches from mine. His obsidian eyes were blown wide, the pupils swallowing the iris. "The way you looked at Thorne. Do you think I don't see it? Do you think I don't know when my woman is searching for another man's eyes?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," I gasped, my back pressed against the cold glass, my chest heaving. "He's just... he was kind to me in the garden."
"Kind?" Dante laughed, a harsh, jagged sound. He grabbed both of my wrists and pinned them above my head against the glass. He pressed his body into mine, his weight crushing the breath out of me. "I don't want you looking for kindness, Elena. I want you looking for "me". I want you fearing me. I want you craving me."
He leaned down, his mouth descending on my neck with a brutal, marking hunger. He wasn't kissing me; he was branding me. His teeth grazed the skin over my jugular, a silent promise of the violence he was capable of.
"You are a Rossi," he growled against my skin, his hand sliding down to the charcoal silk of my gown. He bunched the fabric up, his palm hot and rough against my thigh. "Your mind might be a blank slate, but your body... your body is my ledger. And I haven't finished the audit."
He forced his knee between my legs, pinning me harder against the glass. His hands were everywhere—possessive, desperate, and filled with a dark, adult intensity that bordered on madness. He tore at the silk of my bodice, his mouth finding the curve of my breast.
In my first life, this intensity would have made me weep with love. Tonight, it made me want to sharpen a shard of glass and drive it into his temple.
"Dante, stop... you're hurting me," I whispered, the fake tears finally spilling over.
He froze. He looked up, his face a mask of primal, agonizing conflict. He saw the tears. He saw the terror in my eyes. For a second, the monster recoiled. He let go of my wrists, his hands trembling.
"I... I didn't mean to," he rasped, his voice breaking. He slumped against me, his forehead resting on my shoulder. He sounded like a man drowning. "I just... I can't lose you again, Elena. Not to the darkness. And certainly not to a man like Thorne."
He pulled me into a crushing embrace, his arms wrapped around me so tight I could feel his heartbeat—thudding like a war drum against my chest.
"I will kill him," Dante whispered into my hair. "If he touches you again, if he even looks at you with those silver eyes, I will burn the Thorne name off the map. You are mine. Do you understand? Even if you don't remember who you are... remember that you belong to me."
While Dante was losing his mind in the conservatory, Bianca was in the hallway, her face twisted in a mask of cold, calculating fury. She had heard the glass doors slam. She had heard the low, muffled sounds of Dante's desperation.
She turned to the shadows of the servant's corridor.
"Kael," she whispered.
A man stepped out of the dark—a Rossi cleaner, someone who took orders in cash and blood.
"The Mercenary King," Bianca said, her voice a thin, lethal wire. "Dante won't do it because he's too obsessed with the 'New Elena' to think straight. But if Julian Thorne dies tonight... and if it looks like the Vane guards did it... Dante will have his excuse to liquidate this entire house."
She reached into her bodice and pulled out a small, glass vial. "Put this in Thorne's nightcap. It won't kill him instantly. It will just... slow him down. Just enough for your blade to find his heart."
Bianca looked toward the conservatory doors. "If I can't have Dante's love," she "thought, I'll give him a war. And in the smoke, Elena Vane will finally disappear for good.
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