Chapter 4

Dante and Serena left together. I didn't watch them go.

Ethan called me a car and I headed home. But when I reached the apartment building, Dante was already there — standing by the dumpster, a velvet box in his hand.

He saw me. Held my gaze. Then, with deliberate slowness, hurled the box into the trash.

The lid popped open on impact. A silver pendant tumbled out — tarnished, scratched, but unmistakable.

I'd bought that pendant the summer we got together. I was nineteen, broke, and spent three months working in a mascot costume in hundred-degree heat to afford it. The day I gave it to her — him, I had to remind myself, because the Dante who cried with gratitude that afternoon no longer existed — he'd promised to keep it forever.

This wasn't the first time he'd thrown it away.

The first time was the year he met Serena. She'd shown him a cropped photo of me and Ethan in the campus lab, then whispered her poison: "Arabella told Ethan she's only with you because you remind her of him."

That night, Dante threw the pendant into the lake. I spent two hours in the snow diving for it, and pulled it out with frozen hands and blue lips.

I brought it back to him. He slapped me across the face and said, "I don't believe you."

After that, it was the journal. Then our photos. Every time, Serena lit the match, and Dante burned another piece of us.

And every time, I picked up the ashes.

Eight years. Countless times.

But tonight, standing in the cold, looking at the pendant glinting among garbage bags — I felt nothing.

No urge to reach down. No desperation to salvage what was broken.

Dante stood rigid, watching me, waiting for the familiar scene: Arabella scrambling, Arabella begging, Arabella proving her love through humiliation.

I looked at the dumpster once.

Then I walked past him and into the building without a word.

"Arabella!" His voice cracked behind me. "You're just going to leave it? It means nothing to you?"

It used to mean everything.

But a thing that gets thrown away and retrieved a hundred times isn't a keepsake anymore.

It's a leash.

I woke the next morning to find the apartment half-empty.

Serena was in the living room, loading Dante's belongings into boxes.

She spotted me and smiled — slow, venomous.

"Poor Arabella. He doesn't even want to breathe the same air as you anymore."

I walked past her to the kitchen without responding.

She followed, irritation breaking through her composure.

"You know," she said, dropping the pretense entirely, "Dante knew your heart was failing. He saw your scans. He knew I was perfectly healthy."

"And he still gave me your donor. Want to guess why?"

She leaned closer. "Because he loves me more."

The words were designed to shatter me. But my heart was already so full of holes that new wounds didn't register.

Seeing no reaction, Serena grabbed the front of my shirt.

Then, from the hallway — footsteps.

Instantly, she crumpled to the floor, clutching her chest.

"Dante — my heart — I can't breathe —"

Dante burst through the door. His eyes swept the scene — Serena on the ground, me standing over her — and his face twisted with rage.

"What did you say to her? You know she can't handle stress after surgery —"

"She didn't have surgery," I said flatly.

He wasn't listening.

His gaze locked onto the portable defibrillator strapped to my chest — the one my doctor had ordered me to wear twenty-four hours a day until the bypass.

Before I could react, he lunged forward and ripped it off me.

The electrode pads tore from my skin, leaving raw red welts. The monitor shrieked — and my heart, suddenly unmoored, lurched into chaos.

My pulse spiked to one-eighty. The room tilted. My vision went dark at the edges.

I slid down the refrigerator and hit the floor.

Dante pressed the defibrillator against Serena's chest — a woman with a perfectly healthy heart — while I lay three feet away, unable to breathe.

Serena nestled into his arms. Over his shoulder, where he couldn't see, she looked directly at me and smiled.

When Dante finally glanced my way, he sneered.

"Get up, Arabella. You're not fooling anyone."

"Serena's heart gives out and suddenly yours does too? At least be original."

He kicked me once in the chest — not hard enough to break bone, but hard enough to feel like a death sentence — then walked out with Serena, slamming the door behind him.

The impact rattled my skull.

But I didn't reach for my pills.

Instead, shaking, gasping, vision swimming, I dragged myself to the hallway console and pulled up the apartment's security footage.

Every second of it. The defibrillator. The kick. Serena's smile.

I sent the full recording to Ethan's encrypted server.

With this, Dante couldn't talk his way out of anything. Not anymore.

If he wanted to walk this road to the end, then I'd make sure it led straight to a prison cell.

After that, I don't know how long I lay on the floor.

Minutes. Maybe longer.

The doorbell rang. Ethan pushed through the unlocked door, took one look at me, and went white.

"Hold on — I'm calling an ambulance. Hold on."

The paramedics said my heart had gone into acute failure. The bypass surgery — originally scheduled for next week — had to happen now.

Tonight's surgeon on call was Dante.

When the nurse briefed him outside the OR, he didn't look at the patient file. He was checking his phone — texting Serena about weekend plans.

"One percent survival rate," the nurse said carefully.

Dante shrugged, already gloving up. "Not zero. Let's get this over with."

He strode into the operating room, picked up the scalpel, and reached for the surgical drape covering the patient's face.

He pulled it back.

The scalpel clattered onto the steel tray.

Every drop of color drained from his face.

"Ara... bella?"

Before he could form another word, the OR doors slammed open.

Two men in dark suits stepped inside, badges raised.

"Put the scalpel down, Dr. Moretti."

"Based on evidence in our possession, you are under investigation for medical fraud, criminal negligence, and attempted manslaughter."

"Your medical license is suspended effective immediately. Step away from the patient."

The surgical light blazed white against Dante's face, illuminating the exact moment his world collapsed.