Chapter 3 — Erased

I woke to sunlight and silence.

My throat throbbed with a deep, angry ache, and the collar was still there, heavy and warm, like it had fused to my skin.

No doctor. No ice. No apology.

Just a glass of water on the nightstand and the message my body understood perfectly:

You didn’t matter enough to fix.

I sat up slowly. My fingers brushed the leather, and pain flared. I winced, breathing through the burn.

When I opened my bedroom door, the hallway was quiet, but the house wasn’t empty.

Voices drifted from downstairs. Light laughter. Glass clinking.

I moved like a thief, barefoot, careful, searching for anything—scissors, pliers, a key, anything to get the collar off before my skin blistered again.

In the utility room, I found nothing but locked drawers and supplies labeled in neat black ink.

In the kitchen, Francesca saw me and went pale. “Serafina—”

“Where’s the key,” I demanded.

She looked away. “There isn’t one.”

My stomach dropped. “What do you mean there isn’t one?”

“It was custom,” she whispered. “The clasp… it’s sealed.”

My vision sharpened with rage. “So you just leave it on me? You watch me suffocate?”

Tears burned the back of my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. Tears were currency here. I wasn’t paying.

I turned away before Francesca could speak again and walked toward the living room, drawn by a sound I didn’t recognize at first.

A buzzing hum.

Like a tattoo gun.

I stepped into the doorway and froze.

Dante sat on a chair with his sleeves rolled up, his forearm exposed. A man in latex gloves hovered over him with a compact machine—ink removal, not ink application. A portable laser tool, its tip pressed to Dante’s skin.

The smell hit me next—sharp antiseptic mixed with burned flesh.

On Dante’s arm, just below his wrist, was the mark I’d touched a thousand times when I was trying to convince myself I belonged.

A black phoenix, wings spread, tiny script beneath it.

My name.

Not in full. Just the first letter.

S.

Katerina stood behind the technician, arms crossed, pleased.

“Harder,” she said casually. “I want it gone completely. No shadow.”

The technician nodded and pressed the tool down again.

Dante didn’t flinch. His jaw clenched once, then settled back into calm.

I took a step forward without meaning to, a sound slipping from my throat. “Dante…”

His eyes lifted and landed on me.

Not warm. Not startled. Just… aware.

Like I was a piece of furniture that had moved.

Katerina’s smile widened. “Ah. You’re awake.”

I couldn’t breathe properly. The collar dug into my swelling throat, and my pulse roared.

“That’s ours,” I said, voice shaking. “You— you put that there.”

Dante’s gaze narrowed slightly. “Go back upstairs.”

Katerina laughed softly. “She thinks it belongs to her.”

I stared at him. “Did you let her do this?”

Dante didn’t answer.

The technician wiped Dante’s arm. The phoenix was half destroyed, a blistered smear where my illusion used to live.

Katerina tilted her head at me, studying me like an animal in a zoo. “He’s marrying me,” she said. “Symbols matter. I won’t have my husband branded like a boy in love.”

I felt something inside me rupture, quiet and final.

“You could have told me,” I said to Dante. “You could have looked at me and said, ‘This is over.’”

His expression hardened. “It is over.”

The words were flat. Efficient.

Like erasing ink.

Katerina stepped closer and lifted her manicured finger to the collar at my throat. “This, however, is not over. This is your place.”

Pain flashed hot again beneath the leather.

Dante’s gaze flicked to my throat—not with concern, but calculation.

“Finish,” he told the technician.

Then, to me: “Upstairs.”

I didn’t move.

For five years, I’d been the secret behind his closed doors. Now I was the stain she was scrubbing off his skin.

I turned before they could see my face crumble.

As I walked away, the buzzing resumed behind me, steady and merciless.

And I understood with terrifying clarity:

They weren’t just taking my future.

They were deleting my past.