Chapter 4

The instant I looked up, a black sports car was hurtling straight at us. The tires dragged across the asphalt, leaving a scorching, acrid smell, but it was already too late to stop.

And in that split second, I saw Casper.

He came sprinting from across the street, eyes wide and bloodshot, his face seized by a terror I had never seen before.

"Cecilia!"

He called her name.

The next second, he threw himself forward, sweeping Cecilia into his arms, shielding her with his own body as they rolled together toward the curb.

And I was flung in the opposite direction by the sheer force of the impact.

A dull, sickening thud. My body flew like a kite ripped from its string, launched through the air, and slammed into the ground a dozen meters away.

The back of my skull struck the hard edge of the curb. Pain exploded through me, and something warm trickled down my temple. My vision blurred. My ears filled with screaming, honking, the chaos of running footsteps.

Not a single sound belonged to him.

I forced my head up with everything I had.

A short distance away, Casper was holding Cecilia tight, one hand cradling the back of her head, the other gently rubbing her back.

"It's okay… I'm here." His voice was ragged with fear, yet laced with a tenderness that made me feel as though I were suffocating. "Don't be scared, cara mia. No one's going to touch you."

Cara mia. My beloved. In our world, more intimate than "I love you."

He had never called me that.

Cecilia was curled into his chest, her face buried against him, her hands fisting his shirt.

And I lay in a pool of blood, only a dozen meters away, as though separated by an entire world.

He didn't so much as glance in my direction.

As consciousness began to cave in, a distant memory forced its way through.

My twentieth birthday party. Members of a rival family had infiltrated the estate. I was cornered at the end of a hallway, two masked gunmen closing in with weapons raised.

Just when I thought I was dead, Casper burst out of the darkness. He threw himself in front of me without a second thought and took the bullet with his own body.

Blood poured from his shoulder, soaking my dress. Even after his men arrived and killed the assassins, he still refused to let me go.

"Veronica," his face was ashen, his voice trembling, "are you hurt? Tell me."

The bullet had shattered his scapula, missing his heart by an inch. He was in surgery for a day and a night. The first thing he said when he woke up was to ask if I'd been frightened.

That boy who had shielded me with his own flesh and blood was now holding another woman, soothing her in that same trembling voice.

It wasn't that he'd stopped throwing himself into danger. It was that the person he threw himself in front of had changed.

Darkness swallowed me completely.

When I opened my eyes again, an IV line was connected to the back of my hand, and the stinging smell of antiseptic clogged my throat.

Casper was sitting beside the bed. His shirt was wrinkled, his face haggard, with deep bruise-colored shadows beneath his eyes.

Seeing me awake, his brow eased for a fraction of a second. But then his voice came down like a knife.

"What were you doing going to see Cecilia?" His tone was laced with barely suppressed irritation. "I already did what you asked—I kept my distance from her. Why are you still hounding her?"

I stared at him. That shattered place inside my chest throbbed all over again.

Even after what I'd just survived—a brush with death—his first words were not comfort. They were accusation.

"You call that keeping your distance?" My voice was so hoarse it didn't sound like mine. "Then what was crashing her wedding?"

Casper went rigid, his gaze sharpening. "You've been investigating me?"

"That video went around all of Chicago. Did I need to investigate?"

He was silent for a few seconds, then spoke, a note of self-justification creeping in.

"Her parents were forcing her to marry a man twenty years older for the sake of their family's interests. I'd already let her down once. I couldn't just stand by and watch her be destroyed."

His volume rose. "You're going to blow this out of proportion? Can't you show a little empathy?"

My nails dug deeper into my palms, the pain keeping me lucid.

I wanted to ask if he'd forgotten our past. Why, now, his acts of pushing me to the edge had somehow become proof that I wasn't understanding enough, wasn't gracious enough.

"If you care about her that much…" My voice shook, but I forced myself to finish. "Why not just admit it?"

The words struck his rawest nerve.

"Admit it—then what?" He lurched forward, bracing both hands on the sides of the bed, caging me in. His eyes were shot through with red, his voice quaking with restrained fury.

"You're the one who forced me to choose, Veronica. You."

"All these years together—what have you ever wanted that I didn't give you? The wedding, the title, the respect of this entire city—who in all of Chicago would dare disrespect you?"

He drew a deep breath, as if fighting to hold himself together.

"I just needed a little space. I lost my way for a while, but I came back. And what do you do? You won't let go of Cecilia. Are you trying to drive me insane?"

The tears finally broke through.

I wanted to tell him that the space he needed had been bought with my suffering alone. That his so-called return had been nothing but a soulless shell.

But I couldn't say any of it. Every ounce of hurt, rage, and heartbreak had been crushed into silence under a year's worth of exhaustion.

Seeing my tears, some of the anger seemed to drain from Casper. He released his grip on the bed, rubbed his brow, and let his voice soften.

"I know you feel insecure. But I have boundaries. I won't cross the line." He looked away, no longer meeting my eyes. "Cecilia is just a friend to me. Can't you trust me this once?"

I recognized that tone. It was the signal that his patience had run out. Pushing any further would only make things worse.

I didn't want to torture myself anymore.

I closed my eyes and said nothing.

Silence filled the hospital room. Casper seemed to take my silence as acceptance, and his tone finally softened.

"You've always wanted to see the Northern Lights, haven't you? I've already arranged everything." His voice carried a faint note of appeasement. "Next week. I'll take you to Norway. Whatever gift you want, just say the word—it's yours."

I looked at him, my lips pulling into a thin, bitter line. Next week, I would be gone from his life forever.

But I said nothing. Who he was with, who he loved—none of it had anything to do with me anymore.

Just then, his phone rang.

Casper glanced at the caller ID and immediately got to his feet.

"Get some rest. Something urgent came up—I have to go." He was already heading for the door without looking back. "If you need anything, have the nurse call me. I'll get here as soon as I can."

I saw the name on the screen. Cecilia.

Another lie. But by now, none of it mattered to me anymore.

I watched his retreating figure and felt something deep inside me go perfectly still.

That boy who had dug through ice and snow with his bare hands on an Alpine mountainside when I was sixteen. That boy who had said, "If you die, what am I supposed to do?" That Casper Scarfaro, who had once held me in the palm of his hand like I was his whole world—he was already dead.

The man standing before me now would throw himself into oncoming traffic for another woman. He'd crash her wedding, upend his life for her, and look right through me while I lay bleeding on the pavement.

His heart hadn't been mine for a long time.

And I should have woken up long ago.