Chapter 4

The baby changed things.

At least for a while.

After the diagnosis, Dante had me discharged and taken back to the estate.

He sat beside me, held my hand, and spoke in the same calm tone he used when cleaning up blood after a mess had already been made.

“Yes, I made mistakes,” he said.

“But you went too far too, Elena.”

“Your parents have aged ten years because of this.”

“People talk about them everywhere they go.”

“You’re not a child anymore. Stop being reckless.”

Then he placed my hand over my stomach.

“Think about the baby.”

“Think about your parents.”

And I broke.

Not loudly.

Not dramatically.

I was just too tired to keep fighting.

So I gave in.

After that, I became half-dead inside.

I moved through that huge house like a ghost.

A beautiful prison full of flowers, polished marble, and silence.

Dante came back three nights a week.

On those nights, he would sit by me, talk to my stomach, and read to the baby as if effort could fix what betrayal had already destroyed.

The other nights, he was with Nora.

I didn’t need anyone to tell me.

I always knew.

The perfume on his shirt.

The scratches on his wrist.

The softened look on his face whenever her name came up.

He used to have stomach problems.

When we were younger, he hated junk food, hated waiting in line, hated wasting time on anything he thought was stupid.

But with Nora, suddenly none of that mattered.

He took her to trendy dessert shops.

He stood in line for ridiculous drinks.

He ate hot pot at midnight and ice cream after, just because she wanted both.

This was a man who once said wasting ten minutes on nonsense was pathetic.

Now he could waste an entire night making her laugh.

He watched cheesy romance movies with her.

The kind he used to mock.

He let her put her name on work she had no right touching.

He bent rules for her.

Broke rules for her.

Buried his own standards for her.

For Nora, Dante trampled on everything he once claimed mattered.

My dignity.

His principles.

Even the rules of his own world.

What finally shattered me was the proposal.

By then, Dante had become even more famous.

Not just in the underworld.

Everywhere.

He’d made a move big enough to land his name in international headlines—something brutal, brilliant, and profitable enough to make businessmen admire him and enemies fear him.

He was at the peak of everything.

Power. Reputation. Influence.

And at the brightest moment of his life, he chose to share it with Nora.

He named one of his new luxury clubs after her.

Nocturne Promise.

Under those lights, with the whole city’s elite watching, Dante built her a fantasy.

He arranged a private ceremony upstairs.

Small. Exclusive. Intimate.

Everyone knew what it really was, even if nobody said it out loud.

Not a legal wedding.

Something crueler.

A public promise.

A declaration.

A slap across my face in front of people powerful enough to enjoy it.

Nora walked toward him in a white dress.

A white dress.

And I felt something inside me go cold.

Because I never got one.

Dante and I never had a real wedding.

No aisle. No vows. No celebration.

I had begged once.

Begged.

And Dante had looked at me and said—

“Elena, you know me.”

“I don’t care about meaningless ceremonies.”

“Why waste energy on appearances when I have real work to do?”

Because I loved him, I accepted it.

Because I loved him, I kept lowering the line until there was no line left.

And because I loved him, I lost everything.

That night, watching Nora in white, hearing the applause, seeing Dante look at her like she was something precious—

I shattered.

I rushed forward in front of everyone.

I grabbed her dress and tore it.

I slapped her hard enough to send her stumbling.

Then I hit her again.

The room exploded.

People shouted.

Someone screamed.

And then Dante threw a glass of water in my face.

Ice cold.

The room went dead silent.

He looked at me with open disgust.

“Elena,” he said, “you’ve crossed the line.”

That was the night he asked for a divorce.

That was the night he said he was leaving with Nora.

I begged him not to.

I hate admitting that now, but I did.

I cried.

I shook.

I grabbed his sleeve and said the ugliest, most desperate thing I had ever said in my life.

“If you walk out that door tonight, I’ll take this baby and jump.”

Dante stopped.

For one second, I thought maybe I had reached him.

For one second, I thought maybe somewhere under all that coldness, the boy from the stairwell was still there.

He did stop.

But he didn’t stay.

He pushed me away.

Maybe he only meant to scare me.

Maybe he thought I was bluffing.

Maybe he was just tired of me.

I don’t know.

What I do know is this—

I fell.

And I lost the baby.

The child I had once believed might save what was left of my life.

After that, I was sent back to the psychiatric facility.

This time, the diagnosis was severe depression.

I said all this with a faint smile.

Not a happy one.

Just the kind people learn to wear after surviving things they should have died from.

“In my second year inside,” I told Mia, “Dante filed for divorce.”

“I fought him as long as I could.”

“In the end, I got nothing except that box of old junk.”

“For the first year after the divorce, I was a mess. I cut myself. I lost my mind over and over again.”

“I couldn’t hold a job. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t function.”

“My parents were terrified. They aged so fast it scared me.”

“So I started helping out at the shop.”

“At first just to keep them from worrying.”

“Then little by little… I got better.”

I looked around the little breakfast shop.

The steam. The flour. The warmth.

The small life I had rebuilt with my own hands.

“Eventually, I took over the place.”

“And honestly?”

“I’m doing okay.”

By then, Mia was crying so hard she could barely breathe.

“Elena,” she whispered, “you’ve been through hell.”

“Dante Caruso is a bastard.”

“If I ever get the chance, I swear I’ll beat the hell out of him for you.”

The words had barely left her mouth when the heavy curtain at the entrance was lifted.

A tall figure stepped inside.

For a second, the steam from the kitchen blurred everything.

I couldn’t see his face clearly.

But suddenly, I remembered the sentence Dante had tried to say at the flower shop before I walked away.

The part I hadn’t heard.

Now, standing there in the doorway with years of wreckage between us, I thought maybe I finally knew what it had been.

Elena… I regret it.