Chapter 3

After that, we were completely severed.

Dante almost never returned to the house that was once called home.

The only window I had into his life was Olivia’s Instagram.

She often posted photos of hospital rounds at Massachusetts General Hospital, her captions filled with words like "mercy" and "healing" which were meaningless platitudes. In the background, Dante was always there. Sometimes it was his silhouette, sometimes just his hand, sometimes the Patek Philippe watch I had given him.

The comments underneath were always the same.

"This is truly God’s perfect arrangement!"

"Dante and Olivia are the epitome of true love!"

"Bless you both!"

Every time I saw them, it felt like a knife twisting in my heart. Under the weight of blow after blow, I decided to go down in flames with them.

I uploaded our marriage certificate and the evidence of Dante’s affair to the internet. Along with it, I attached irrefutable proof that Olivia had stolen my notes on cancer gene therapy, including timestamps, experimental data, and even the original spelling errors; all of it was identical.

That wasn’t all.

I also discovered that Olivia had hacked into my private cloud server and downloaded a massive amount of raw data.

I was ready to rip the veil off completely, but I had underestimated the Falcones.

Dante struck harder than I ever imagined.

He bribed Dr. Matthew Caldwell, my mother’s attending physician and cardiac specialist the family had paid heavily to recruit from a top East Coast medical institution. Dr. Caldwell suddenly claimed he needed to return to the coast and halted my mother’s treatment.

My mother, Elena Rossi, suffered from severe heart failure. Without Dr. Caldwell's proprietary treatment, she could die at any moment.

Dante called me. His voice was as cold as January in Boston.

"Sofia, post a clarification video immediately. Say the marriage certificate was photoshopped. Say the academic fraud was something you fabricated. Otherwise, your mother’s oxygen supply at the hospital might be ‘accidentally’ cut off."

The moment I heard that, my phone slipped from my hand.

I collapsed to my knees and screamed into the line, "Dante, that’s a human life! She once paid for your education! How can you be this ruthless?!"

Dante did not waver.

I could even hear the sound of whiskey being poured on his end.

"Sofia, don’t expect mercy for enemies. Since you chose to stand against the family, you bear the consequences. Go clarify. Don’t destroy Olivia. She’s the family’s future cash cow."

In that moment, I finally understood that the man I loved was already dead.

Or perhaps, he had never existed at all.