LOGINIreneI woke before the sun had fully claimed the sky.Dawn had only just begun to press itself against the slatted blinds of the medical room, spilling a muted, gray light that softened the edges of everything it touched. My neck ached when I shifted, muscles stiff from having fallen asleep curled at the edge of the narrow mattress rather than properly lying down. For a few suspended seconds, I existed in that fragile space between awareness and forgetting, where nothing had meaning yet and the world had not quite decided what it was.Then the heart monitor beside the bed broke through that illusion with its steady, indifferent rhythm, and I remembered where I was.The medical room. Isabella. The night that had swallowed everything whole.I stretched my legs slowly, anticipating the bite of cold air against my skin, but it never came. Instead, there was warmth. I paused, unsettled by the sensation, and looked down.My heavy dark trench coat, which I clearly remembered loosening ar
RomeoThe medical wing was the quietest part of the estate. But tonight, the silence in the room felt almost suffocating.I pushed the door open without making a sound, stepping into the dim light. The steady, rhythmic hum of the monitors was the only proof that the world was still turning.I moved to the side of the bed, my eyes immediately scanning the screens. Habit. Duty. It was the only armor I had left that still fit perfectly. Isabella’s vitals were completely stable. Her breathing was even. In sleep, the terror and confusion that had haunted her for the last five days were gone. She looked exactly like the woman who had held our family together.I adjusted her IV line, making sure the drip was steady, before stepping back.It was only then that I looked toward the foot of the bed.Irene was there.She hadn’t gone back to her room. She was curled up on the edge of the mattress, her knees pulled toward her chest, deeply and completely asleep.For a long time, I just stood there
IreneThe Galante estate had survived bullets, betrayals, and rival syndicates. It had survived blood in the halls and fire in its foundations. But nothing had ever hollowed it out the way silence did now.Five days.Five days since Isabella opened her eyes in the sterile light of the medical wing and looked at us like we were strangers standing in the wrong version of her life.The emergency delivery had gone as planned, in the way nothing ever truly goes as planned in a house like this. The baby lived. Isabella lived. But when she finally regained consciousness, something inside her mind had closed like a door that refused to open again.Retrograde amnesia.Eight years of her life gone without warning, without explanation, without mercy.She did not remember the wedding. She did not remember Dante. She did not remember the wars that had turned this estate into a fortress or the compromises that had kept it standing. She did not remember the life she had built inside violence and som
Romeo“What is going on between you and Irene?”The question didn’t belong in the air between us. It shouldn’t have existed at all in a moment like this. And yet it did, hanging there in the narrow hallway like something sharp I had no safe way to touch.I looked at Camilla. The face I had searched for in strangers for years. The voice I had reconstructed in memory until it became something larger than reality. For so long she had been the center of everything I could not let go of.But right now, none of that mattered.All I could hear was Irene’s footsteps disappearing down the corridor.I didn’t answer immediately. I couldn’t. The words refused to form in any order that felt survivable.Instead, I reached for Camilla’s hand. Her skin was cold, almost shockingly so. I held it tightly, as if warmth alone could reset everything inside me.“Let’s go back inside,” I said quietly. My voice came out rougher than I intended. “You’re freezing. You need to sit down.”Camilla didn’t move.She
IreneI didn’t stop walking until I reached my room and shut the door.My hand remained still on the handle, as if my body hadn’t fully registered that I was finally alone. Then the strength left me without warning. My knees gave out and I slid down the door until I hit the floor.The silence in the room pressed against me from every side.I buried my face in my hands.After five years of carrying that truth like a blade pressed against my ribs, I had finally spoken it. Romeo knew now. There was no taking it back, no softening it, no pretending it had never existed.I thought it would feel like release.It didn’t. It felt like something inside me had been ripped open and left exposed.His face kept replaying in my mind. A sound broke out of me before I could stop it.Then another. And suddenly I wasn’t holding it together anymore at all.I had spent so many years being the one who stayed upright no matter what was happening around me. I had learned how to swallow pain, how to bury i
Romeo “Camilla. You called me Camilla.” The words hit me. It felt like something inside my chest collapsed the moment she said it. I could not breathe properly for a second and I could not understand what she meant because it did not fit anything I had believed for five years. For five years I had been certain of one thing. That Irene had been reckless that night. That she had stolen my car out of impulse or immaturity or some stupid need to provoke chaos in my life. That belief had been convenient. It had justified distance. It had justified control. It had justified everything I had done since. But now it did not hold. A memory surfaced that I had buried without realizing it. I saw the nightclub again, loud and suffocating, the kind of place where grief makes people reckless. I remembered drinking too much, barely holding myself together. I remembered her steadying me, holding me upright when I could not stand properly on my own. Though I was too lost inside myself to c
Isabella’s POVThe heavy doors creaked open before I could even catch my breath. Suddenly, everything narrowed. The party's music, the strong smell of lilies, the people talking – it all just disappeared.Two people stood in the doorway. It was Irene, looking confused. And holding her hand, wearin
Isabella’s POVThe ballroom looked just as I remembered. The sparkly chandeliers, those huge velvet curtains that went all the way to the ceiling, the shiny marble floor where I could see my reflection on my wedding. But tonight, it felt like a place for the dead. White lilies were all over the pl
Isabella’s POVThe moment Dante disappeared into the sea of tuxedos and gowns, the invisible wire holding me upright snapped.I collapsed on the velvet stool and clenched my hands tightly in my lap, acting the part of the bored, elegant Italian heiress. But beneath the fabric of my dress, my skin w
Mateo’s POV3:00 AM. The Santiago Penthouse.I poured another glass of vodka. The crystal decanter clinked by the trembling of my hand.The apartment was silent but inside my head, there was chaos. Too much chaos.I loved you.I had said it. I had screamed it in a room full of elites. And she had l







