CHAPTER 5

DOMINIC POV 

"It has been five years, Dominic! Five fucking years! Catherine is dead, when will you stop this? Fucking look at you!"

He yelled so loud I was almost certain all of New York could hear him. I stared at him with hollow, dead eyes. Lines of worry had aged him drastically.

The once-mighty Richard Moretti was losing his mind in my office. Normally, I would have barked right back and put him in his place, but I didn't care. I didn't have the will to.

"Dominic! Catherine is dead! For four fucking years, let it go! Heal! Look at you, you’ve lost weight, you’re gaunt, you look like a cold corpse. You look dead!" my father roared harder.

Because I was.

The day she died, I died right alongside her. The moment the news of her death reached me, every single living cell in me surrendered.

I didn't just lose my Catherine, I lost myself. I lost the will to live.

He didn't know how many times I had stood in front of the mirror with a gun pressed to my head, coming so close to pulling the trigger. He didn't know about the times I almost drove myself off a cliff, or when I stayed hospitalized for months after stabbing my own chest.

To him, it was five years. To me, it had been five centuries. Every single day stretched on endlessly.

I used to tell myself that if I buried myself in work, time would pass faster, and maybe death would finally wrap its arms around me.

It didn't work. Every second was agonizingly worse than the last.

"Dom! Look at me when I talk to you! Get over it! Besides, you never even loved her!"

That caught my attention. I slowly lifted my head to glare at him.

"Oh, don't look at me like that... I saw the way you treated that poor girl. You never looked at her like a wife. She might as well have been married to a ghost. You never loved her!”

I did.

I wanted to say it wanted to scream it in his face.

I had loved her from the very moment I set eyes on her almost a decade ago. I had loved her quietly, fiercely. And when I saw the chance to tie her to me, I took it…to the world it was a contracted marriage but no one, not even father knew I contracted it, I made sure I was the only solution she had.

I loved her so damn much.

"Don't tell me you loved her. Dominic, stop fooling yourself. You never treated her like your wife."

On any other day, I would have sent him away and told him to give me space. I had called him weak when Mother died, but now... now I understand his pain.

Except I didn't have the right to mourn. He was right. I hadn't treated her the way she deserved.

I had foolishly thought that keeping my distance meant protecting her. I thought that if I let her get too close, she would see the monster beneath the mask. I thought just giving her the Moretti name meant safety and happiness.

It didn't.

It took her death for me to realize that. It took seeing the maids glaring at me in disgust for hurting her.

If only I had stayed with her at that party. If only I had come home early. If only I hadn't thrown the party at all…

She would still be safe. She would still be alive.

"Dominic, you are going to this dinner event, and there is no room for argument. This is our chance to prove to our rivals that the Morettis aren't falling apart. We've lost too much already, now here we are." He let out a heavy sigh, leaning heavily on his walking stick. "Get your act together. Go to that event and prove to the world that the Morettis are still untouchable."

I didn't argue. I didn't have the energy to fight him, nor was he giving me a choice. I had stayed away from public events for years, trying to evade the crushing shadow of guilt. Standing in a room full of people always brought back the day she died—the day I walked into that hall, my eyes landing on her. In that moment, I had stopped breathing, she looked like an angel, now she is gone. Parties only served as a brutal reminder of what I lost.

"The private jet will be ready." With that, he turned and stormed out, slamming the door so hard the framed art on the wall rattled.

I dragged my gaze down to my desk drawer and pulled it open, my eyes lingering on her picture.

The knot in my gut tightened. I trailed my fingers over the cold glass frame, every memory of her and the accident floods my mind.

The fire from her car crash. It had burned so intensely that they couldn't even piece her body together. All that remained of her was our wedding ring and the golden necklace her mother had given her.

I stared at the frame, wishing with everything in me that I could go back and rewrite the past.

I couldn't. She was gone

The sounds of soft laughter and overlapping chatter filtered through the venue hall. I glanced around taking in the sea of swarming guests.

Leeches.

 Parasites waiting for a single chance to climb the social ladder.

I let out a heavy sigh, digging my hands into my pockets while I tried to steady my breathing. I forced myself to ignore the fact that I was surrounded by people, that this entire scene reminded me so painfully of her.

The knot in my gut tugged harder.

Most people thought I hated big events because they were exhausting. The truth was, I hated them because they were filled with wolves pretending to be sheep. But more than that, I had developed an absolute phobia of them after she left.

The last time I ever saw her was in a hall just like this was on the floor with her knees bleeding.

If only I hadn't messed up.

If only I had held her.

But I didn't. I had turned away and chose Elveyn 

“Is that Mr. Dominic Moretti?”

“It’s Dominic Moretti!”

“He’s alive?”

“After his wife’s tragic death, he became a ghost...”

“He looks dead .”

The guests' whispers rippled across the room.

I paid them no mind. 

“Good evening, and welcome to the Starlight Dining Room. We would like to thank you all for taking time out from your busy schedules to attend, and also our supporters and our organizers: Mr. Zyan Salvatore, Mr. Adrian Lockwood, Mr. Killian Castle, and Mr. Dominic Moretti.” The announcer’s voice boomed through the speakers. One by one, each host was called up to give a speech.

I pulled out the prepared paper as my name was called. I walked up to the podium, my hand gripping the microphone tightly. Refusing to let a single emotion break through the cold mask on my face, I began to speak.

My gaze mindlessly swept over the crowd until it landed on a figure rushing out toward the exit.

She shoved the heavy doors open but right before she stepped out, she turned. Her face came into full view.

Those striking blue eyes.

Catherine?

My world stopped.