Chapter 2

Dante’s answer crushed the last bit of hope I had left.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” he said coldly. “Sophia’s security feed picked up movement near the bell tower. She thought someone was trying to get close to her, so I went to check it. I didn’t follow you.”

He looked at me with open disgust.

“Stop using death to force people to care about you. Adrian chose Sophia. Accept it.”

So he had not come for me.

Even now, he had only left the wedding because of Sophia. I should have known. Dante Bellandi would never admit he loved her, but everyone in Chicago knew he would tear the city apart if she cried. She was marrying another man today, and he was still running around for her fear, her safety, and her peace of mind.

As for me, I was only a stain on the family name.

I turned toward the warehouse without another word.

Inside, the power had been cut for years. At the back was an old ice room built with insulated stone walls, still trapping the river cold like a locked vault.

Dante stayed by the entrance.

“Still acting?” he said. “Isabella, if you want attention, choose a better stage.”

I stepped into the cold room and pulled the door almost shut.

At first, he did not move.

Then the silence stretched too long.

When Dante finally opened the door, the anger on his face disappeared for half a second.

I was sitting against the far wall, barely able to feel my hands.

“You actually meant it,” he said, his voice rough. “You actually meant to disappear.”

I looked at him in silence.

He was the one who had told me to do it.

Dante stood in the doorway, blocking the only exit.

“Mother gave you that life,” he said. “You don’t get to throw it away over Adrian.”

Mother.

That word finally hurt, because in this world, she was the only person who had loved me without needing a reason. I did not want to leave her, but the Program had already declared the end.

I lowered my eyes. “I won’t do it here.”

Dante stared at me for a long moment before opening the car door.

“Get in.”

He drove me to the edge of the Bellandi estate, and before I got out, he said, “Adrian married the woman he loves. If you really cared about him, you’d stop ruining his life.”

I almost laughed.

I had approached Adrian because I loved him once, and because loving him was supposed to keep me alive.

After Dante left, I did not go inside. Mother was home, and I could not let her see me like this, so I walked past the garden wall toward the one place on the estate no one used anymore.

Twenty-five years in this world had taught me one thing: sincerity only mattered when the other person was willing to believe it. When Dante hated me as a child, I took punishments for him, hid his mistakes, waited outside his door when he refused to eat, and cleaned blood from his shirt before Mother could see it. For a while, he softened, and the family-bond score rose little by little, making me believe I could really become his sister.

Then Sophia appeared, and everything I had done became worthless.

She only needed to cry once.

I found the old conservatory behind the estate, shut myself inside, and sat on the cold tile floor, letting the cold take me because I no longer had the strength to keep saving myself.

Dante could keep protecting Sophia.

Adrian could keep loving his bride.

This world could return to the heroine it had chosen from the beginning.

I only wanted to leave.

The darkness slowly blurred around me, but before it could swallow me completely, footsteps crushed the broken glass nearby.

“Isabella?”

I opened my eyes.

Julian Vale stood under the ruined glass roof, his face tense and pale. Then he saw the state I was in, and something in his expression cracked.

“Damn it,” he said, rushing toward me. “What are you doing?”