Chapter 4

From that day on, I stopped fighting.

Everyone assumed I had finally accepted my fate, and the guards outside my door grew fewer by the day.

Only Sofia grew more and more uneasy.

The day she came for her dress fitting, I went out of my way to compliment her.

She eyed me with suspicion. "What are you up to?"

I looked at the wedding ring on her hand and needled her.

"You'll be Mrs. Moretti.

"And I'll still be in Dante's bed. Who do you think he loves more, you or me?"

Sofia's face changed, and she turned to leave.

I called after her, "Mrs. Moretti, I have no interest in coming between you two. But he won't let me go. As long as I'm still here, are you really his only Mrs. Moretti?"

Late that night, she gave me a new key and arranged a car.

"Leave and never come back."

I took the key.

Of course I didn't believe she had suddenly turned kind.

I had simply been waiting for this moment. The more she wanted me gone, the better my chance of actually getting out.

The car pulled smoothly out of the estate.

Before long, a black SUV appeared in the rearview mirror.

It didn't force us off the road. Instead, it rammed our rear again and again until the driver lost control and the car went off the mountain road.

When I came to, the driver was no longer moving, and the front of the car had started to catch fire.

Sofia had never intended to let me leave alive.

If I called Dante right now, the second I dialed, he would come.

He would hold me, bandage my wounds, and lock me in an even more secure room.

Going soft had already gotten Marco killed once.

This was my best chance to get away.

Since Sofia wanted me dead, I would use her plan to truly "die" and vanish from Dante's world.

I left my phone, jacket, and blood-soaked scarf in the car, then dragged my injured leg into the drainage ditch beside the highway.

Moments later, an explosion erupted behind me.

The fire swallowed the entire car.

Sofia's people had watched it burn with their own eyes, and Dante's men would find my phone and bloodstains.

They would all believe I had died in the wreck.

I braced myself against the guardrail and kept walking.

After a few dozen yards, a row of unfamiliar black sedans pulled over ahead of me.

The door of the center car opened.

A broad-shouldered, powerfully built man stepped out quickly, a woman close behind him.

The moment they saw me, they both froze.

Tears spilled from the woman's eyes, and she rushed toward me, almost throwing herself at me.

"Oh, my poor daughter... You've suffered so much."

"Daughter?" My whole body went rigid.

The man's gaze locked onto the black price tag on my chest.

"Don't be afraid. We're not with the Morettis."

Before I could ask who they were, everything went black.

When I woke, I was already in the car.

The man asked only one question, his face dark with fury. "Who put that on you?"

"Dante Moretti."

He was silent for a few seconds, then said grimly to the driver, "Back to the Moretti estate."

Twenty minutes later, twenty black sedans blocked the estate gates.

Dante had clearly heard about the crash, but he hadn't taken it seriously. He assumed I was playing another trick.

He'd told Sofia, "Third time now. She never learns. When they catch her, she's yours to deal with."

Seeing the two of them chatting so casually, the man who claimed to be my father slammed his fist into Dante's face.

A second time.

A third.

Every Moretti guard raised a gun, but not one dared step forward.

The man seized Dante by the collar.

He held up the black price tag, his eyes red, and roared at Dante.

"My precious daughter, the one I've spent twelve years searching for...

"How could she have ended up here, a slave for seven years?

"You killed my daughter."