Chapter 6

Seraphina POV:

The days leading up to my escape were a strange, hollow performance. I packed a single, small suitcase with newly purchased, untraceable clothes. Everything else-every book, every trinket, every piece of clothing Dante had ever bought me-I sorted into boxes. I called a discreet company that specialized in cleaning out the homes of the recently deceased, telling them I was handling an old estate. They asked no questions.

On the day the cleaners were scheduled to arrive, Dante came home early. He found me in my room, which was already stripped bare, looking sterile and impersonal, like a cheap hotel room between guests.

His eyes swept over the empty shelves and bare walls, a flicker of something unreadable in their depths. Confusion? Annoyance?

"What is this?" he asked.

"Spring cleaning," I said, my voice even. "I'm donating some things. Making space."

He didn't believe me, but he didn't press it. He seemed distracted, a deep line etched between his brows.

"My birthday party is tonight," he said. It wasn't an invitation; it was a statement of fact.

"I know," I replied. "I'll be there. To say a final goodbye."

The words hung in the air between us. He thought I meant a goodbye to my childhood, to my place as his ward. He had no idea how final it would truly be.

"We'll see," was all he said before turning and leaving me in the empty room.

That afternoon, I found my old sketchbooks. For years, I had drawn him. Dante smiling, a rare and precious sight. Dante sleeping in his study chair. Dante with his back to me, staring out at the city skyline. Page after page of my obsession.

I turned to the last blank page. With a steady hand, I drew him one last time. I drew the man from the engagement photo. Dante standing beside Isabella, a crown on his head and a stranger in his eyes. He was no longer my dark protector; he was a king, and she was his queen.

Beneath the drawing, I wrote a simple inscription: May your empire last forever.

It felt like closing a coffin.

That night, the night before his birthday, the night before my freedom, he came to my room.

The scent of whiskey hit me first, heavy and sharp. He was drunk, stumbling through the doorway he hadn't entered in years. His eyes were unfocused, clouded with a pain so deep it seemed to swallow the light.

"Isabella?" he slurred, reaching for me.

My blood ran cold. He thought I was her.

Before I could speak, he had me in his arms, his grip desperate. He buried his face in my neck, his body trembling.

"Why..." he rasped, his voice thick with anguish. "Why don't you understand what I'm doing?"

He pulled back, his hands framing my face. His thumbs traced my cheekbones, a ghost of a forgotten tenderness. But his eyes weren't seeing me. They were seeing her.

Then he kissed me.

It was nothing like I had ever imagined. It was brutal and desperate, a kiss born of self-loathing and regret. It tasted of expensive liquor and a sorrow so profound it felt like I was drowning in it.

He pushed me back towards the bed, his weight pinning me down, his lips never leaving mine. It was a violation. An act of desecration on the altar of my dead love. And through it all, as his hands tangled in my brutally short hair, he whispered her name.

"Isabella."