Chapter 6

Elara POV:

The rain had seeped into my bones, leaving a deep, unshakable chill. I felt sick, but the physical ache was a dull hum beneath the vast, silent numbness in my soul.

I didn't care where Dante was. I didn't care if he came home. The pain in my body was a distant echo compared to the desolate landscape of my heart.

A text from my father lit up the screen. It was a picture of a booking confirmation. A flight.

A breath I didn't know I was holding escaped my lungs. The departure date was circled in red. Six days from now.

It was Dante's birthday.

A bitter, humorless smile touched my lips. How fitting. For ten years, my only birthday wish had been for him. Now, my final gift to him would be my absence. My complete and utter disappearance.

The next few days were a blur of logistics. I arranged for a donation service to come and collect the last of my furniture, the pieces of a life I was methodically erasing. I was a phantom, haunting the manor as I wiped away my own existence.

Dante came home one afternoon and found me directing the movers. He stopped in the doorway, his brow furrowed in confusion. He saw the change in me, the emptiness in my eyes, but he didn't ask. He never dug deeper.

"Sofia and I have moved into the city apartment," he said, his voice cool and distant. "You'll have the manor to yourself."

The unspoken message hung in the air between us: I don't need you here anymore.

A final, masochistic impulse took hold of me. "Can I come to your birthday party?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

He looked at me then, his eyes cold and flat. "No."

He didn't hesitate. He just turned and walked away, leaving me standing in the cavernous, empty hall.

My heart trembled, but the tears wouldn't come.

Later that day, I found it. My sketchbook. The one filled with his face, with a decade of my adoration captured in charcoal and pencil. It was in the trash can in his study, tossed aside like garbage.

I pulled it out, my fingers tracing the worn leather cover. I took it back to my room and opened it to the last blank page. If he wanted me gone, I would give him what he wanted. I would draw their union. I would immortalize his choice.

My hand was steady as I sketched his face next to Sofia's, capturing the adoration in his eyes that was never meant for me.

That night, I heard his car in the driveway, much later than usual. Then, a key fumbling in the lock. He was drunk.

I found him stumbling in the foyer, his suit disheveled. A part of me, a deeply ingrained instinct I couldn't kill, moved forward to help him.

"Dante," I said softly, reaching for his arm.

He leaned on me heavily, his familiar scent of whiskey and expensive cologne wrapping around me like a shroud. I knew, with a certainty that chilled me deeper than the rain, that this would be the last time I ever touched him.

He looked down at me, his eyes unfocused. A slow, drunken smile spread across his face. "Sofia," he murmured, his hand coming up to cup my cheek. "You waited up for me."

His mouth crashed down on mine. It wasn't a gentle kiss. It was rough, demanding, fueled by alcohol and a desperation I didn't understand.

A jolt of static shot through me, my mind going completely blank. The kiss I had dreamed of for a decade was finally happening, and it was a nightmare. A violation.

He groaned, but the name that escaped his lips wasn't mine. "Sofia..."

A wave of nausea washed over me, so strong I thought I would be sick. This was a new level of humiliation, a fresh kind of hell. He was kissing me, touching me, but he was thinking of her.

"Dante," I tried to say, my voice muffled against his lips.

He didn't listen. His hands started to roam, his touch possessive and wrong. He pushed me back against the wall, his body pressing into mine, and he whispered her name again, like a prayer. "Sofia, I..."

Something inside me snapped.

"It's me!" I screamed, the sound raw and torn from my throat. "It's Elara!"

He froze. The drunken haze in his eyes cleared, replaced by a flash of pure shock. He stared at me as if seeing me for the first time.

Then, with a strangled noise, he shoved me away from him so hard my head hit the wall.

I slid to the floor, my body trembling. He stood over me, breathing heavily, his face a mask of horror. He looked from me, crumpled on the ground, to his own hands, as if they belonged to a stranger. The horror was for what he'd done.

But he didn't apologize. He didn't say a word.

Instead, he dropped to his knees, the sound a harsh scrape against the marble floor. He reached for me, not with force, but with a trembling desperation, pulling me into his arms and holding me tight against his chest.

"Don't go, Elara," he rasped, his voice thick with something I couldn't name. "Please... stay."