Pain lanced along my back.
Every breath became shallow, punctuated by involuntary, sharp gasps that burned in my throat and lips.
My mouth tingled, lips swelling as though someone had poured molten acid over them.
My tongue thickened slightly, making it difficult to swallow.
My throat constricted, tightening with a cruel, suffocating pressure that set off a spike of panic in my chest.
Yet the hall remained eerily quiet, the murmurs of astonished witnesses distant and meaningless, almost like they existed in another world.
No one moved.
No urgent commands rang out to summon an ambulance.
No one rushed forward to help.
No one even seemed to notice that I was spiraling toward death from a deadly allergic reaction—triggered by the peach my new husband had just pressed to my lips, here, on this altar, in front of hundreds of witnesses.
Vincenzo had no reason to hate me. No reason to want to kill me.
He had chosen me, in this surreal, impossible moment, over everyone else, in front of both factions of his dangerous world.
And yet, here I was, writhing in pain.
I tried to move, to lift a hand, to call out, to plead for mercy—but my body betrayed me entirely.
My arms felt leaden, impossibly heavy, my legs trembling like wet noodles under the weight of despair.
Each attempt to rise or shift seemed futile, as if the marble beneath me had fused to my bones.
Only the faint, ragged sound of my own breathing cut through the deafening silence of the hall, each inhale a struggle, each exhale a fragile thread barely holding me to life.
My vision narrowed.
The towering, magnetic figure of Vincenzo, began to fade into darkness, his presence receding as if I were slipping from reality itself.
I tried again to call out, a weak, strangled sound, but it caught in my throat, stifled by swelling and the thickening burn that clawed up from my stomach.
I didn’t survive everything—the chase, the ambushes, the endless nights running through shadows—just to die now.
Not like this, in the hands of the man who had once been my friend.
And then the darkness claimed me.
Chapter 5
ELENA
My eyelids fluttered open to a harsh, blinding light.
For a moment, I couldn’t understand where I was.
Sunlight poured over me like molten gold, too bright.
The air carried a sharp blend of ocean salt and something faintly masculine.
I inhaled sharply, my lungs aching as though I had been asleep far too long.
