The Scapegoat Fiancée: I Am No Substitute

Dante POV

Marco moved past me, his stride heavy with a decision that had clearly been festering for a long time. He stopped and looked at his daughter. The Golden Child.

But there was no gold left in his gaze-only the dull, flat look of a man cutting off a gangrenous limb.

"You are done," Marco said.

"Daddy?" Chiara blinked, the rage in her eyes dissolving into a fragile, childlike confusion. "What do you mean?"

"You are not a Salinas," Marco said. His voice was flat. Dead. "You are a cancer. And tonight, I cut you out."

"You can't do that!" she screamed, her voice cracking. "I am your heir! I am the future!"

"You are nothing," Marco said. He pointed to the door with a trembling, final finger. "Get out."

"Dante!" She spun toward me, tears carving tracks through her makeup. "Help me! You love me! You peeled my grapes!"

I looked down at her clinging to my arm, and a wave of nausea rolled through me.

"I peeled your grapes because I thought you were dying," I said, my voice hollow. "I pitied you."

"Pity is love!" she argued, her nails digging into my suit jacket.

"No," I said, prying her fingers off me. "It isn't."

I stepped into her space, looming over her until she was forced to look up into my eyes. I leaned in close, dropping my voice to a lethal whisper so she could hear the monster I had become.

"You stole seven years from her," I said. "You stole my life. You destroyed the only thing I ever loved."

She froze. "You never loved her. You chose me. Tonight. In the park. You chose me."

The memory hit me like a physical blow-Alessia standing in the candlelight, her heart in her eyes. My back turning on her. The sound of her breaking.

"I made a mistake," I whispered, the words tasting like ash. "My last mistake."

I turned to the guards standing like statues in the hallway.

"Take her," I ordered. "To the sanitarium upstate. The secure unit. The one with the padded walls. She never leaves. She never speaks to anyone. As far as this world is concerned, she ceases to exist."

"No! No! Daddy! Dante!"

The guards grabbed her. She kicked and shrieked, a feral animal realizing the cage door was closing. She dragged her nails across the doorframe, leaving gouges in the wood as they hauled her away.

The screams faded down the hall, swallowed by the size of the house.

Silence returned to the room, heavy and suffocating.

Isabella was on the floor, weeping into her hands. Marco was staring out the window, looking at nothing.

I looked at the shredded photo in Giuliana's hand. Alessia's smiling face, obliterated by hate.

My hands trembling, I pulled out my phone. I dialed Alessia's number.

The silence on the line stretched for an eternity, followed by the three tone chime that signaled the end of my life.

The number you have dialed is not in service.

The phone slipped from my numb fingers. It hit the floor with a sharp crack.

She was gone. And in the silence of that room, I knew she wasn't coming back.

Alessia POV

The steady drone of the private jet engine was the only sound in the world.

I stared out the window at the Atlantic Ocean. It looked like a sheet of hammered lead. Dark. Heavy. Endless.

A mirror of the last seven years of my life.

I closed my eyes, desperate for rest, but the moment I drifted off, I was back in Danbury. I could smell the acrid sting of industrial bleach. I could hear the soulless clang of metal doors. I could feel the phantom ache in my hip where they had drilled into my bone to save a sister who wanted me dead.

I jerked awake, a gasp tearing from my throat.

My hand flew to my chest. My heart was hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.

Blink. Breathe.

I wasn't in a cell. I was in a leather seat that cost more than my prison commissary budget for a decade.

I looked down at my hands, knotted in my lap. They were trembling.

I forced myself to breathe. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. The way the prison psychologist had taught me before the budget cuts took her away.

Below me, the water was changing color. The leaden gray was giving way to a brilliant, impossible turquoise.

Dominica.

The Nature Island. No extradition treaty that mattered. No sprawling Salinas estate. No Dante.

Thinking his name brought a fresh wave of nausea, acidic and hot.

I pictured him in the park. The candles flickering in the twilight. The roses. The look on his face when Chiara screamed. The way his instinct was to catch her, to soothe her, to protect the fragile glass doll while I stood there made of steel and scars.

He would be looking for me by now.

He would be tearing New York apart. He would be threatening Sal. He would be screaming at my parents.

Let him scream.

The pilot's voice crackled over the intercom, shattering the silence. We were beginning our descent.

I pressed my forehead against the cool glass.

I saw the lush green mountains rising out of the sea. They looked wild, ancient, and untamed.

I reached into my bag and pulled out the only thing I had taken from the attic. A small, crushed tube of oil paint. Cerulean Blue.

I rolled the cool metal between my fingers.

The girl who went to prison seven years ago was a Salinas. She was a daughter. A sister. A fiancée.

She died in that cell.

The woman landing on this island was nobody. She had no name. No history. No blood debt.

The wheels touched the tarmac with a screech. The jolt vibrated through my spine.

It felt like a gavel coming down.

Case closed.

I unbuckled my seatbelt. I didn't look back at the empty seat next to me where a life with Dante could have been.

I walked to the door. The stewardess opened it, and the heat hit me instantly.

It was thick and humid, smelling of salt and wet earth and flowers I couldn't name.

It didn't smell like bleach. It didn't smell like expensive cologne and lies.

It smelled like freedom.

I walked down the stairs. My legs were shaking, but I didn't stop.

I was twenty-five years old. And for the first time in my life, I was breathing air that hadn't been filtered through my father's permission.