"Dominic... help..." Her voice was thin and trembling, and her hand found her stomach again, the choreography flawless even through smoke and fire. The gesture that had shielded her for months. The gesture that had rewritten the hierarchy of this house.
She hadn't even finished her sentence before he scooped her up in his arms, never once glancing at me.
Without hesitation, he turned and walked away. The flames closed behind him like a curtain falling. And I lay on the floor of the guest room, alone, the heat pressing against my skin, watching the doorway where he had stood. Where he had chosen. The way he had always chosen.
Thirty minutes later, after calming Daniela down, he searched the entire house, but I was nowhere to be found. Every room. Every hallway. The wine cellar, the east wing, the garden perimeter where the soldiers kept watch. He sent Marco to check the cameras. He called the gate. Nothing. I had vanished from the Valente estate like smoke clearing after a fire, and the house felt different without me in it, though he would not have been able to say how.
Late that night, at the airport.