Chapter 2 - THE DEAD GIRL BREATHESDante took Arabella to a private medical suite hidden beneath one of his restaurants in Tribeca.
From the street, the place looked like a closed Italian supper club with dark windows and a handwritten sign that said RENOVATIONS. Beneath it, there were reinforced doors, armed guards, a surgical room, and walls thick enough to muffle a war.
Arabella sat on an examination table wrapped in three blankets.
Her newly cut hair hung unevenly around her jaw. Without the filthy weight dragging behind her, she looked smaller, younger, almost fragile. But Dante had seen what fragile people did when the world gave them no choice.
They survived.
The doctor stitched a cut along her scalp and checked the bruises along her ribs.
“How old are you?” he asked gently.
Arabella stared at the floor.
Dante answered for her. “Thirty-one.”
Her eyes snapped toward him.
“You don’t know that.”
“You disappeared at nineteen. Twelve years ago.”
The doctor paused.
Arabella whispered, “I disappeared?”
“No,” Dante said. “They said you died.”
She laughed once, but there was no humor in it.
“Lucky me.”
The doctor stepped away to prepare medication. Dante remained by the wall, arms folded, watching her the way he watched loaded guns and locked doors.
Arabella noticed.
“Are you afraid of me?”
“No.”
“Then why do you look at me like that?”
“Because dead women don’t walk into salons unless someone made a mistake.”
Her hands tightened around the blanket.
“I don’t remember everything.”
“What do you remember?”
Water.
Dark water.
A white ceiling.
A woman crying.
A man’s hand with a gold signet ring.
A room without windows.
Arabella pressed her palms against her eyes.
“I remember being told my name was gone.”
Dante’s jaw shifted.
“Who told you?”
She swallowed.
“My uncle.”
The air changed.
Nico, standing by the door, looked at Dante.
“Malcolm Vale,” Dante said.
Arabella nodded slowly, as if the name hurt her mouth.
“He said Arabella died on the yacht. He said I was nobody. He said if I ever spoke my real name, he would cut the mark from my neck and mail it to my father.”
“Your father died three years after you vanished,” Dante said.
Arabella’s lips parted.
“What?”
Dante regretted saying it the second he saw her face.
Her father had been Sterling Vale, a shipping billionaire, philanthropist, and one of the only legitimate men Dante’s father had ever respected. According to the papers, Sterling Vale died of a heart attack after spending years searching for his missing daughter.
But Dante knew better.
His father’s ledger had said Sterling was murdered.
Arabella’s voice broke. “My father looked for me?”
“Every day.”
She bent forward as if the words had punched through her chest.
For years, Malcolm had told her nobody wanted her. Nobody searched. Nobody cared. He had fed her scraps of truth mixed with poison until she no longer knew which memories belonged to her.
Dante stepped closer.
“My father knew you were alive,” he said. “He wrote it down before he was killed.”
Arabella looked up sharply.
“Your father?”
“Antonio Serrano.”
Recognition flickered across her face.
“I remember a man named Antonio.”
Dante froze.
“You knew him?”
“He came to the house once. Before the boat. He gave me chocolate wrapped in gold paper. He told my father not to trust family.”
Dante looked away.
His father had been right.
The doctor returned with a sedative.
Arabella jerked back. “No needles.”
“It will help you sleep,” the doctor said.
“No.”
Dante lifted a hand. The doctor stopped.
Arabella stared at Dante, suspicious.
“You stopped him.”
“You said no.”
“People don’t stop when I say no.”
“They do here.”
For several seconds, neither of them spoke.
Then Arabella whispered, “Why are you helping me?”
Dante could have given a dozen lies. Strategy. Revenge. Debt. Curiosity.
Instead, he told the ugliest truth.
“Because the man who buried you also helped kill my father.”
Arabella’s eyes changed.
Not softer.
Sharper.
For the first time since the salon, she looked less like a victim and more like the woman Manhattan had once called the Vale Princess.
“Then we both want the same thing,” she said.
“What?”
Her hands stopped trembling.
“I want my name back.”
Dante smiled faintly.
“Then we start by proving you’re alive.”
The lights above them flickered once.
Nico stepped inside, face grim.
“Boss,” he said, “you need to see this.”
He handed Dante a tablet.
On every major news site in New York, the same headline had appeared.
HOMELESS WOMAN ABDUCTED BY CRIME BOSS DANTE SERRANO AFTER SALON ATTACK.
Beneath it was a blurry photo of Dante carrying Arabella through the alley.
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Malcolm Vale had made the first move.
And he had made Dante look like the monster.
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