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Dante took a step back, staring at the hotel entrance like he couldn't see it.
Wedding's canceled.
"Miss Harrington canceled it herself," the staff member added quietly.
His mother's face iced over. She grabbed his arm.
"What the hell is going on? You're getting married today. Where is she? This was all settled months ago."
His throat tightened. It took him a moment. "I—I don't know."
He called her. The line clicked straight to nothing.
The number you have dialed is unavailable.
She'd turned her phone off.
His stomach fell through the floor. He tore out of the hotel and drove like hell back to the apartment. It was empty.
The couch looked untouched, like no one had sat on it in weeks. Her medical kit was gone from the bathroom. Half of the closet was empty. Even the framed photo of the two of them on the dining table had been taken down.
He stood, frozen.
She'd gone. Completely. Cleanly. Like she'd never lived here at all. Like she'd excised herself from his life with surgical precision.
On the calendar, five words in her handwriting:
Dante, we're done.
His head detonated. He dropped onto the couch. His ears rang.
Done? Why?
Today. Today was supposed to be the day. Hadn't she wanted this more than anything?
She'd known.
She'd known, and she'd decided to leave.
He called again. This time, she picked up.
"What the hell are you playing at?" His anger was shoved down under something fragile. "You just walk out on me? Just like that?"
Silence on the line. Then her voice, quiet and cool.
"Dante. We're finished."
"You're doing this over Isobel's kid? Did you even ask me—"
"You never asked me. You've only ever asked yourself."
"You're a doctor. You know she's dying."
"Yes. I'm a doctor. Which is exactly why I know—having a baby isn't how you make up for someone. And it's not a reason to sacrifice the person you claim to love. You also know exactly how hard I worked to be with you. No doctor in her right mind gives up her career to marry into the Mafia."
The line went dead.
Dante sat there, frozen. And finally it sank in. The woman who'd loved him for twenty years was gone. Really gone.