Roses never fade

Dante Vitiello's POV:

I woke up feeling like I was suffocating.

Darkness pressed down on my chest like a boulder. For a terrifying second, I thought I had gone blind again.

I reached out.

"Elena."

My hand met only cold sheets.

I sat up, my heart hammering. The room was empty. The bathroom door was open, pitch black inside.

"Elena?" I called out.

Silence.

The quiet in the penthouse wasn't peaceful; it was wrong. It was the silence of a tomb.

I got out of bed and checked the closet.

Her clothes were still there. The red dress I bought her. Her shoes. But something was missing.

The air felt thin.

I walked into the living room. A maid was dusting the mantelpiece.

"Where is she?" I asked.

The maid jumped. "Sir?"

"Elena. Where is she?"

"I haven't seen Miss Rossi since yesterday, sir," the maid said nervously. "Her bed hasn't been slept in."

Panic, cold and sharp, hit me in the gut.

She said she was cleaning. She said she was buying a dress.

My phone rang on the kitchen counter.

I snatched it up, expecting to see her name.

It was Sofia.

"Dante!" she shrieked. "There's someone in the hallway! The power's out!"

I rubbed my temples.

"Sofia, call security."

"I can't! The keypad is dead! Dante, please, I'm scared!"

I looked around the empty apartment. Elena was probably just out getting coffee. She did that sometimes when she was upset.

"I'll be there," I muttered.

I drove the ten minutes to Sofia's apartment.

The hallway lights were working perfectly fine.

I pounded on her door.

She opened it immediately. She was wearing black lace lingerie under a silk robe that was slipping off her shoulders.

She threw herself at me.

"Oh, thank God," she sobbed against my chest. "I heard footsteps."

I peeled her off me.

"Sofia, the power is on," I said, pointing at the lights behind her.

"It just came back on," she lied. Her eyes were dry.

Her hands trailed up my chest.

"Stay," she whispered. "Just for a little while. I'm shaken up."

She pressed her body flush against mine.

It felt wrong.

Her body didn't fit mine right. Her perfume was too sweet.

I looked over her head, out the window. The sky was grey.

An overwhelming sense of dread hit me like a physical blow.

It started in my stomach and spread to my fingertips. Something was about to happen. A disaster.

Sofia was unbuttoning my shirt.

"Dante, look at me," she commanded.

I looked down.

But I didn't see her.

I saw Elena standing in the rain, blood on her arm.

I saw the look in her eyes in the music room.

It wasn't anger.

It was nothing.

She had looked at me with completely empty eyes.

I pushed Sofia away.

"Dante?" she asked, shocked.

"I have to go," I said.

I turned and walked out.

I didn't wait for the elevator; I took the stairs two at a time.

I had to get back to the penthouse. I had to see her.

I needed to make sure the bird hadn't flown the coop.

But as I drove back, running red lights, the emptiness in my chest turned into a scream.

I knew.

Before I even opened the door, I knew.

She was gone.