PART 4 — THE GIRL WHO WAS REWRITTEN
PART 4 — THE GIRL WHO WAS REWRITTEN
My head felt light.
“No,” I whispered. “My mother never said anything like that. There were hospital records, school records—”
“Cleaned,” Dante said.
“Who would do that?” I asked.
For the first time that night, Dante hesitated.
Just for a fraction of a second.
Then:
“People who thought you would never matter.”
Something inside me cracked—but didn’t break.
It reorganized.
Daniel stepped forward again, voice rising.
“This is manipulation. Ellie, he’s trying to—”
Dante didn’t look at him this time.
“Leave,” he said calmly.
Daniel froze.
“You can’t just—”
Dante’s bodyguard moved half a step forward.
And Daniel stopped arguing.
Not because he lost.
Because he understood escalation had ended.
PART 5 — THE TRUTH THAT CHANGES THE ROOM
Dante turned back to me.
His voice softened, but only slightly.
“I didn’t choose you tonight randomly,” he said.
My hands trembled now.
“Then why?”
He looked at me for a long moment.
“Because someone else already tried to find you.”
The ballroom felt suddenly too far away.
“What does that mean?”
Dante’s expression tightened.
“It means,” he said carefully, “that your father’s enemies didn’t believe you were gone.”
A pause.
“And they still don’t.”
My chest tightened.
May you like
“That doesn’t make sense,” I whispered.
“It does,” Dante said, “if you were never meant to be visible in the first place.”
