the shattered halo

chapter 3

Elena's POV

The rain drumming against my window morphed into a deafening roar in my sleep. In the depths of the nightmare, reality fractured. I was trapped inside a spinning vortex of blinding, distorted headlights that sliced through the pitch-black night. The agonizing screech of tearing tires echoed through my skull, followed by the sickening crunch of metal. Then came the voice—a man’s voice, raw, desperate, and laced with absolute terror—screaming my name over the storm. Elena!I bolted upright in bed, gasping for air as if I had just surfaced from deep water. My nightshirt was drenched in cold sweat, my heart hammering wildly against my ribs. As I clutched my blankets, a sharp, phantom pain flared in the center of my chest, so vivid it made me wince. I rubbed my sternum, but the ache wasn't physical; it was an echo. The dark void in my mind—the amnesia that had stolen my past—throbbed with sudden intensity. Images from earlier today flashed behind my eyes. The strange, dangerous-looking man from the bakery. The way his eyes had burned into mine. A chilling, undeniable certainty washed over me: he was the key to the accident in my dreams. He was tied to whatever piece of my soul was missing.Meanwhile, miles away from my quiet bedroom, Dante was moving his operations into a heavily fortified penthouse suite overlooking the coast. He didn't care about the ocean view; he cared about control. His team spent the night setting up a high-tech surveillance room, standardizing a fortress of glass and steel.Dante stood in the center of the dim room, watching wall-to-wall monitors flicker to life. He had built this entire command center for a singular obsession: me. High-definition lenses were now trained on the perimeter of my house, tracking the shadows outside my window. Other screens displayed crystal-clear angles of the bakery, capturing every entrance, exit, and blind spot. As I sat shivering in my bed trying to piece together my shattered memories, Dante adjusted the master console, locking his gaze onto my darkened home. He had me back in his sights, and he had no intention of ever letting me go.