CHAPTER SEVEN
Matteo
I traced the curve of Serafina’s smile with my thumb.
Her face was half-turned toward the camera, a rare moment of unguarded joy captured in the afternoon light.
I had memorized every detail… the exact shade of her hazel brown eyes in the sunlight, the way her nose crinkled when she smiled big, and the small beauty mark in the corner, under her right eye that most people never noticed.
But I noticed everything about her. I always had.
I leaned back in the leather chair, taking a slow sip of my whiskey, letting the burn slide down my throat as my gaze drifted upward. The room was dark, except for the single lamp casting a dim red light into my private study.
Above me, dozens of photographs hung, staring back at me.
Serafina walking across campus. Serafina eating a sandwich on the park bench, her pink headphones over her head. Serafina laughing with a dark-haired friend outside a coffee shop.
Three years of her life, meticulously documented.
Three years of watching her mature, growing from a girl to the woman who would be my wife.
She was always meant to be… mine.
My eyes landed on a single photo; the very first photo of her that I received. Serafina at newly eighteen, her hair long, falling in loose waves down her back as she stared at the endless ocean.
I remembered when I first received that photograph, the sharp stab of want, of need that pierced through me at the sight of her standing here, so far out of my reach.
Marco had been my eyes and ears while Serafine was in California. A skilled operative that blended seamlessly into the background of college life, reporting back once a month with photos and details of her daily life.
Three years of watching… six years of waiting since the last time I had seen her.
She was fifteen, the day her father had sent her away.
She was so different then, gangly, uncertain, confused, scared…
but cute with her framed glasses perched on her nose and the metal braces flashing when she spoke.
Her dark hair had been pulled back with childish bows and she never looked anyone in the eyes.
So innocent.
So pure and fragile—untouched by the dreadful, violent world we both inhabited.
Something had stirred in me that day, the need to make her mine, the need to possess her and that need only grew with time and distance.
And now she was here.
Grown, beautiful, matured… different. Too different, it seemed like she wasn’t the same woman I had known, I had been obsessed with.
Gone was the timid girl I knew and in her place stood a woman of calculated grace, poised and armored with a careful, constructed facade.
And there was something else in her…
Defiance.
A spark of rebellion.
Serafina was supposed to be malleable. Compliant. Grateful, even, for the protection my name would provide. Instead, she’d returned with secrets in her eyes and walls I hadn’t expected to encounter, to break.
The whiskey burned pleasantly as I took another sip.
This Serafina had secrets.
This Serafina was a liar.
The thought should have angered me. Instead, I found myself more… intrigued than ever.
I’d always assumed I knew everything about her; that she was the simple, obedient daughter of Santino Morelli, raised to be a perfect mafia wife.
Now I realized there was something more to her.
It was going to be so much fucking fun… peeling all those layers until she was naked, in her truth. Serafina thought she could deceive me, but I had been in this twisted game way before her.
Little did she know…
I knew more than she knew.
I knew more than Adrian knew.
I threw my head back, my chest rattling with a laugh. Mirthless, sardonic, bitter. It echoed against the walls of my private study and I laughed harder.
Oh, little did he know…