CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Adrian
Two weeks later
I ran my hand through Serafina’s hair as she slept, the silky strands sliding between my fingers.
Her cheeks were soft beneath my touch, but even in sleep, her face was etched with pain, her brow furrowed, her lips pressed together in a tight line. Her pale skin was streaked with dried tears, making her look even more fragile than she already was.
Two weeks had passed since we lost our child.
Two weeks of watching my wife crumble, piece by piece, until there was almost nothing left of the fierce woman who had once looked at me with such defiance.
The miscarriage had carved a hole in both of us, but I couldn’t focus on my own pain. I didn’t have the time to. Not when Serafina’s grief was so vast, so consuming.
She blamed herself. That was the worst part.
Night after night, she sobbed against my chest, repeating the same words like a broken prayer, “I should have known. I had felt something was wrong, but I ignored it. The baby was inside me. I should have known something was wrong.”
Her words tore at me every time she repeated them. There was nothing I could say to ease her guilt, nothing that would bring back what we had lost.
I held her, rocked her, whispered meaningless platitudes that did nothing to ease her pain. And mine. “It wasn’t your fault,” I told her, over and over, but I didn’t think she even heard the words.
Tonight, sleep eluded me once again.
The weight of our loss pressed down on my chest, making it difficult to breathe, the darkness threatening to swallow me whole, suffocating and heavy with memories I couldn’t escape.
I needed something—anything—to numb the pain, even if just for a moment.
I needed a fucking drink. Something strong enough to burn away the images that haunted me, Serafina’s face as she realized what was happening, the blood staining our sheets, the doctor’s sympathetic eyes as she confirmed what we already knew.
I slipped from the bed, careful not to wake Serafina. She needed her rest, even if it was a restless slumber. I pulled on a pair of sweatpants and my black shirt before silently padding down the stairs.
The house was eerily silent, quieter than most days.
The kitchen was dark as I moved toward the cabinet where I kept the whiskey, but something else caught my eye, making me pause in my tracks.
A splash of color on the kitchen island. Flowers. A bouquet of white and pink lilies in a crystal vase.
I stopped, my body going rigid. Those flowers hadn’t been there earlier. I would have noticed. I noticed everything in this house, especially after the fire.
My jaw clenched as I approached the flowers, suspicion coiling in my gut. The lilies were beautiful, pristine, their petals perfect and untouched. Beneath the vase, there was a small white card.
I picked it up and turned it over.
The handwriting was unmistakable, instantly recognizable—elegant, precise, with a cruel flourish that only one man possessed.
I’m sorry for your loss... again.
—Matteo
The card fell from my fingers, fluttering to the counter like a poisonous leaf.
My body shook violently as I gripped the edge of the island, knuckles turning white.
No one was supposed to know.
We hadn’t announced the pregnancy. No one fucking knew.
We’d kept it a secret, protecting the fragile life growing inside Serafina from the dangers of our world. No one knew of the baby… and certainly, no one knew of the miscarriage.
But Matteo knew. My brother had found out.
I’m sorry for your loss... again.
The words echoed in my mind, taunting me. Again. He had said again.
Rage surged through me like a tidal wave, obliterating everything in its path. It burned through my veins, hot and corrosive, consuming every rational thought, every restraint I’d ever possessed, every shred of control I had left.
The darkness inside me, the monster I’d kept caged for Serafina’s sake, broke free with a vengeance.
My heartbeat thundered in my ears.
I needed to move. I needed to act. I needed to destroy something. Him.
I stalked out of the kitchen, my movements jerky with barely contained fury. The need for violence devouring me, a hunger so intense it blinded me to everything else. I grabbed my keys from the entry table, not bothering with shoes or a jacket.
I had to find him.
I had to make him fucking pay.
I slid behind the wheel of my car, my hands clenching around the steering wheel with such force that my knuckles cracked.
A growl built my throat, as I pulled out of the driveway, my chest shuddering with the force of my violence.
He was responsible for Serafina’s pain.
He was the reason behind the rage that consumed me.
He was the reason why Elizabeth—
Fuck.
FUCK.
My heart caved into the hollow of my chest, my stomach tightened as agony sliced through me.
A memory flashed through my mind with brutal clarity.
The smell hit me first—copper and something rotten, something sweet that made my stomach clench.
Death. I knew that smell too well that I would recognize it anywhere.
My heart hammered against my ribs as I pushed open the door to the apartment, my hand already reaching for the gun at my waist.
The silence was deafening. Wrong.
Elizabeth should be here. She should have been moving around, humming to herself as she prepared dinner, her belly round and full with our child.
“Beth?” I called out, my voice sounding strange to my own ears. “I’m back early. The meeting was canceled.” The man had already been dead when I got there. Too frightened to face me that he killed himself.
“Beth?” I called out again, my voice echoing in the quiet apartment.
No answer.
The hallway stretched before me, dark. I moved forward, my footsteps silent against the hardwood floor.
The smell grew stronger with each step and my throat burned.
I pushed open the bedroom door, and my world came to a screeching stop.
Blood.
The sight of it stole the air from my lungs so violently, my body forgot how to move.
No…
Then the horror hit.
It wrapped around my throat like icy hands, crushing the breath from my chest as disbelief tore through me with brutal force.
The room tilted. My pulse roared in my ears.
Blood was everywhere. On the walls, the floor, the ceiling, everything was stained crimson. It had sprayed across the room in uncontrollable arcs, painting a grotesque masterpiece of violence.
It was still wet in places, glistening under the dim light from the bedside lamp.
My body shook as I took a step forward, my foot sliding through a pool of blood. I caught myself against the wall, my lungs squeezing so hard I couldn’t fucking breathe.
I slipped through the blood, desperate to reach her, my shoes making wet, sticky sounds against the hardwood. Each step sent a fresh wave of horror through me.
Elizabeth laid on the bed, her blonde hair spread across the bloody pillows, her beautiful face frozen in an expression of absolute terror.
Her eyes were open, staring at nothing.
Her nightgown was torn, her body…
God, her body.
I couldn’t process what I was seeing.
Her stomach—the stomach that had been swollen with our child just a day ago, was cut open, her organs spilling out onto the blood-soaked sheets. The brutality of it was unimaginable, a cruelty that defied comprehension.
A roar tore from my throat, feral and broken.
I stumbled toward her, falling to my knees beside the bed. My hands hovered over her, trembling, not knowing where to touch, how to fix this.
There was too much blood. Too much damage.
I couldn’t fix this.
“No,” I screamed. “No, no, no.”
I reached for her, gathering her broken body into my arms.
She was cold, so fucking cold but still so soft, I almost believed that she was alive.
But there was no life in her. No breath. No heartbeat.
I rocked her against my chest, my tears mixing with the blood on her skin.
Her blood soaked my clothes, staining me.
And then I saw it—
A small bundle beside her on the bed.
Our baby. My son.
Covered in blood, so still, so perfect, and so utterly, completely lifeless.
His tiny hands were curled into fists, his face peaceful in a way that made my heart shatter.
An anguished roar tore from my throat.
The memory faded as abruptly as it came, leaving me gasping for breath, my hands still clenched around the steering wheel. My chest heaved with ragged breath.
I was parked on the side of the road, I realized, though I didn’t remember how I got here.
Fucking Matteo.
He was finally going to pay for what he had done.
I knew this was his doing. He had taken Elizabeth and my son from me, and now he had somehow orchestrated the loss of my second child. The fire, the miscarriage, it had all been connected.
The rage that had been simmering inside me for two weeks, for years, really, boiled over. I needed to see him. I needed to look into his eyes as I made him bleed for every blood he had shed.
I found Matteo exactly where I knew he’d be, in his penthouse apartment, lounging in that absurdly expensive armchair that cost more than most people’s cars.
The arrogance in him was palpable, radiating from him like a toxic cloud.
My rage was a living thing inside me, clawing at my throat, demanding blood. The gun felt heavy in my hand, a natural extension of my fury. The weight of it was almost comforting, a promise of the vengeance I had craved for so long.
His posture was relaxed, almost bored. His dark eyes met mine across the room, a small, infuriating smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
“Hello, brother,” he said, not even bothering to look surprised as I entered. His voice was smooth and controlled, as if we were meeting for a casual drink rather than for his execution.
He had been waiting for me. Of course.
The bastard had known I would come.
I raised my gun, the barrel aimed directly between his eyes. My hand was steady, despite the violence coursing through my veins, eating my flesh, rotting me from the inside out.
“I know what you did,” I said, my voice deadly calm. I took a step closer. “All of it.”
Matteo didn’t flinch. He didn’t even try to reach for his own weapon.
Instead, he leaned back, a smirk playing across his lips as if I’d just told him a particularly amusing joke.
“And what is it you think I’ve done?” he asked, his tone light, almost conversational.
As if we were discussing the weather rather than the murders of my children.
Matteo raised an eyebrow, his expression one of mild curiosity.
“And how can you be so sure it was me? The world is full of enemies, Adrian. Not everyone who crosses you is my doing.”
I took another step closer, the gun never wavering from its target. “I found the evidence. On the blood-soaked floor of my apartment, where Elizabeth died. A Sunrise Ruby that only you own in this whole world.”
Matteo’s smile faltered for just a moment before returning, wider than before.
“A piece of ruby that was embedded in the ring you wear on your finger,” I continued.
I watched as his eyes dropped to his hand, to the ring that now held a perfect ruby. A replacement. The original had been left behind, a careless mistake that had sealed his fate.
The silence that followed was heavy, charged with the weight of years of hatred and resentment.
I had known for so long, had suspected, had gathered evidence, but I had never acted.
Not because I feared the consequences within La Cosa Nostra—though killing one’s own blood was a sin that would never be forgiven—but because I didn’t just want to kill Matteo.
I wanted to make him suffer. I wanted him to know the pain he had caused me. I wanted to strip away everything he valued, everything he had built, before I finally ended him.
Matteo shrugged, the gesture casual, dismissive, that it made my finger twitch against the trigger. “It needed to be done.”
The words hit me like a physical blow.
The casual cruelty of them, the complete absence of remorse, broke something inside me that had been holding on by the thinnest of threads.
“How could you?” I demanded, the words tore from my throat, raw with pain and fury. “How could you be so arrogant, so egotistical that you would take innocent lives just because you couldn’t be a father?”
Matteo stilled, his expression hardening.
For the first time since I had entered the room, I saw a crack in his composure.
His smirk fell, fading.
“Yeah, I fucking know,” I laughed bitterly, the sound harsh in the quiet room. “You’re infertile. You can never father a child, you would never have an heir, no legacy.”
His jaw tightened, a muscle ticking in his cheek. I had struck a nerve, hit the one insecurity that my perfect, arrogant brother had always tried to hide.
“And that’s why you took mine,” I continued, taking another step closer. “Because you couldn’t bear the thought that I would give the Salvatore the heirs they need, and you would be nothing. Forgotten in history.”
He was quiet for a second, his body so still he wasn’t even breathing. His fingers clenched the armrest, dark and ugly resentment in his gaze.
And then…
Matteo’s triumphant smirk returned. There was something more vicious about him now, that grin of his. “You are absolutely correct,” he confessed, his voice so cold it slithered down my spine and tightened around my throat like an icy chain. “And I feel no remorse for doing so.”
My finger twitched over the trigger. One small movement, and it would all be over. Years of pain, of loss, of rampage, would be avenged in an instant.
Matteo made a cold tsking sound.
“If I were you,” he said softly, his eyes never leaving mine. “I wouldn’t pull the trigger.”
And then I heard it.
The soft click of a gun being cocked, the cold press of metal against the back of my head.
I froze, my body going rigid.
A scent enveloped me—vanilla and familiar, something that was devastatingly, uniquely her.
My heart seized painfully in my chest.
She stepped around me, her gun never wavering from my head. Her movements were graceful, deliberate, as if she had been waiting for this moment just as long as I had been waiting for mine.
When she faced me, she slowly lowered the barrel to my chest, directly over my heart.
Her eyes, those beautiful hazel eyes, were cold, empty, devoid of any warmth or real human emotions.
The woman who had once trembled at the sight of blood now held a gun with steady hands, aiming it at my heart.
Thud.
“Serafina,” I breathed.
My wife smiled then, a slow, merciless curve of her lips that transformed her beauty into a monstrous canvas, so evil I almost didn’t recognize her.
Thud. Thud.
Her villainous smirk cut through me, carving open a wound so deep under my skin, so venomous, it rotted my flesh.
“Hello, Husband.”
Her voice…
Her voice, so fucking sweet, so fucking deadly.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
And then she pulled the trigger.
The last thing I saw was her face, beautiful even in her cruelty.