Chapter Twenty AURORA
The garden smelled like rain, roses, and regret.
I sat on the cold stone bench where Matteo had tackled a killer just yesterday, the same place where blood had soaked into white roses and turned them crimson.
The book in my lap was one of those old romance novels I used to devour in secret, pretending they were thrillers.
Pages full of grand gestures and heroic men who didn’t shoot your fiancé at the altar.
I hadn’t turned a single page in twenty minutes.
My fingers kept drifting to my lower belly again, pressing lightly against the fabric of my sweater.
I could still feel the ghost of Santino’s hand there, the way he’d rubbed slow circles while buried deep inside me, whispering filthy, obsessive promises about filling me until I swelled with his child.
The memory sent heat rushing through me even now, shame and desire twisting together until I couldn’t tell which was stronger.
I yanked my hand away like I’d been burned.
Santino watched me constantly, those dark eyes tracking every movement like I might disappear.
At night he pulled me into his bed without asking, wrapping his powerful body around mine, one large hand possessively cupping between my thighs as if to remind me who I belonged to even in sleep.
I pretended to be asleep when he kissed my shoulder or whispered my name like a prayer.
I pretended I wasn’t melting under his touch.
I pretended the lie I was living didn’t feel more real than anything that came before.
Because I wanted him. God help me, I wanted the devil who had stolen me.
I wanted the brutal way he fucked me, the terrifying tenderness that slipped through when he thought I wasn’t looking, the way he’d given Angelo’s watch to Matteo like it was the most natural thing in the world.
But every time I closed my eyes, I saw that bloodstained altar.
I saw Sergio crumpling to the marble floor.
I saw the life I was supposed to have burning to ash because of one stolen kiss with a man in a devil mask.
A folded note had appeared under my bedroom door this morning while I was in the shower. The handwriting was jagged, almost unrecognizable, like someone had written it with a trembling, untrustworthy hand.
Cathedral crypt. Noon. Come alone if you still have a soul left. -Sergio
My stomach plummeted. He was supposed to be dead. I had watched Santino shoot him point-blank in front of the entire cathedral. I had felt his blood splatter across my wedding dress like warm rain. I had screamed as his body hit the floor.
But the note felt real. The tremor in those letters felt painfully, horribly real.
I told myself I wouldn’t go. I told myself Santino would lose his mind, lock me in the bedroom, chain me to the bed, never let me out of his sight again.
I told myself I owed that man nothing. He had been part of the arrangement that would have trapped me in a loveless, blood-soaked marriage. He wasn’t innocent.
Yet at 11:40 a.m., I was slipping out of the estate on the motorcycle anyway, heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat.
The coastal wind whipped my hair as I drove, cold and sharp, carrying the scent of salt and pine.
I kept checking the mirrors. For the past few days I’d felt eyes on me, an SUV tailing at a distance, always disappearing when I looked closer.
I’d convinced myself it was Santino’s men watching over me.
Maybe sent by the man who sent that hitman.
Now I wasn’t so sure.
The old cathedral loomed ahead, half-ruined and swallowed by shadows.
I killed the engine a block away and approached on foot, small knife clutched in my sweating palm.
Every creak of the old wooden doors made my skin crawl.
The crypt stairs descended into darkness that smelled of mildew, old candle wax, and something coppery underneath.
A single flickering bulb buzzed overhead like a dying insect.
A shape shuffled in the shadows.
“Sergio?” My voice echoed too loudly.
He stepped into the weak light. I nearly dropped the knife.
The man I remembered, who was broad-shouldered, quiet, lethally composed, had been erased.
The left side of his face was a grotesque ruin.
Thick scar tissue pulled his mouth into a permanent, snarling twist. One eye was milky white and blind, the other bloodshot and furious.
Deep, jagged grooves marked where Santino’s bullet had torn through cheekbone and jaw.
When he breathed, it sounded wet and labored.
“Aurora…” The word came out slurred and rasping, like stones grinding together in his throat. “You actually came.”
I pressed a hand over my mouth, bile rising. “Oh my God… Sergio.”
He let out a broken, wheezing sound that might have been a laugh. “Not so pretty anymore, am I? Your devil made sure of that. He left me choking on my own blood on that fucking altar and walked away like I was nothing.”
I took a shaky step closer, guilt slamming into me like a tidal wave.
This was the man I had been promised to.
The man who had stood beside me at that altar, ready to bind our families in blood and duty.
And I had let Santino shoot him. I had let myself be carried away in a bloodstained dress while Sergio lay dying behind me.
“I thought you were dead,” I whispered, voice cracking. “I saw him shoot you. I saw…”
“You saw what he wanted you to see.” Sergio hissed.
Up close the damage was even worse, the left side of his jaw wired awkwardly.
“His men were sloppy in the chaos. A few of my loyalists dragged what was left of me out before they could put a second bullet in me. Weeks in hiding. Surgeries without proper doctors. Pain you can’t even imagine. ”
He stopped a few feet away. His good eye dragged over me slowly, hungry and bitter and something unhinged.
“He told you it was because of the kiss, didn’t he?
The bachelorette party. That devil mask bullshit.
How he couldn’t stand another man touching you.
” Sergio’s ruined mouth twisted. “It was never about you, Aurora. Not really. He’s been planning to tear down the Five Families for years.
I was in his way, too close to Leo, too loyal.
You were just the match he needed to light the whole thing on fire. ”
My chest tightened painfully. “You’re lying.”
“Am I?” He reached into his coat with a trembling, scarred hand and pulled out a crumpled photograph. It showed Santino and Marco in a dimly lit meeting room weeks before the wedding. Dates were scribbled on the back in red ink. Plans. Names. Mine was circled in the center.
“He left me for dead for nothing,” Sergio rasped, voice rising with demented anger.
“Not love. Not even a real grudge worth respecting. Just power. And now look at you. Barefoot in his house, letting him fuck his claims into you, turning into one of them. I see it in your eyes. You’re already halfway his whore. ”
The words hit like a slap. Tears burned my eyes.
The guilt was suffocating. This broken, demented shell of a man still looked at me like I belonged to him.
Like I owed him the future that had been stolen from us both.
And some stupid, deeply ingrained part of me, the obedient Ventura daughter who had been raised to honor debts and family, felt the weight of it crushing my ribs.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, voice small and broken. “For what he did to you. I never wanted any of this…”
“You owe me.” He stepped closer, breath metallic and sour, like rust and old blood. “You owe me a chance to get you out before he destroys what’s left of you. Come with me. I still have people. Loyal ones. We can rebuild. We can hide. I can still protect you, Aurora. Like I was supposed to.”
His ruined hand reached for mine, fingers twitching like they remembered how to be gentle once. I didn’t pull away fast enough. The touch was cold. Clammy. Wrong. Like touching something already dead.
For a moment, the crypt felt smaller. The air thicker.
Just the two of us down here in the dark.
Me, the girl who had once stood beside him at an altar in white, and him, the ghost of the man I was supposed to marry.
The silence between us was heavy with everything we had lost. Everything Santino had taken.
I swallowed hard, my voice barely a whisper. “Does… does Leo know you’re alive?”
Sergio’s good eye flickered with something feral. He leaned in closer, the flickering bulb casting grotesque shadows across his ruined face.
“No,” he rasped, the word wet and triumphant. “Leo thinks I’m dead. Clean. Final. The great Serpent doesn’t make mistakes, right?”
A broken chuckle escaped him. “I made sure of that. I stayed in the shadows. Watched. Waited. He has no idea I’m still breathing. No idea what I’ve become.”
The realization hit me like ice water down my spine.
This wasn’t the Sergio I remembered. The quiet, controlled right-hand man who had stood loyally beside Leo with steady hands and unreadable eyes. That man had been cold, yes, but rational. Loyal in his own twisted way.
This version… this was something broken. Twisted. Demented. His gaze darted too quickly. His laugh came too easily, too unhinged. The man who had once spoken of duty and family now sounded like he was speaking from the bottom of a grave.
And it was all Santino’s fault.
The thought landed heavy and sharp in my chest. Santino had done this. He had pulled the trigger. He had left this man to rot. He had turned Leo’s loyal right hand into this nightmare standing before me. Guilt clawed up my throat until I could barely breathe.
“I can’t,” I whispered, the words tasting like ash. “Not anymore.”
Sergio’s good eye darkened, the milky one twitching unnaturally. “Because of him.”
“Because I’m already his,” I said, the truth slipping out like a confession I couldn’t take back. “In ways I don’t even understand yet.”