3. Serena
SERENA
My husband watches a video of another woman having sex at six twelve in the morning.
I know this because I’m awake beside him.
Rocco doesn’t realize that at first.
He turns the sound off before he opens the message. He angles the phone away. His face goes blank in the special way it does right before someone has a terrible day.
The light from the screen moves across his face. Then stops.
I lie very still under his arm.
There’s a naked shoulder on the screen. A man’s back. A woman’s dark hair spread across white sheets.
The video is grainy, but not grainy enough to misunderstand what they’re doing.
My stomach twists.
“Bit early for porn,” I say.
Rocco jerks like I fired a gun beside his ear. He locks the phone.
“You’re awake.”
“Excellent detective work.”
He moves away from me. Not far. Maybe six inches.
It feels like another country.
“Who sent that?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
“Who’s in it?”
His mouth goes flat. That’s when the joke dies.
I sit up and pull the sheet around me. My back aches. The baby presses low against my bladder, because apparently one disaster at a time isn’t enough.
“Rocco.”
He gets out of bed.
“I need to make a call.”
“No.”
He reaches for his trousers.
“No?”
“You took a call from Claudia after midnight. You disappeared for hours. Now you’re watching strangers have sex and looking at me like I broke into the house.”
He pulls on his trousers. He doesn’t answer.
Fear moves through me. Cold. Fast.
“Is that you?” I ask.
His head snaps up.
“What?”
“In the video.”
“No.”
The answer is instant. Offended.
I almost laugh.
“Well, good. One of us can answer a question.”
I climb out of bed and reach for my robe.
Rocco watches me tie it over my stomach. There are red marks on my hip from his fingers last night. His eyes catch on them.
For one second, he looks like my husband again.
Then his phone vibrates. The stranger comes back.
“Show me,” I say.
“Not here.”
“We’re in our bedroom.”
“I know where we are.”
“Then where would you prefer? The breakfast room? We can ask Mrs. Doyle to bring coffee while you explain why Claudia’s sending you sex tapes.”
“Claudia didn’t send the second one.”
There’s a second one.
“The second one.”
Rocco goes silent.
I want to throw something. The lamp is expensive and one of his socks is still hanging from it, so that would ruin the effect.
“How many videos are there?”
“Two.”
“And Claudia sent the first.”
“It was sent to one of David’s old accounts.”
“Which she controls.”
“Yes.”
“And she called you in the middle of the night to share.”
“Serena.”
“Stop saying my name like I’m the difficult part of this conversation.”
His nostrils flare.
I know that look. It’s the look men get before Rocco stops being polite.
Usually, I enjoy it. Not today.
“Get dressed,” he says. “We’ll talk downstairs.”
“Show me now.”
“Get dressed.”
He leaves the room. The door stays open behind him.
That’s almost worse than a slam.
Claudia is in my kitchen when I come downstairs. Of course she is.
It’s not even seven thirty. She wears black trousers, a cream sweater, and no visible makeup. Her grief has a casual morning collection.
Mrs. Doyle stands at the counter making tea with the stiff shoulders of a woman who knows this household is about to explode but still has opinions about water temperature.
Rocco is nowhere in sight.
Claudia rises from the table.
“Serena.”
She says my name like she’s arriving at a hospital.
“Why are you here?”
“Rocco asked me to come.”
“That was stupid of him.”
Mrs. Doyle puts the lid on the teapot with great care. I love her for pretending not to listen.
Claudia’s face softens. “I know how this looks.”
“Do you?”
“I wish I didn’t.”
“That makes one of us. I have no idea how it looks because nobody will show me.”
She didn’t expect that. Good.
Rocco appears in the doorway to the hall. He’s dressed now. Black shirt. Black trousers. No jacket. His phone is in one hand.
Matteo stands behind him. Matteo doesn’t look at me.
That scares me more than Claudia’s sad face.
“Office,” Rocco says.
I fold my arms. “Just us.”
“Claudia stays.”
“Why?”
“She received the first file.”
“Then Matteo stays too.”
Rocco’s eyes narrow.
“Why?”
“Because apparently we’re inviting spectators, and I like him better.”
Matteo looks at the floor. Claudia gives a tiny, wounded sigh.
Rocco turns to Matteo. “Outside the door.”
It’s not what I asked for. It’s what I get.
The office smells like coffee and the wood polish Mrs. Doyle buys in alarming amounts. Rocco’s laptop is open on the desk. A frozen image fills the screen.
A woman in my coat stands outside a hotel room.
My body stops. Not my heart. That starts beating so hard it hurts.
My body. I can’t take another step.
Rocco closes the door. Matteo remains outside.
Claudia sits in one of the leather chairs like someone asked her to attend a funeral.
“Where did you get that?” I ask.
“It came to David’s account,” Claudia says.
I don’t answer her.
“I asked Rocco.”
She goes quiet.
Rocco moves behind the desk. He doesn’t sit.
“The first video arrived just before midnight,” he says. “The second came this morning.”
“Play it.”
He hesitates.
“The first one,” I say. “Play it.”
He presses a key.
The woman steps from the lift. Dark hair. My coat. My black heels.
She walks like me if somebody watched me from a distance and practiced.
Too much hip. Not enough hurry. I’m always in a hurry.
She knocks on the door.
Rafe D’Amato opens it.
I know him at once.
His silver cuff links. The little smile he wears when he thinks he owns the room. His hand on the door.
The woman walks inside. The video ends.
There’s something in his face I’ve never seen directed at me. Not anger. This is doubt.
It hurts worse.
“That isn’t me,” I say.
Claudia’s fingers tighten around the strap of her handbag.
Rocco does not move.
“Where were you Thursday night?” he asks.
I laugh. It comes out ugly.
“You know where I was.”
“Tell me.”
“Dinner with Lucia.”
“At the Halcyon.”
“We had dinner at Cavalli’s. Then we went to the Halcyon because Lucia wanted tea and I wanted the pistachio pastry from their bakery.”
I point at the screen.
“That video is in the Halcyon.”
“I noticed.”
“Lucia left around nine. I stayed to meet Amelie Laurent.”
“Who’s that?”
“The pastry chef.”
His face changes by half an inch.
“You never mentioned her.”
“I brought you her pistachio tart.”
“That is not the same thing.”
I pull my phone from the pocket of my robe. My hands are shaking now, which makes the face scan fail twice.
Great. Even my phone has chosen a side.
I enter the code and open my messages.
“Here.” I hold up the thread with Amelie. “She confirmed the meeting on Tuesday. Eight forty-five. Bakery office.”
Rocco takes the phone.
The messages are ordinary. Painfully ordinary.
Amelie asks whether the fundraiser needs two hundred desserts or two hundred servings. I tell her both. She sends a laughing face.
At ten thirty-six Thursday night, I text her:
Thank you. Sorry I kept you so late. Rocco will pretend the tart is too sweet and then eat all of it.
There’s no reply.
Rocco scrolls upward. Then down.
“This proves you planned to meet,” he says.
“It proves I did meet her.”
“No. It proves you arranged it.”
I can’t believe I have to ask this.
“Do you think I created a fake meeting with a pastry chef so I could sneak upstairs and have sex with Rafe?”
His face tightens.
“I did not say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
I take the phone back and find the picture I sent Lucia from the bakery office. A tray of small lemon cakes. Amelie’s hand in the corner, a thin gold bracelet.
“This was taken at nine thirty-two.”
Rocco studies it.
“Her face isn’t in it.”
For a second, I honestly can’t speak.
Her face.
The woman in the sex tape has no face. My witness in the bakery photograph has no face. Only one missing face bothers him.
“You have decided,” I say.
“I have not.”
“You have. You’re just looking for enough facts to feel noble about it.”
“I was talking to her about helping with the winter fundraiser. I didn’t know I needed to submit a full report.”
“You had security.”
“They were outside.”
“Why?”
“Because I was having tea, Rocco. Not negotiating a hostage release.”
Claudia shifts in her chair.
“Maybe Amelie can confirm,” she says.
I want to bite her.
Rocco looks at her. “She left the hotel at nine fifteen.”
My mouth opens.
“No, she didn’t.”
“Hotel staff clocked her out at nine fifteen.”
“Then she forgot to clock out earlier, or someone used her card. She sat with me until after ten.”
“Is there anyone else who saw you together?”
“The server. The manager came over. Half the bloody tea room.”
“The tea room closed for a private event at nine.”
“We sat in the bakery office.”
Each answer sounds worse than the one before it.
Rocco hears it. Claudia definitely hears it.
“This is insane,” I say. “Call Amelie.”
“We have.”
“And?”
“Her phone’s off.”
My stomach turns. The baby moves.
His face almost breaks. Almost.
“Play the second video,” I say.
“No.”
“I saw part of it upstairs.”
“You don’t need to see the rest.”
“You did.”
His jaw locks.
“Play it.”
Rocco looks at Claudia. “Leave.”
She stands slowly.
“I can stay if Serena needs?—”
“She doesn’t need you.”
Something flashes in Claudia’s eyes. Gone fast.
She comes toward me anyway.
“I’m so sorry.”
I step back before she can touch me.
“You keep saying that.”
Her face goes pale. Then she leaves.
The office door closes behind her.
Rocco and I are alone. Finally.
It doesn’t feel safer.
He opens the second file.
“You don’t have to watch,” he says.
“Yes, I do.”
“Why?”
“Because my husband already did.”
He flinches. Good.
He presses play.
A fixed camera high in the corner of a hotel bedroom. Rafe walks into view. He takes off his shirt.
The woman follows.
She’s wearing black underwear and my wedding ring.
Her face stays turned away.
Rafe kisses her neck. His hands move over her. She climbs onto the bed with him.
Rocco stops the video before it gets worse.
Dark hair. My height. My coat on the chair. My ring on her hand.
Not my body. Not my life.
My voice shakes now. I hate giving the lie anything.
Rocco’s hands are flat on the desk.
“The ring?—”
“Is a ring.”
“It’s yours.”
I pull my left hand up between us. My wedding ring catches the morning light.
“Mine is here.”
“You could have taken it off.”
The room goes silent.
I look at him. Really look.
His hair is a mess from my hands. There’s a faint mark on his throat from my mouth. He still smells like our bed.
This man was inside me a few hours ago.
Now he’s standing across a desk asking whether I took off his ring so I could wear a copy into another man’s hotel room.
“Do you hear yourself?”
“I’m trying to understand.”
“No. You’re trying to make the tape make sense.”
“Because it exists.”
“So do I.”
He looks away.
That’s the moment something in me cracks. Not breaks. Not yet. But cracks.
“Look at me,” I say.
His eyes come back.
“I did not go to Rafe’s room. I did not kiss him. I did not sleep with him. That woman is not me.”
“The coat is yours.”
“Someone took it.”
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
“The shoes?”
“They sell black heels in shops now. It’s very exciting.”
He does not react. My eyes burn.
I will not cry in front of that laptop.
“You know my body,” I say. “Better than anyone. Look at her shoulder. Look at the way she moves. Look at her face.”
“Her face isn’t clear.”
“Exactly.”
He says nothing.
“Rocco.” I step around the desk. “Look at my face, then. Right now. Not the video. Me.”
He does.
For one second, I think love will win.
I see my husband somewhere behind the Castellano boss.
Then the office door opens.
Vittorio walks in without knocking.
Claudia stands behind him. Of course she does.
“What happened?” Vittorio asks.
Rocco moves between me and the door. Even now.
Even doubting me, his body protects mine without asking permission.
It would be romantic if it didn’t hurt so much.
“Get out,” Rocco says.
Vittorio looks at the paused video on the laptop. His face hardens.
“Is that Rafe?”
“Get out.”
“If D’Amato touched your wife, this is family business.”
“He did not touch me,” I say.
Vittorio barely glances at me.
“Rocco.”
The way he says the name is a warning. A challenge. It’s the voice of the man who sits at the head of the table and decides what the family swallows and what it answers for, and right now he’s looking at his nephew like a debt about to come due.
Claudia puts a hand on Vittorio’s arm. “Not here.”
Still soft. Still reasonable. Still standing in my house while my marriage catches fire.
Rocco’s fists close.
“Both of you leave.”
Vittorio studies him.
“Do not let weakness make this worse.”
Then he turns and walks out. Claudia follows.
She looks back at Rocco before the door closes. Not at me.
Rocco stands with his back to me.
“Tell me you believe me,” I say.
He does not turn.
“Tell me.”
His shoulders rise once. Fall.
“I need time.”
I press both hands over my stomach.
“No. You need a spine.”
He turns then. His face is wrecked.
Good. Mine probably is too.
“You told me once that I was the only person in this family you trusted completely,” I say.
“I know.”
“Was that a lie?”
“No.”
“Then why is a blurry video stronger than my word?”
His eyes go to the laptop. Not to me.
The floor drops out from under me. No crack this time. Just the fall.
He already chose. Last night, in the dark, watching a stranger in my coat—he chose then. Everything since has been paperwork.
The baby moves between us.
I wait for him to come to me. He does not.
When Rocco finally speaks, his voice is almost too quiet to hear.
“I can’t keep you here.”