CHAPTER THREE
SERAFINA
THE PAST
The apartment smelled of lemon-scented cleaner and new paint. The carpet even looked spotless, as if everything had just been newly done right before my arrival this morning.
I sat on the couch with my knees drawn up, my Kindle balanced on my thighs as I scrolled through titles I had no intention of reading. I had bought so many new ebooks this morning, but I didn’t know which one to start.
Reading would always calm me, but I found myself not in the mood for… anything.
My chest constricted, and the familiar knot of anxiety coiled in my stomach.
My breakfast was still on the coffee table, untouched. I couldn’t even bring myself to take a bite into the protein bagel that was my favorite.
I scrolled through my Kindle's library again, thinking that maybe this time, one book would catch my attention. Maybe an older one that I would want to reread, but nothing piqued my interest.
I set the device down on the armrest and let my gaze drift across the apartment. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a small kitchen with stainless steel appliances that still bore the thin plastic film across their surfaces.
The apartment, only a ten-minute walk from the university, came fully furnished with the bland efficiency of a hotel suite—a beige couch, a glass coffee table, and a single abstract print above the television that I suspected no one had chosen with any real feeling. It was just random decor.
I chose the bedroom on the right, the one with the smaller closet but the better natural lighting. I had spent the better part of my morning arranging my things with the precision that felt less like preference and more like compulsion.
Everything was in its proper place.
Everything was accounted for.
It was old habits that lived in my muscles rather than the mind.
I had arrived at six this morning, my father’s man dropping me off with three suitcases.
I thought today my father would finally come to visit me.
It had been three years since he sent me away. Three years since I had last seen any member of my family. Today, I moved from the all-girls Catholic dorm to this apartment to begin my adult life.
My father in his letter believed that I would be safer in student housing than my own private condo. Maybe he was right…
Still, I wished he had come to see me himself.
Not that I expected comfort from him, but because showing up would have meant I mattered enough to warrant the effort.
Maybe I wanted to know that I wasn’t… forgotten. Only to be used as his pawn when he needed me to fulfill my obligations for the family.
But of course… Santino Morelli didn’t care for such frivolous, sentimental gestures. A letter was efficient. It was irrelevant to him that I was beginning an entirely new chapter of my life.
I had grown accustomed to solitude.
No family. No friends.
Eventually, I came to understand that loneliness had its one undeniable advantage.
You’d be less likely to be disappointed when you were alone.
The silence of the apartment pressed against my ears. At St. Clare’s Academy for girls, there had always been noise—the shuffle of nuns’ habits, the murmur of prayer, the collective breath of dozens of girls moving through corridors in pairs.
Here, there was only the hum of the refrigerator and the distant thrum of traffic four floors below.
I placed my palm flat against my sternum before letting it drift lower to my breasts, pressing lightly against the fabric of my blouse. The tenderness there was still present, a dull, persistent ache that flared whenever I moved too quickly or turned the wrong way.
Three years of binding had left their mark in more ways than one: bruises like thumbprints along my ribs and skin chafed raw beneath my arms. And my breasts were constantly and uncomfortably sore.
I could still feel the ghost of the compression garment against my ribs, the way it had reshaped my breathing into something shallow and insufficient.
The only time I ever got a reprieve from the binding was when I was taking a shower, and that too must have been quick. We were only allowed a set amount of time in the shower.
Sister Marguerite had taught me how to bind myself at fifteen, my first day at St. Clare’s, a Catholic private school.
Her hands had been clinical and impersonal, telling me in her measured voice that modesty was a virtue and a woman’s body was something to be concealed because it invited the kind of attention that led only to sin.
Anything capable of tempting a man was a burden a woman had to carry in silence.
Virtue.
The word sat in my mouth, thick and heavy like a stone.
I had been taught to wear virtue similar to how I wore the binding—tight, invisible, and unquestioned.
My body never belonged to me.
It had been a vessel for someone else’s ambition. A peace treaty. My body was for my future husband… and my womb would carry the Salvatore heir, whether I wanted it or not.
It never mattered what I wanted…
I pressed my hand harder against the soreness and felt something akin to relief. The pain reminded me that no one was watching me now. No one would check my closet for forbidden garments or inspect my plate for inappropriate portions.
I was… free.
This apartment was mine—or half mine, at least. And this silence, it was mine too.
I let my hand fall to my lap. The soreness would fade eventually.
The sound of a key turning in the front door made me straighten. I set my feet on the floor and smoothed my hands over my midi skirt.
Anxiousness and excitement bubbled inside my chest. I didn’t know what to expect.
The door opened, and a girl stepped through with a single, large suitcase rolling behind her, the wheels catching briefly on the threshold before she tugged it free.
She was my height, or nearly so. Her blonde hair was cut into a neat bob that brushed just below her ears, stopping maybe two inches above her shoulders. She wore a simple navy jacket and dark jeans.
My new housemate closed the door behind her with a soft click. She moved with the effortless confidence of someone who had done this before, who had arrived in new places and settled right in.
She hadn’t looked in my direction yet, so I took the small second I had to study her. Something about her tugged at my memory. Maybe it was the sharp line of her jaw or perhaps the way she tilted her head as she surveyed the living room—there was a familiarity there that I couldn’t quite name.
Whatever it was, it stirred a faint sense of recognition just beyond my reach.
I studied her for a moment longer, searching and chasing the feeling of familiarity, but it slipped through my fingers. All that remained was the unsettling certainty that I had seen her before… somewhere, somehow.
“Oh, hi,” she said when her eyes finally landed on me. “You must be my roommate. Uh, sorry… I meant, housemate.”
She left her suitcase by the door and walked toward me, extending her arm for a handshake. “I’m Elyssa,” she introduced, her voice warm, unhurried.
“Serafina.” I took her hand. Her grip was firm, but not aggressive. She held my gaze with hesitation, her eyes steady, but there was nothing challenging about it.
She was just… direct. Simply looking.
And somehow, I found that unnerving.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I said, ever so politely.
Calm and collected. Poised and graceful.
“Likewise.” Elyssa smiled with perfect straight teeth. She was strikingly beautiful when she smiled like this, free and innocent. Elyssa glanced past me toward the hallway where the bedrooms were. “I assume you already picked your bedroom. Which one is mine?”
“The left one.” I pointed toward her bedroom. “We share a bathroom, though.”
She nodded. “Oh yes, I know. I read it in the description. Do you mind that?”
“No, that’s fine.”
“Perfect.” She walked back to her suitcase and wheeled it toward her bedroom.
For some inexplicable reason, I followed at a distance. Something about Elyssa intrigued me. She wasn’t like the other girls at St. Clare’s Academy. Both innocent and pretentious.
Elyssa appeared calm and straightforward.
Something about the way she spoke, the way she walked… it beckoned me with curiosity.
I hovered in her bedroom’s doorway as she stepped inside and set her suitcase on the bed. She unzipped it with the calmness of someone who has done this too many times to count. Packed up their lives only to unpack right after, settling into yet another new place.
I expected her to put each piece of clothing in the closet with precise care but was surprised when she clumsily dumped them inside.
All my clothes were organized by color, and my shoes were carefully arranged in pairs along the closet floor with the toes pointing inward.
Elyssa had no care to do anything perfectly.
“I can almost feel the judgment ,” she drawled lazily.
Something shifted in my chest, and I shook my head quickly, denying her accusation.
Elyssa glanced over her shoulders and smiled—not the tight, performative smile I was accustomed to receiving from women in my world, but something looser, more genuine. “Believe it or not, I thrive better in chaos. If everything is too perfect, it makes me jittery.”
She held up a sweater and examined the wrinkles. “Perfection is a facade, don’t you think?”
I couldn’t answer that.
All my life I had been told how to be… perfect.
The perfect daughter.
And soon, I would have to be the perfect wife—if I wanted to live.
My survival has always depended on how flawless and impeccable my character was.
When I didn’t respond, she laid the sweater on her bed and continued unpacking. “Are you from Chicago?” she finally asked after half a minute of silence. “Your accent tells me that you’re not from LA.”
The question was casual, but I felt the old instinct rise—the careful calibration of how much to reveal, which details were safe and which might betray the shape of the life I’d been forced to leave behind. “Yes,” I said. “Born and raised.”
“Me too. Well, I was born in Chicago, but we moved to New York when I was five. And now here I am, in LA.”
“Have you always wanted to attend UCLA?”