CHAPTER NINETEEN
ADRIAN
The name sent a shock through me, sharp and brutal, striking me with a force that knocked the breath from my lungs.
Angelo Garza.
The syllables reverberated in my skull, unlocking memories I had buried years ago.
I stepped back from Serafina, my mind reeling. The room tilted beneath my feet, the familiar contours of the hotel suite warping into a foreign den , disorienting. Angelo Garza. Her father. The man I had—
“You’re lying,” I said, but the words came out hollow, stripped of any real accusation or conviction. How did Serafina know about Angelo?
“I have no reason to lie to you now.” Her voice cracked, raw with the pain of confession.
That broken expression on her face, no one could act so well because this wasn’t…
acting. It was real. “My name was Elyssa Garza before my father changed it. Before we went into witness protection. We used a different last name.”
I pressed my palm against the wall, steadying myself, as the memories flooded back—not the last night I saw him, but before. Years before.
Angelo. A little shorter than most average men, but he was large. He always had been a big man. Wide chest and shoulders, big arms and thick legs. I remembered his dark eyes that crinkled at the corners when he smiled.
That man had been my father’s shadow, his confidant, his most trusted soldier.
He sat at our dinner table every Sunday and he was the same man who slipped me a piece of candy after I had fallen from my horse and fractured my arm at six years old.
Here, kid. Sweets make everything better.
It had been a silly competition between my brother and me, to see who could go the fastest. I proved myself to be the fastest, but then I fell.
So, Matteo won.
I remembered how unfair I thought it was, how angry I was at my father for praising Matteo, how furious I was at my brother for gleaming the way he did at the praise, almost like he wanted to rub it in my face.
But Angelo’s candy had made it all better.
I could still taste that candy—strawberry, too sweet, the kind my father would have frowned upon. Angelo had winked at me as I had popped it into my mouth, his finger pressed against his lips in conspiratorial silence.
He had been family. More than family, truly. He was the steady presence in a household where affection was measured in expectations and accomplishments.
“Your father...” The words felt foreign on my tongue. How could Angelo be Serafina’s father?
No, but she said she was… Elyssa Garza. Not Serafina.
That made…no sense.
“Angelo was a traitor,” I finally spoke around the lump in my throat.
“He was a man who fell in love,” Serafina or Elyssa defended, eyes blazing with a fury that seemed to emanate from her very core. “He fell in love with my mother, and he wanted out. He wanted a normal life. A life without blood on his hands. Is that so difficult to understand?”
I turned away from her, my hand raking through my hair. The memories collided with each other, a chaotic jumble of past and present, of the man I had grown up respecting and the man I was sent to eliminate.
“He was my father’s confidant, his most trusted soldier,” I said, more to myself than to her. “He knew everything—every operation, every contact, every skeleton in every closet. My father sent him to Chicago to infiltrate the Morelli organization, to watch Santino, to report back.”
It had been the most critical assignment my father had ever entrusted to anyone. One mistake could have shattered the fragile peace between our families and plunged us into yet another war that neither side could afford.
He chose Angeolo because he trusted him with more than his life. He trusted him with our family's future.
Angelo was one of the few men capable of moving through Santino's world without drawing suspicion, of getting close enough to uncover what we needed without leaving a trail that could be traced back to us.
Because if Santino ever discovered that we had been spying on him, there would be no more negotiations. No alliance left to salvage.
The betrothal between Serafina Morelli and the Salvatore heir was the only thing keeping our families bound together by something other than bloodshed.
“And he fell in love instead.” Serafina’s voice had dropped to a whisper. “He chose my mother over your father’s war. He chose us over your family’s vendetta.”
Men in love did foolish, dangerous things. Angelo Garza proved that.
I turned back to face her, a cold, heavy weight settling in my chest. “He chose to become an informant. He chose to betray decades of loyalty, to hand over my father to the FBI. That wasn’t love—that was self-preservation.”
“He was protecting us!” The words exploded from her, almost desperately.
“The FBI had him cornered. They knew who he was, what he’d done.
They gave him a choice. Testify against Enzo Salvatore or spend the rest of his life in prison.
He chose to live. To be there for my mother, for me, for Caleb.
Is that so unforgivable? Does that decision truly deserve… death?”
The silence that followed was almost deafening. I could hear my own heartbeat, steady and relentless, the opposite to the chaos in my mind.
“It took me three years to find him,” I said finally. “Three years of chasing shadows, following false leads, hunting a ghost. Your father was good, better than good. He knew how we operated, how we thought. He had trained me himself, in many ways.”
Serafina’s face contorted with pain. “And when you finally found him? When you stood in our living room on my fifteenth birthday? Did you feel proud? Did you feel like you had accomplished something noble?”
The memory of that night surfaced with brutal clarity, the cramped two-bedroom mobile house, the birthday cake, and the two children hiding in the bedroom.
I remembered Angelo’s face when he had seen me, the recognition, the resignation on his expression.
“He begged you,” Serafina continued before I could even process what she was really saying, her voice breaking over each word. “I heard him through the door. He begged you to spare his children. He offered you everything. He just wanted us to live.”
My eyes squeezed shut.
The sound of Angelo’s voice echoed in my memory, stripped of the authority I had always associated with him, reduced to something raw and desperate.
“Please, Adrian. They’re just kids. They don’t know anything about any of this. I am all they have. They need me.”
“I gave him mercy,” I said, the words tasting like ash on my tongue. I opened my eyes again, spearing Serafina with a hard look. “I was sent to eliminate a threat to my family. I was supposed to make it clean, make it final. But I let him live.”
“Mercy?” Serafina’s voice rose, trembling with barely contained fury. “You call what you did mercy?”
“I could have killed him. I should have killed him. That was the job.” I forced myself to hold her gaze, despite the storm of emotions I saw there.
I didn’t… understand. “Instead, I made a deal. He would disappear completely—no contact with anyone from his old life, no attempts to reach out. He would live as a ghost, and in return, I would tell my father he was dead.”
Silence stretched between us.
What I had done wasn't a mistake. It was a mercy to Angelo to a betrayal to Enzo Salvatore.
I knew exactly what would happen if my father ever learned the truth. In our world, there were no second chances for a man who turned his back on his family. Blood answered with blood. Betrayal answered with death.
And it didn't matter who it was.
Whether it was Angelo. Or me.
I knew that. And chose to betray my father's command, his trust anyway.
And I made sure I did everything right to bury the truth.
I killed the two sheets who accompanied me that night. They had seen everything, they knew I disobeyed orders. They knew the man I had been sent to execute was still alive.
And they could never be allowed to speak the truth.
I erased every trace of what happened that night, silenced every witness, and buried every piece of evidence deep enough that even my father would never find it.
As far as Enzo Salvatore was concerned, the man had died that night.
“Lies,” she roared. “You’re a dirty liar, like the dirty fucking human you are. How can you stand there and look me in the eyes and speak the most outrageous lie of your life.”
“If you were in that room, then you heard what I said to him that night.”
Serafina laughed, a harsh broken sound that held no humor.
“Yes, I heard. I remembered every word you said to him. I remembered the false promises you made to him, the false safety you gave him. You made him think he could get away, you made him think he could trust your words… but you are your father’s son after all, aren’t you?
You’re Adrian Salvatore, you have a reputation to uphold. ”
The accusation landed like a physical blow. Serafina shook her head, tears streaming down her face. “You don’t get to be the hero in this story, Adrian. You don’t get to rewrite history and paint yourself as some kind of savior. You destroyed my family.”
“I never claimed to be a savior,” I said quietly. “I’ve never been anything but what I am—a weapon my family forged, a tool they wielded. But that night, with Angelo, I made a choice that went against everything I’d been taught. I chose mercy over duty.”
“Was giving my father false hope and then going behind his back to orchestrate our deaths mercy?”
I pressed my fingers to my temple. “Serafina—or Elyssa, fuck… you’re confusing me. Your retelling of the events do not match my memories.”
“I heard them,” she said. “I heard them outside the window. The two men who were with you. I heard them on the call with you. You instructed them to burn the house down. You told them you wanted no evidence of Angelo ever existing. I heard it. I heard you on that phone. And they followed that instruction. You burned us alive, Adrian. You BURN THEM,” she roared.
The world slowed at her words.
My heart stuttered.
My mouth opened, shock and horror coursing through my veins
What—the fuck was she talking about?