CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE #2
“And then one day,” I finally spoke, because I needed to hear her say it, I needed to understand the moment when the mask came off, “it was time to reveal your truth.”
She nodded. A single, sharp movement. “And I did.”
“And what truth is that exactly?”
My voice came out rougher than I intended, stripped of the measured composure I usually wore like armor.
“A truth I never knew myself until I turned sixteen,” she explained, “when my aunt told me the truth about my mother and father.”
“You see, Angelo Garza did truly fall in love,” she continued, and her voice had taken on a quality I hadn’t heard before—something almost tender, almost reverent, wrapped around a core of bitterness so deep it had calcified into something permanent.
“But he fell in love with a woman who didn’t really belong to him. ”
The confusion must have shown on my face because she noticed. Of course she noticed. Now I had realized this woman noticed everything and she weaponized everything she learned.
My wife laughed. A small, bitter sound that held no humor whatsoever.
“You can’t keep up, Salvatore?” The mockery in her voice was deliberate, aimed where she thought it would hurt. “Is this too much for you? The great Adrian Salvatore, brought low by a little girl’s story?”
My jaw tightened, the muscle tensing under the skin, the involuntary betrayal of my body. I pressed my lips together, swallowed once, and when I spoke, the words came out flat.
“Your abilities impress me,” I drawled, and I meant it. What she had accomplished…it deserved nothing less than admiration. “But get to the point.”
A ghost of satisfaction flickered in her eyes. She seemed to revel in the successful deception she had so flawlessly executed, a quiet pride in her expression.
And as much as I hated to admit it, she had every right to that feeling.
“Let me paint a picture for you.” Her brow raised, the corner of her lips lifting. “A quick, vivid one. Enzo Salvatore sent Angelo to infiltrate Santino Morelli’s operations. To spy on him. To learn everything and every move Santino made.”
I knew this part. Finally she said some words that made sense to me.
“And Angelo did that,” Serafina said. “He really did. And along with all the things he found out, he also discovered Santino’s affair with Violet.”
“Violet...” The name left my mouth before I could stop it, trailing off into silence. I knew that name…
“My mother,” Serafina admitted, and her shoulders trembled in the slightest bit. “My mother was a sweet woman. A good woman. Angelo, my father, approached her because she was Santino’s mistress.”
She paused, and I watched her delicate throat work as she swallowed.
“What could be the better way to keep an eye on a man than to put yourself into the life of the woman he’s secretly keeping as his whore?” The word whore came out hard and sharp.
“But he didn’t think he would end up falling in love with her. That wasn’t part of his plan. He was supposed to use her. Extract information. Maintain the cover. That’s what spies do, isn’t it? They use people. They take what they need and they leave.”
She looked at me, and the challenge in her gaze was unmistakable and I understood the words she left unsaid—you would know about that, wouldn’t you?
My heart thundered in my chest. “But he didn’t leave.”
She nodded once. “He stayed. And my mother, she fell in love with him too. A man who saw her as a person, not a possession. Not a secret to be kept. Not a thing to be hidden away and used when it was convenient.”
Serafina closed her eyes once, squeezing them tightly shut before she opened them again.
They glistened before she blinked, and then it was gone.
“My mother got pregnant,” she announced and then took a deep breath.
“And she realized that she deserved better. That the child she carried deserved better. So they ran. They left everything behind. Santino’s protection.
Enzo’s trust. And they started a new life. With me”
She swallowed hard this time, her voice breaking off a little and my eyes hardened on her as I started noticing the cracks in her storytelling, in her emotions.
The silence that followed after her words was thick, suffocating.
Thud.
Something violent twisted in the pit of my stomach. Fuck.
Thud.
All the pieces clicked into place. FUCK.
“You are—” The words caught in my throat, and I had to force them out, each one tasting so fucking bitter on my tongue. “Santino’s illegitimate daughter.”
It wasn't a question.
I didn't have to ask her that question.
I knew.
I fucking knew. Because I saw it in her eyes. Her silent confession was undeniable.
Serafina looked at me, and for the first time since she’d started speaking, a broken vulnerability cracked through her facade—a fracture in her deceit, brief and devastating
“Yes,” she said. “I am.”
The word settled over me, pulling me under the storm she had unleashed on us. I felt her truth, that ugly reality, in my chest, in my ribs and in every cell inside my body.
She was the daughter of a man who had no idea she existed. A man who had looked at her across dinner tables and never once recognized the blood that ran in her veins.
“Jesus Christ,” I hissed under my breath.
I leaned back in the chair, my body retreating from the magnitude of what she’d just revealed, creating distance between us. A distance we both needed from that revelation.
The armchair creaked beneath me, the leather groaning in protest.
The sheer, staggering audacity of Elyssa made something in my chest tighten. It wasn’t fear or anger. It was a feeling more complex, one I couldn’t quite understand. Maybe it was respect…pride… or alarm at the fact that a woman like her could lie so perfectly.
I raised my hand, silencing the rest of her confession because now it was easy to figure the rest out by myself. She had already laid everything else out so perfectly. A fucking genius she was.
“Let me finish the story for you. You told the real Serafina the truth…and she realized that she could escape this arranged marriage, and live her life freely if you took her place?”