Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 105679 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 528(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105679 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 528(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
And his hand… cupping my breast… his finger circling my treacherous nipple.
The taste of him, the feeling of his touch… they all still lingered on my skin, burying under my flesh, trying to carve themselves a home in my bones.
Guilt coiled in my stomach like a venomous serpent, constricting tighter with each passing second.
God, I would never, ever forgive Adrian for this.
“Stop,” I whispered to the empty room, desperate to banish the memory. But it persisted, relentless and vivid, taunting me with what I’d allowed to happen. What I’d recklessly, unwillingly participated in.
I’d been engaged for mere hours and already I’d betrayed Matteo. I’d betrayed my family. And myself… of everything I’d been taught to be. My morals, my character, my honor, my virtue.
I had jeopardized everything with one impulsive moment in a moonlit garden.
I wondered if whatever Matteo had witnessed was enough to plant seeds of doubt that would surely grow into something I couldn’t control. The thought made me sick with dread and I swallowed down the nausea building in my throat.
A ping from my phone cut through my spiraling thoughts. The bright screen illuminated the darkness, momentarily blinding me. I fumbled for it, squinting at the notification.
Arabella.
God, she was everything I needed right now.
Arabella Rose was my closest friend, my only friend.
My only real friend.
Even though we never met.
We didn’t even know each other’s real name.
We had never seen each other’s faces.
But she was the person I knew would understand me best.
Arabella: Hey gorgeous. Just checking if you survived the big engagement party. Still breathing?
Arabella: I know you took his breath away (;
My fingers trembled over the screen. The concern in her simple message broke something in me, and all my emotions threatened to burst, trying to spill in the ugliest ways possible.
Before I could think twice, I was dialing her number, pressing the phone to my ear as if it were a lifeline.
She answered on the second ring. “Sera? What’s wrong? It’s like two in the morning—”
“I messed up so badly,” I choked out, a sob escaping from where I’d trapped it all evening: a raw, broken cry. “I don’t know how or if I can fix this.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Matteo
I traced the curve of Serafina’s smile with my thumb.
Her face was half-turned toward the camera, a rare moment of unguarded joy captured in the afternoon light. I had memorized every detail… the exact shade of her hazel brown eyes in the sunlight, the way her nose crinkled when she smiled big, and the small beauty mark in the corner, under her right eye that most people never noticed.
But I noticed everything about her. I always had.
I leaned back in the leather chair, taking a slow sip of my whiskey, letting the burn slide down my throat as my gaze drifted upward. The room was dark, except for the single lamp casting a dim red light into my private study.
Above me, dozens of photographs hung, staring back at me.
Serafina walking across campus. Serafina eating a sandwich on the park bench, her pink headphones over her head. Serafina laughing with a dark-haired friend outside a coffee shop.
Three years of her life, meticulously documented.
Three years of watching her mature, growing from a girl to the woman who would be my wife.
She was always meant to be… mine.
My eyes landed on a single photo; the very first photo of her that I received. Serafina at newly eighteen, her hair long, falling in loose waves down her back as she stared at the endless ocean.
I remembered when I first received that photograph, the sharp stab of want, of need that pierced through me at the sight of her standing here, so far out of my reach.
Marco had been my eyes and ears while Serafine was in California. A skilled operative that blended seamlessly into the background of college life, reporting back once a month with photos and details of her daily life.
Three years of watching… six years of waiting since the last time I had seen her.
She was fifteen, the day her father had sent her away. She was so different then, gangly, uncertain, confused, scared… but cute with her framed glasses perched on her nose and the metal braces flashing when she spoke. Her dark hair had been pulled back with childish bows and she never looked anyone in the eyes.
So innocent.
So pure and fragile—untouched by the dreadful, violent world we both inhabited.
Something had stirred in me that day, the need to make her mine, the need to possess her and that need only grew with time and distance.
And now she was here.
Grown, beautiful, matured… different. Too different, it seemed like she wasn’t the same woman I had known, I had been obsessed with.
Gone was the timid girl I knew and in her place stood a woman of calculated grace, poised and armored with a careful, constructed facade.