Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 70097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
“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 but 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 I chose to betray my father's command and his trust anyway.
And I made sure I did everything right to bury the truth.
I killed the two soldiers 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 BURNED 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?
CHAPTER TWENTY
SERAFINA (ELYSSA)
His face blurred in front of me. The room tilted, the walls dissolving into smoke and flame, and suddenly, I wasn’t in the hotel suite anymore.
I was fifteen years old, standing in my bedroom, listening to those men speaking outside the window.
The memory crashed over me like a wave, pulling me under, and I couldn’t fight it.
I didn’t want to.
I could feel it—the severing heat. The heat that had seared into my skin and never truly left.
Fire.
The smell hit me first. That acrid, chemical sweetness that I would spend the rest of my life trying to scrub from my nostrils. Gas. It had been gas, leaking from the stove in the kitchen, filling the house with its invisible, suffocating presence while I stood in my room and listened to the conversation I wasn’t supposed to hear.
“Burn it. All of it. I want no evidence that Angelo Garza ever existed.”