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)
“Okay, fine.” He settled back in the chair, crossing one ankle over the opposite knee. The movement was casual, almost bored, his posture deceptively relaxed.
But I could see the tension in his shoulders, the way his fingers pressed together until the knuckles went white. “Too tough of a question to start with. How about this one: the reason you shot me that night, it was because...”
He trailed off, leaving the sentence unfinished, an open invitation that he expected me to walk through.
And I did.
Because the truth—this truth, at least—was a weapon I had been sharpening for six years, and I wanted him to feel it pierce his cold, rotting heart.
“It was my vengeance,” I said, and my voice came out steady despite the restraint around me, despite my body still trembling with the rage that still lived in me, despite the pain that festered deeper and deeper into my bones, into the marrow of my very being.
“I orchestrated your death for the last six years. I dreamed of pulling that trigger every night ever since I woke up in that hospital bed, alone and never the same again.”
My revelation filled the space between us, heavy and irrevocable.
I watched him make sense of them, watched the way his expression shifted, not dramatically, because nothing about Adrian was dramatic. I saw it in the tightening around his mouth, the slight narrowing of his darkened eyes.
Anyone else could have missed it.
But I didn't.
I didn't because I had waited for this moment for a very long time and I didn't want to miss a single moment of his realization.
“Every night…” I continued, because now that I had started, I couldn’t stop; the dam had broken, and my flooding words and emotions were carrying me forward with a momentum that felt both terrifying and inevitable. “I closed my eyes and I saw your face. The face of the man who ordered my family to be burned alive and felt absolutely no remorse in doing so.”
Adrian didn’t move at my confession. He sat across from me, perfectly still, his gaze fixed on mine with an intensity that made my skin prickle. “How did you take the real Serafina’s place?”
I knew why he wanted to know the truth. After all, the real Serafina mattered to him. She was the real daughter of Santino Morelli, the one he was supposed to trick into marriage.
Except I tricked him into marrying me.
I had played every card perfectly.
And Adrian had never once seen it coming.
He never discovered the truth about his wife. Never realized that the woman beside him wasn't even who she claimed to be.
What a fool he was.
No…
What a fool I played him to be.
I was never his pawn.
He was mine.
Every move, every life, every carefully orchestrated step that had brought us here, I had planned it all along before he ever realized he was even a part of the game.
And maybe… it was finally time to tell him the truth.
I had nothing left to hide now. Nothing else to lose.
He already knew who I was.
Now, it was time he learned my real identity.
And how well I had schemed, manipulated, and orchestrated all of this…
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ADRIAN
I sat across from her, the armchair groaning softly under my weight as I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, hands clasped between them.
The blood on my cheek had dried to a thin, flaky crust, and I could feel it pull against my skin every time I shifted my jaw. The scratches my wife had left burned, but they weren’t deep, not dangerous.
They were a reminder of the violence she had poured into me though, the years of fury she’d been carrying.
I didn’t wipe the blood away. I wanted to feel it. Her rage. Her fear. Her contempt.
She sat there with the blanket wrapped tightly around her waist, her arms pinned to her sides, her face streaked with tears and flushed with the aftermath of rage.
Serafina—or Elyssa.
I couldn't seem to reconcile the two names with the same women.
I had married Serafina.
I had known her as Serafina.
And even after realizing she wasn’t who she had claimed to be, that was still the name my mind reached for whenever I thought of her. Serafina.
It was the name I had spoken when I took my vows, the name I had whispered in throes of pleasure.
But now I knew there was another name attached to the woman who was my wife.
Elyssa.
I didn’t know what to do with that information.
So for now, she was Serafina.
She was Serafina until I decided she wasn't.
She looked small. Fragile. But her fragility was deceptive. It concealed something sharp and lethal beneath the surface, like a blade wrapped in silk.
My wife was a weapon without her even realizing.
Her lips twisted cruelly.
And she was talking. Fina-fucking-lly.
The words poured out of her in a torrent she couldn’t stem.