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)
“I spent months in foster care,” she said, and her voice had changed. The fury had drained from it, and the tone was more distant now, as if she was simply recounting someone else’s story. “Six different homes in four months. Nobody wanted a fifteen-year-old girl who screamed herself awake every night. I was damaged goods. Too old, too broken, too much trouble.”
Her eyes were fixed somewhere beyond my left shoulder, seeing something I couldn’t see. The memory of those months lived in her. I saw it in the tightness around her mouth, the way her fingers curled and uncurled against the blanket.
“Then my mother’s sister came for me. An aunt I had never met before, though I had heard of. She was familiar because my mother often spoke of her. Elena, her older sister. She lived in California.”
I didn’t interrupt. I sat perfectly still and listened, because the truth she was giving me was more valuable than anything I’d ever been offered. And I understood with cold, tactical clarity that had kept me alive this long, that the moment I broke the flow, she might stop.
Serafina might retreat behind the walls she had spent years constructing, and I would lose her before I could get all of her.
“I didn’t know how I was going to make you pay,” she continued, and her gaze shifted back to mine, sharp for a single moment. “Not at first. I was fifteen, Adrian. I was grieving, I was broken, I was living in a stranger’s house in a city I didn’t know. But I knew one thing with absolute certainty… I would have my revenge. I would find the man who ordered my family burned alive, and I would destroy him.”
The certainty in her voice was absolute. It didn't waver; there was no doubt in it, and now I knew that conviction didn't bend under the weight of any circumstances.
This was the same kind of conviction that could build empires as well as topple them. I recognized it because I had seen it before—in my father’s eyes, in my grandfather’s voice, in the mirror every morning.
It was the lethal certainty of someone who had decided, irrevocably, that they would not be denied.
“So, I did my research,” Serafina said. “As best as I could. There wasn’t much about you and your family on the internet. The Salvatore name existed in whispers and rumors… criminal organizations, mafia connections, but nothing concrete. Nothing I could use.”
She paused, and something shifted in her expression, a flicker of what might have been satisfaction, or disbelief, or both.
“But fate was on your side,” I murmured, finally speaking, saying the words she was thinking aloud.
Her lips curled with a sharp, deadly smile. “Fate was indeed on my side.” The words came out quietly, almost reverently, not matching her expression. As if she still couldn’t quite believe the coincidence that had delivered her to this moment.
“My aunt was a cook at St. Clare’s Academy for Girls. An exclusive boarding school for the rich and the corrupted. She had been there for years. She was good at what she did, reliable, invisible.” Serafina paused, swallowing. “One day, she was staying late for an event, some kind of fundraising gala. She asked me to come with her because she didn’t want me sitting alone in the apartment.”
Her voice dropped lower, and I found myself leaning forward, drawn in by the gravity of what she was about to say.
“And you know who I found there?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She didn’t need to. I already knew what she was going to say, what name she was going to utter on those pretty, deceptive lips of hers.
“Serafina Morelli.”
The name took shape in the air between us, heavy and almost tangible.
My fingers curled tighter where they were clasped between my knees, knuckles whitening with the pressure.
Serafina saw. She noticed my reaction, and her eyes gleamed dangerously.
For the first time in years, my body betrayed me before my mind could control me. Before I could physically compose myself.
“The name was familiar to me,” she uttered slowly, carefully as she laid each piece of the puzzle exactly where it needed to go. “Morelli. I had heard it before. My father had mentioned it in fragments of conversations. And then it clicked.”
She held my gaze, her eyes bright with what I could only describe as ultimate triumph.
“My father was sent to spy on them, correct? The Morellis. That was his mission. That was what Enzo Salvatore sent him to Chicago to do.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to. Serafina—Elyssa already knew.
“I thought it was fate playing a joke on me.” A rough sound escaped her, not quite a laugh, not quite a sob. Something broken in between, her own emotions playing with her.
“The daughter of the man my father was sent to spy on, standing right in front of me, clueless. I thought the universe was mocking me. But then I realized… no, it wasn’t fate playing a joke. It was fate helping me.”