Just before they wheeled me into pre-op, my phone vibrated. A new message. A video. No caption. No words. Just a single file sent by Ginevra.

I should've deleted it, but I didn't.

I tapped it open with shaking hands, and the screen lit up with them. Dominic and Ginevra.

She was in his lap, his mouth buried in her neck, murmuring something against her skin, and her nails dragged down his chest like she'd done it a thousand times. Like she knew exactly how to make him lose control.

Then he kissed her.

Slow, possessive, familiar. The kind of kiss that once made my entire world go quiet.

But what broke me wasn't the way he touched her. It was what I saw next. As he leaned back, his shirt slid off, and there it was.

The small, red spade-shaped birthmark just below his collarbone.

Dominic.

I smiled bitterly, like someone who just found their own tombstone. That was it. The final proof. And yet, somehow, my heart still clung to one last hope.

One last chance.

So I did something pathetic. Something human.

I called him.

If he picked up. If he heard my voice and chose me. If he came to me right now, I swore I'd forget everything. I'd forgive the lies, the faked death, the mistress, the pain. I'd erase it all for our child. For the love I still carried like a curse.

The line rang.

Then clicked.

His voice came through, low, strained, tired.

"Seraphina. I've got some things to handle here. Let the driver take you home. We'll talk when I'm back."

And then I heard it.

A moan. High, loud, shameless. A woman's voice, wet and unfiltered.

Ginevra.

She didn't even try to hide it. She didn't care.

Another moan followed, louder, and then her voice gasped his name, "Dominic," like she was singing it from her bones.

Click.

Silence.

Just the dead beep, beep, of the disconnected line. I didn't cry. Not this time.

I just stared at the nurse, eyes hollow, voice flat.

"It's fine," I whispered. "Let's proceed with the abortion."

And as they wheeled me away, I swore.

The next time he hears my voice will be the last time he breathes easy again.

By the time I got home, it was already dark.

I stepped into the estate. The foyer was marble and shadow, a single lamp burning low beneath the portrait of Dominic's father. Two soldiers stood at the far end of the hall, hands folded, eyes averted. The house carried a silence that had nothing to do with peace and everything to do with surveillance.

And there he was.

Dominic. Waiting.

Still pretending to be Alessio, the noble older brother, the mourning man, the fake.

"The driver said you went shopping after your check-up," he said with a smile. "Came home empty-handed though. Didn't find anything you liked?"

His tone was light. As if everything was normal. As if I hadn't just erased the one part of him he didn't even know existed. Halfway through his sentence, he paused, his eyes catching mine.

He noticed.

The red in my eyes. The puffiness. The dried salt on my skin.

"Seraphina, what happened? Why are your eyes like that?"

"Did you miss Dominic again at the hospital?"

He moved closer, pretending like he cared. His hand almost reached for me, the way a Don reaches for something he considers his property.

"It's alright. That baby in your belly, that's Dominic's legacy. That's something real. Something to hold on to."

I stared into his eyes. Still the same. Still beautiful.

Same smoky gray with that slight flicker of mischief that used to melt me.

The same eyes I once trusted with my soul.

And now the same ones I saw staring up in that video while Ginevra rode him like I never existed.

I looked away, quiet, and walked away, straight to my room. Past the soldiers who tracked my movement without turning their heads. Up the staircase that smelled of old wood and cold stone.

I collapsed onto the mattress and, for the first time since Dominic's death, I slept. No nightmares. No ghosts.

In my dream, I saw him again. Dominic, age eighteen.

Nervous. Sweaty palms. Blushing as he confessed his feelings like a kid who had nothing to offer except honesty. Not the heir to a bloody empire. Not the future Don. Just a boy standing in the garden behind the Santoro estate where the old fig tree still grew, its branches heavy with late-summer fruit.

"Seraphina, I like you. Would you be my girl?"

"I swear, I'll treat you right."

And back then, I believed him.

Maybe because the sky was painted gold. Maybe because his eyes had that kind of light I never saw again after the lie.

I said yes. And that moment? It ruined me forever.

Morning light poured into the room like it wanted to mock me. I was still sitting in bed, numb, staring at nothing, when the door creaked open.

And there she was.

Ginevra.

The other woman. The one he destroyed me for.

Except she didn't look like someone with four months to live.

She wasn't pale. She wasn't weak.

She walked in with a full face of makeup, lashes curled, cheeks glowing. And she was wearing my silk robe. The ivory one trimmed with lace.

The same one Dominic used to say made me look like heaven wrapped in sin.

Worse?

I caught it immediately. My perfume. The one I wore the night he asked for my hand, the night the two Families sealed their blood pact over wine and the promise of an heir.

Ginevra stopped at the foot of my bed and crossed her arms, that familiar smug smile curving across her face like poison ready to pour.

"You know why I sent you that video, right?" she asked sweetly. She tilted her head, eyes gleaming with cruelty. "You really thought he was Dominic's brother? You actually believed I was your sweet little sister-in-law?"

She took a step closer, voice dripping venom.

"Darling, wake up. I've been sleeping next to your husband this entire time."

She laughed. Loud. Unapologetic. Insulting. The sound filled the bedroom and bounced off the walls like it owned the space. Somewhere below, I heard a soldier's footsteps pause on the landing, then move on. No one intervened in this house. No one intervened in anything that happened under the Don's roof.

Then she spun, letting the robe flutter as she walked toward the window.

"Poor Seraphina," she sighed dramatically. "You thought I was dying? God, no. I just needed time. Space. And a little pity so no one would question why he was always with me."

She turned back around, grinning wider.

"I had Dominic wrapped around my little finger the second I came back. It wasn't even hard. Do you really think a man like him would choose a soft little thing like you over me?"

Her voice dropped lower. Cruel now. Ruthless. Her fingers drifted to her collarbone, touching it with two fingertips as though confirming something only she could feel.

"Oh, and before I forget. I'm the legal wife."

"Signed. Stamped. Certified. You were just the pretty placeholder. The blood-bound bride they dressed up for the ceremony while the real arrangement was already made."

She laughed again, a slow, triumphant cackle that rattled the bones in my chest.

"Dominic Santoro will always be mine, Seraphina. He loved you, sure. But he belongs to me."

Ginevra expected tears, but I didn't even look at her.

I walked straight to bed, lay down, and turned my back to her.

She started screaming. "Say something! Cry! Scream like you used to!" But I didn't move.

I just slipped on my headset, closed my eyes, and let her yell into silence. Eventually, the door slammed shut behind her.

And the quiet felt like victory.

That night, the invitation came.

Hand-delivered in a velvet-black envelope sealed with an insignia only a few circles would recognize.

The crest of the Del Rossi Vault. Underground auction house, syndicate-owned, legacy-driven. The kind of event where fortunes were exchanged for blood rights, artifacts, or reputation.

Dominic got one too.

Of course he did.

I knew he'd show. And I knew he'd drag Ginevra in beside him, painted like a porcelain doll, dressed to steal the spotlight.

Good. Let her think it's her night.

Let them both walk in thinking they've won.

I wasn't going to buy.

I came to sell.

The auction hall was carved into the belly of the old Velbrunnia opera ruins. Dark. Grand. Ruthless.

And when I stepped onto the marbled floor, the chatter stopped for a full five seconds.

My dress was black. Simple in cut, but made to strangle the breath out of the room. It hugged my curves like it knew the war I was carrying underneath.

My hair was slicked back. My makeup sharp. My perfume matched the night I lost everything.

On my arm was a man no one recognized.

Not Cristiano. Not anyone from my past.

Just a private broker with obsidian eyes and hands that could probably kill three men before breakfast.

He didn't speak. He didn't need to.

I nodded once, and he stepped forward and opened the black leather case for the crowd.

Inside sat every piece Dominic had ever given me.

The Santoro family heirloom bracelet, passed down for four generations.

The three-hundred-million-dollar emerald choker from our second anniversary, the one he kissed me through when we danced barefoot in Tuscany.

And lastly…

My engagement ring.

The room gasped.

Even the auctioneer faltered.

I heard whispers float up from the front row.

"Is that…?"

"That's the Santoro heirloom…"

"She's auctioning the ring?"

I didn't look at anyone.

Not yet.

Bidding started, and the room turned wild.

Men shouted numbers like war drums. Women raised cards not for diamonds but for power. Some wanted the pieces for history. Others, just to spit in the Santoro name.

I stood still. I let them fight.

And halfway through the chaos… they arrived.

Dominic and Ginevra.

He wore his classic black tux, the one I tailored myself when he wanted to look untouchable. Two soldiers flanked him at three paces, hands clasped in front of them, scanning the room with the unhurried precision of men who'd already identified every exit.

And she… she wore white.

Of course she did.

She looked around like she expected applause. Expected flashbulbs. Expected envy.

But the second her eyes landed on the stage, and on me, her whole face twisted.

Because I wasn't in the audience.

I wasn't grieving in a corner. I was standing center-stage, auctioning off the life she tried to erase.

And the room? The room was eating from my hand.

Dominic froze when he saw me.

He stopped mid-step. Eyes locked. Mouth parted like he forgot how to breathe. Ginevra turned to him, whispered something sharp in his ear, but he didn't even blink.

Didn't move.

Didn't speak.

His father's signet ring was between his thumb and forefinger, turning once, then going completely still.

"All proceeds tonight will go to the Velbrunnia Orphan Recovery Program," I said calmly.

The room went quiet. No one clapped. The soldiers behind Dominic exchanged a glance but held their positions.

He just stared at me like a ghost he never wanted to see again. And then he moved. Pushed past a few guests, walked up to the edge of the stage just as my broker stepped away.

"Seraphina," he called, voice low but urgent. "What the hell are you doing?"

I didn't answer.

The bidding for the engagement ring was just finishing. One point two million to a buyer from the eastern syndicate. And when the gavel hit, Dominic's voice rose again.

"You're selling your engagement ring?" he snapped, stepping closer. "The heirloom bracelet? The emerald choker my brother gave you in Tuscany?"

He shook his head, like he couldn't process what he was seeing.

"I clearly remember you once told me those were the most precious things you owned. That they meant everything to you. And now you're just selling them? Like they're garbage?"

The room went quiet. Even the auctioneer stopped breathing. I finally turned to look at him.

Our eyes met.

For one small, razor-sharp second, I let him see it. I stared at him for a long moment.

And then I smiled. Just a little.

A smile that held no warmth.

Only ruin.

I pulled my wrist free and said quietly:

"Not anymore."

He blinked. I took a slow step back, voice even colder now.

"I'm no longer grieving."

Another step.

"I'm done." And with that, I turned my back to the man who once promised me forever.

And left him standing in a room full of wolves, holding nothing but the ashes of what he destroyed.

The air outside the auction floor was quieter, but not peaceful. I slipped into the corridor behind the main ballroom, heading toward the powder room, needing just a second to breathe.

My heels echoed against marble… And then I heard her.

Click. Click. Click.

Ginevra's heels. Sharp. Fast. A fuse on its last second. I didn't need to turn around to know she was coming.

I kept walking until I hit the intersection of the hall. And that's when she grabbed my arm.

Hard.

She yanked me back and slammed me against the wall like a woman who'd been waiting too long to explode.

Her eyes were wild and her lipstick was cracked from gritting her teeth.

"You really thought you could humiliate me and just fucking walk away?" she hissed, voice shaking.

I didn't answer.

Didn't blink.

She took that silence like gasoline and threw a match on it.

"You sold my spotlight. That was my night! I was supposed to be the face they remembered. Not you, not your little poor orphan girl charity act, not your dead engagement ring!"

And just like that, she shoved me hard toward a side door I hadn't even noticed. It slammed open, and before I could stop her, she pushed me inside.

I stumbled, heels skidding, and hit the freezing tile floor. The old cold-storage room. Stone walls, no windows, and the faint copper smell of something that had been kept down here longer than wine.

By the time I scrambled to my feet and turned around, I heard it. The click of the lock snapping shut.

"Ginevra," I said again, louder this time, slamming my palm against the door. "Open it, you bitch!"

"Oh, baby girl… I'm not done watching you suffer."

Then she laughed. A soft, cold sound that didn't belong to a human woman.

"Let's see how powerful you feel when the air runs out."

And then nothing.

I reached for my phone.

Zero bars.

They found me twenty minutes later.

Two auction house guards, both young and twitchy, probably more used to breaking up rich men's fistfights than rescuing frozen women from storage rooms.

I heard the door creak open like it was underwater. I couldn't lift my head anymore, couldn't move my lips. My body was stiff, my skin cold and damp, and my fingers wouldn't uncurl.

"Miss — miss, we need medics down here now!"

Voices blurred. Arms lifted me. Heat touched my skin, and I whimpered without meaning to.

Everything after that came in pieces.

Flashing lights. Tubes. Machines. Warm blankets. And then the beeping slowed, and the shouting faded, and someone said the word trauma like it was just another item on a chart.

Not a single word from Dominic.

Not a call.

Not even a fucking text. I waited, just once, to hear his voice.

But nothing.

Later I learned that Ginevra told him I'd checked into a hotel to be alone and "cool off."

And he believed her. Of course he did.

Because whatever she fed him, he swallowed without question. Always had. Always would.

By the time I came home, my bones ached.

I looked like a ghost and I moved like one too.

The compound was too clean. Too still. The guards at the gate had waved me through without a word, but I'd felt their eyes track me all the way up the gravel drive, the way soldiers watch something they've already been briefed about.

And there he was. Waiting.

Dominic.

Or Alessio.

Or whoever the hell he was pretending to be today.

He stood in the middle of the living room, back straight, face unreadable, jaw set like he'd been practicing this confrontation in his head all damn day. Two of his men lingered near the doorway to the hall, close enough to hear everything, professional enough to pretend they couldn't.

I barely made it three steps in when he stepped forward and shoved a piece of paper into my face.

A medical form.

My fingers didn't even need to unfold it.

I knew exactly what it was.

Abortion paperwork.

I'd left it in my drawer. Tucked away. Hidden.

Ginevra must've gone through my things while I was gone and handed it to him like a trophy.

"You wanna tell me what the fuck this is?" he snapped.

His voice wasn't calm. It wasn't cold. It was furious. The signet ring on his right hand caught the lamplight as his fist tightened around the paper.

I said nothing. I just stared at him while he held that form like it personally bled.

"You killed my brother's child?" he barked. "You just — what? Got rid of it like it was trash? Like it meant nothing?!"

I blinked slowly.

"You don't even look sorry," he snarled. "You look proud. Are you proud, Seraphina? Is this your big revenge? You really think this makes you strong?"

Then his hand came down hard.

Crack.

He slapped me across the face. My head jerked sideways and I tasted blood at the corner of my lip. The sound cut through the room like a gunshot, and I felt the two soldiers in the doorway go absolutely still.

I didn't fall.

But I staggered.

And before I could find balance again —

Another hand hit me.

His mother.

Patrizia stepped forward with fury in her eyes, her pearl rosary rattling against her wrist like it could feel the wrath in her.

"You murderer," she spat. "You evil little snake. That baby was our blood. You just threw it away like some street rat's mistake."

She slapped me again, sharp and loud. "How could you? How could you take an innocent child just because you wanted to hurt Dominic?"

"Ginevra told us everything," she hissed. "You're ungrateful. You were always just a pretty little project. And now look at you. Empty womb, empty soul."

Tears were falling now.

But not from pain.

They just fell because my body didn't know what else to do. I stood still while they cursed me. While they threw fire at my skin and called it justice.

Then I straightened slowly.

I wiped the corner of my mouth, smearing the blood away with the back of my hand. And I looked him dead in the eyes.

"Why are you mad if I aborted the baby?"

My voice was soft. Too soft. "You're not Dominic. You're only his brother, remember?"

His face paled. His mouth parted. But I didn't stop.

I stepped forward.

"Don't act like him."

The room had the silence of a sit-down gone wrong. Nobody breathed. One of the soldiers by the door shifted his weight, just barely, like he was recalculating the geometry of the room.

Ginevra made a sound behind him — an unhinged laugh, sharp and manic. She stepped forward with that fake sweetness dripping from her fangs.

"You hear that, baby? She finally gets it. You're not Dominic. You're mine. She's just bitter because she lost her little fantasy."

She leaned against the wall like she was relaxing into her victory. "Besides, we both know she never wanted that baby. She just needed an excuse to play the grieving little widow."

That was when I smiled.

Not with warmth.

With venom.

"Or maybe…" I said slowly, locking eyes with Dominic, "you are Dominic. And you've just been pretending to be Alessio."

The whole room went still. Even Ginevra stopped smiling. The kind of silence that falls in a room when someone says the unsayable, when Omertà itself holds its breath.

"But either way…" I took one last step, standing in the center of the mess they built, "…I don't care anymore."

My voice didn't rise.

It didn't need to.

"I am no longer tied to this Family."

I looked at the matriarch who once hugged me like her own.

I looked at the man who once held my hair while I cried from morning sickness.

I looked at the woman who crawled into his bed and wore my perfume to spit on my memory.

And I smiled.

"Whatever love I had left in me died in that cold room."

Dominic's face cracked.

The way his brows knit, the way his mouth trembled slightly — it was panic. The kind of panic you don't show in war. The kind that slips out when you realize you went too far and there's no undoing it. His right hand had gone to his signet ring without his knowing, and it was perfectly, terribly still.

"Ginevra —" he started, his voice unsteady.

But I was already walking away.