Serafina
The mirror hardly recognized me. Neither did I.
The woman staring back wore sin as easily as breath—her eyes hidden behind a black lace mask that dipped over her cheekbones, her hair disguised beneath a short, jet-black wig that clung to her jawline, her lips painted a deep crimson that promised danger rather than command.
The dress… god, the dress. It clung to me like spilled ink, slipping low over my chest and hugging my waist, the hem stopping far higher on my thighs than any Dona would ever dare in public.
Authority was stripped from me and replaced with anonymity, seduction, shadow. It terrified me. It exhilarated me. And it was necessary.
“Serafina,” I whispered to my reflection, leaning closer as my pulse pounded in my throat, “you are not doing this as a wife. You are doing this as a woman who deserves the truth.”
I straightened, steeling myself.
Every ounce of Dorian pride screamed that a Donna should never enter a place like this, never debase herself to spy on her own husband, never shed her armor for lace and gloss.
But pride had no place tonight. Only truth did.
By the time I reached the hotel, the night hummed with tension. The side entrance glowed faintly, guarded by two men who scanned each person descending to the hidden underworld below.
I kept my head lowered, my gait altered—not the confident stride of a Dona, but the slow, suggestive saunter expected of a woman here for pleasure. My heart hammered as I offered the card I’d acquired from a contact who owed me far more than one favor. The guard scanned it, barely glanced at my face, and nodded.
“Go ahead,” he murmured. “He’s already downstairs.”
He.
I didn’t know if he meant Adrian. I didn’t ask. I simply descended into the darkness.
The air changed as soon as I reached the bottom. Heat, dampness, and the faint bite of alcohol slid over my skin like a second garment. The room glowed in pulses of red and violet, shadows dancing across bodies that moved with a mixture of hunger and invitation. Music thumped low and slow, vibrating through the floor and into my ribs.
My breath caught—not from fear, but from the visceral shock of seeing a world built entirely on secrets. Women leaned into men who wore masks of their own. Laughter broke from shadowed alcoves. Leather, silk, whispers, moans—everything was dipped in sin.
I moved with care, drifting between clusters of people who took no notice of me. Their indifference helped, allowed me to glide deeper into the thick atmosphere until I reached the bar, where the lights dipped even lower. That’s when I saw him.
Adrian.
He was leaned back in a plush red velvet chair, his shirt undone at the collar, a glass dangling loosely from his hand.
Two women draped themselves over him—one whispering in his ear, the other tracing her finger along his throat. His head tipped back, revealing a lazy, intoxicated smile I had never seen on him. A smile of surrender. A smile of escape. A smile that did not belong to my husband. Or perhaps it did—and I had never been allowed to see it.
My lungs constricted so violently it felt like a fist had closed around my ribs. My first instinct was to turn away before the sharpness of betrayal shattered something inside me.
But I forced myself to remain still, to study him as though he were a stranger, because in this moment, he was. His eyes were glazed, his posture slack, his breath shallow with intoxication.
“Enjoying the view?” a voice murmured beside me.
I startled—subtly, but enough. A tall man in a dark mask stood too close, scenting opportunity. “No,” I replied coolly, lowering my gaze. “Just looking.”
He laughed softly. “Everyone here is looking for something.”
“Not me,” I said, forcing steel into my tone despite the tremor threatening to unravel me. “I’m here for someone.”
He tilted his head. “Careful. Searching is more dangerous than indulging.”
I offered him a dismissive smile and slipped away before he could ask anything more.
My attention snapped back to Adrian—onto the man who kissed my children each morning, the man who promised me loyalty, the man who once worshipped me like sunlight. Now he let two strangers touch him as though he belonged to no one.
My throat tightened painfully.
I took one unsteady step backward—and that was when my gaze collided with a second figure, lounging only a few seats away, equally intoxicated, equally surrounded.
Matteo Verrelli.
For a moment, the entire world stilled. The thrum of music dulled, the heat of bodies disappeared, the club dimmed into a blur around him. Matteo sat with posture dripping arrogance and lethargy, as though the night itself molded around his form. His shirt hung open halfway, exposing the familiar line of his chest. A woman perched on his lap, her hand tracing circles along his jaw, her lips at his neck. He laughed—soft, seductive, dangerous. A sound I had fought so hard to forget.
My breath fractured. My knees weakened. Matteo, in this place. Matteo, surrounded by women. Matteo, drunk and beautiful and devastating. Matteo, the man who had once broken me so thoroughly I doubted I would ever breathe again.
“What the hell are you doing here…” the words slipped out in a whisper only I could hear.
He didn’t see me. Neither did Adrian. And for a moment—an insane, dizzying moment—I wondered if this was some elaborate trap engineered by fate to twist a blade into every wound I had ever carried. I stood frozen between the two men who shaped my past and present, each unaware of the other, each drowning in their own vices. And I—hidden behind a mask—stood witness to their unraveling.
My heart stormed inside my chest.
“How poetic,” I muttered bitterly, stepping further into the shadows while watching them. “My husband seeks oblivion in the same pit where the man who destroyed me comes to lose himself.”
A laugh broke near me—a woman passing with a drink in hand. “Men always come here for the same reason,” she said, not looking at me.
“And what reason is that?” I asked before I could stop myself.
She shrugged, swaying as she walked. “To forget the parts of their lives that hurt too much to face.”
Her words struck harder than they should have.
I closed my eyes briefly, gathering the strength I needed not to collapse in the center of this den of secrets. When I opened them, my gaze darted again between Adrian—my husband—and Matteo—my ruin. The sight cemented something inside me, not despair but resolve, not heartbreak but determination sharper than a blade.
I had come for truth.
And I would take it from the shadows if I must.
Because if Adrian thought he could keep this life hidden from me…
And if Matteo thought the past would haunt me into paralysis…
They were both about to learn who I had become. A woman who hunted answers. A Dona who bowed to no man.