Serafina
The moment I stepped inside our home—my sanctuary, my palace, the place where every memory should have been safe—I felt like an intruder dragging filth across holy ground.
My hands shook so violently I could barely turn the lock. The quiet house greeted me with the softness I once found comforting, but tonight it felt accusatory, as though every shadow whispered what I had done, what I had allowed, what I had become.
I shut the door with trembling fingers and pressed my back against it, swallowing a sob that clawed up my throat.
“No,” I whispered, shaking my head desperately. “I won’t fall apart. Not here. Not yet.”
My own voice felt foreign to me. Hollow. Weak.
I hurried down the hall, avoiding mirrors, avoiding lights, avoiding everything that might show me the reflection of the woman who had lost control in that darkened room.
When I reached the bathroom, I flicked on the faucet, turning it so hot steam immediately filled the air. I stripped quickly, almost violently, ripping off the dress as if it were made of thorns. The mask fell to the tiled floor with a soft thud. It looked harmless there—innocent even—but I felt sick just looking at it.
I stepped into the shower and let the scalding water hit me full force. It burned instantly, but I didn’t move away. I lifted my hands and began scrubbing, dragging my palms over my arms, my collarbone, my throat where Matteo’s mouth had touched me. “Get off,” I whispered harshly, scrubbing harder. “Get off. Get off.”
The water turned pink from the pressure of my nails against my skin.
Still, I kept going.
I washed until my skin felt raw, until the steam made my head spin, until my sobs mingled with the hiss of water. But nothing changed. No matter how violently I tried to erase it, the club clung to me—the smell, the heat, the hands, the voices, the darkness swallowing all reason.
And Matteo.
God, Matteo.
His touch lingered like a brand. His breath at my neck, the rough whisper that trembled from him as though he still remembered how my body responded to him years ago—even without knowing it was me. That recognition, that instinctual claiming, had ignited something terrifying in my chest. Something I had buried. Something I had sworn would never see daylight again.
“No,” I choked, bracing both palms against the shower wall as the water scalded my shoulders. “This isn’t happening. This is not real. I don’t want him. Not anymore. Not ever again.”
But the lie collapsed as soon as I spoke it.
Because my body had betrayed me in that room. My breath had caught, my pulse had raced, my legs had weakened under the familiarity of him. Even in the shadows, even drowned in alcohol, even swathed in anonymity—Matteo had touched me and awakened a fire I had spent years smothering.
“What kind of woman does that make me?” I demanded aloud, my voice cracking as the water beat down on me. “What kind of wife? What kind of mother?”
The bathroom walls offered no answers. Only steam.
I slid to my knees, letting the water cascade over me as I pressed my hands to my face. Shame coiled through me, thick and unforgiving, laced with something far worse: desire. Forbidden desire. Desire I had convinced myself didn’t exist anymore. Desire I thought Matteo had killed inside me long ago.
But he hadn’t.
He had only buried it.
The moment I closed my eyes, the scene returned—not as a nightmare, but as a vivid, visceral memory. The heat of the room. The scent of sweat and incense. Matteo’s hand gripping my hip with the rough certainty of a man who had once known every inch of me. Adrian’s breath at my ear, his hands sliding down my sides, unaware he was touching his own wife.
A whimper escaped me at the thought, half shame, half something I refused to name.
I punched the tile wall, my knuckles stinging. “Stop it,” I hissed. “Stop thinking about it. Stop remembering.”
But memory did not obey.
Matteo’s voice—low, drunken but unmistakably him—echoed inside my skull.
You feel familiar.
The words replayed like a curse.
He hadn’t known it was me, but his body had. Mine had answered. A spark had ignited so violently I could still feel its heat. And the worst part—the absolute worst part—was that for a breath, a single wretched breath, I had wanted more. I had wanted to lose myself, wanted to drown in the chaos, wanted to forget the guilt tearing at my chest.
“What is wrong with me?” I whispered hoarsely. “I should have stopped it. I should have pulled away. I should have been stronger.”
But I hadn’t been.
I rose shakily to my feet, gripping the shower door as the water continued burning my skin. When I stepped out, I reached for the towel, but my reflection in the fogged mirror caught my eye. I wiped a small patch clean with trembling fingers.
The woman staring back was unrecognizable.
Her eyes were swollen and red, her skin blotched from heat and tears, her hair plastered against her scalp. But beneath that, there was something else. Something older. Something raw. Something hungrier than I had ever let myself admit.
“I hate you,” I whispered to my reflection. “I hate that you feel anything for him. I hate that you let this happen. I hate that your body betrayed you.”
The reflection didn’t flinch.
“I love Adrian,” I insisted, gripping the sink until my knuckles whitened. “I chose him. I built a life with him. I would die for him.”
The words were true. Every one.
But they didn’t erase the truth sitting beneath my ribs like a ticking bomb.
I still remembered Matteo.
I still reacted to him.
And that memory—his memory—still lived inside my blood.
I closed my eyes again, begging for the darkness behind them to stay blank. But as soon as the world dimmed, the room returned—the red glow, the heat, the two men who knew me better than anyone in the world without knowing at all who they were touching.
A sob ripped out of me.
I fled the bathroom, clutching the towel around me, dragging myself into the bedroom as though distance could erase the shame strangling me. I collapsed onto the bed, burying my face in the sheets where Adrian slept, inhaling his familiar scent as if it could cleanse me.
But even wrapped in his warmth, Matteo’s ghost lingered.
And my own desire betrayed me again.