Serafina
I chose a different location this time—one even more controlled, more deliberate, more removed from any trace of the life I lived with Adrian.
A private room in a shuttered vineyard estate miles outside the city, a place thick with the scent of oak and dust, a place quiet enough that I could hear my own heartbeat hammering against my ribs.
The curtains were drawn tight, blocking out the moonlight. I had disabled every lamp except the softest floor lights, illuminating nothing above my ankles. The air felt suspended, like time itself was holding its breath.
I fitted the blindfold over my eyes, tying it securely behind my head. My disguise was complete—wig, mask, a scent not my own—yet the blindfold felt like the final barrier between Serafina the Dona and the anonymous woman who kept returning to Matteo in the dark.
My breath trembled as I reached for the voice modulator again, fastening it at the base of my throat. Silence settled heavily around me.
A faint creak echoed from the entry to the estate. Matteo was here.
His footsteps were slower than the last time, less hurried, more measured—as if walking into something he both feared and needed. When he reached the threshold of the room, he paused. I could sense the way he took in the darkness, the tension in the air, the uncertainty.
“You’re blindfolded?” he asked quietly, his voice edged with confusion. “Why?”
I kept my answer controlled, the modulated tone disguising every quake beneath it. “Because it keeps things… fair.”
“Fair?” Matteo stepped into the room, the floor shifting with his weight. “You think anything about this is fair?”
He moved closer, the air warming as he approached. “I want to see you,” he murmured, and the desperation in his voice cut deep. “I’ve been losing my mind trying to find a trace of you. And you want fairness?”
“You promised,” I said softly. “No identities.”
He let out a frustrated exhale. “You’re torturing me.”
“And yet you’re here,” I replied.
A tense silence followed.
Then I felt him—standing just a breath away, the heat of him familiar enough to haunt me. My skin tingled, my pulse quickened, the memory of that night in the club crashing back with merciless clarity.
“You arranged all this,” Matteo said, his voice low and rough. “You chose the place. You chose the rules. Why?”
“So you wouldn’t recognize me.”
“That doesn’t stop my body from remembering yours,” he whispered.
The words hit like a blow I wasn’t prepared for.
His fingers brushed my forearm—barely a touch, yet my entire body reacted with a tremor I couldn’t suppress. He noticed. Of course he noticed.
“You’re shaking,” he said quietly. “Are you afraid?”
“No,” I breathed, and the honesty surprised us both. “Not afraid.”
“Then what?” he pressed. “What are you feeling right now?”
Alive.
Too alive.
More alive than I had felt in years—certainly more than with Adrian, whose touch had become hesitant, measured, distant. With Matteo, even in anonymity, the electricity surged through every part of me, a cruel reminder of the fire I thought I had extinguished.
“Don’t make me say it,” I whispered.
He stepped so close that his breath grazed my cheek. “If you won’t say it, I will.”
I held my breath.
“I haven’t stopped thinking about you,” he confessed, his voice rawer than I had ever heard it—even in the worst days of our marriage. “Not since the club. Not since you touched me. Not since that moment when everything inside me recognized something I shouldn’t have recognized.”
My throat tightened painfully.
He continued, slower, more intense. “I tried to forget. God knows I tried. But every night I close my eyes and all I can feel is your hand on my skin. Your breath. Your body answering mine like… like it never forgot me.”
My heart thrashed against the blindfold’s pressure.
“Stop,” I whispered faintly. “You shouldn’t say these things.”
“If I shouldn’t say them,” he replied, gently taking my hand and pulling it toward his chest, pressing it over his racing heart, “then why do they feel truer than anything I’ve said in years?”
His heartbeat pounded beneath my palm. A mirror to mine.
I tried to pull away, but he held my hand with careful restraint—not forceful, not demanding, just anchoring. “Tell me,” he murmured. “Does this feel like nothing to you? Does this feel like something that should be ignored?”
“I don’t know,” I lied, my voice shaking through the modulator.
“You don’t know,” he repeated slowly, tilting his head closer. “Or you won’t admit it?”
The room seemed to shrink around us. My breath grew shallow. The ghost of our past pressed against the present, collapsing years into a single moment. I felt his fingers brush my cheek, then my jaw, tracing it with the familiarity of a man who once knew every corner of my soul.
“Why do you tremble?” Matteo asked softly. “Why does your breath catch? Why do you lean toward me even when you shouldn’t?”
“I’m only human,” I murmured.
“So am I,” he whispered. “But when you touched me that night… I felt alive again. Do you understand what you did to me?”
Alive.
The word echoed through me like an accusation and a seduction.
Matteo moved his hand behind my neck, drawing me closer. My pulse pounded so violently I thought it would crack my ribs.
“Tell me your name,” he said again, barely audible. “Or tell me nothing at all. But don’t disappear.”
The desperation in his voice—the vulnerability—nearly unraveled every boundary I had crafted.
I thrust my hands against his chest, creating distance we both hated. “This has to remain what it is,” I said, struggling for air. “Nothing more. Nothing that touches the light.”
His jaw tightened. “You say that, but your body—”
“Bodies lie,” I whispered.
He shook his head. “Not ours.”
The truth in his voice terrified me. Because he was right. My body recognized him in a way it refused to recognize Adrian lately. My heart answered him in ways that made me feel disloyal to everything I had built since leaving him.
I stepped back, forcing a tremor of authority into my tone. “We’re done for tonight.”
“We’re not,” Matteo said, taking one step toward me before stopping himself with painful restraint. “But if you walk away now… I’ll wait. I’ll wait for as long as it takes. Because someone like you doesn’t just vanish. Someone like you doesn’t touch a man like that unless it means something.”
His certainty shook me to my core.
I turned away, my breath unsteady. “Goodnight.”
Before he could reply, I slipped out, slamming the door behind me and stumbling into the cool night air.
My legs trembled violently, not from shame—but from the crushing, terrifying truth that I felt alive in his presence in a way I no longer felt with Adrian.
And that realization…
was the beginning of the end of everything I thought I knew.