Serafina
The moment I stepped into the darkened room, I knew something was wrong.
Matteo was already there, pacing like a caged animal, shoulders taut, breath uneven, eyes flickering with a storm I had never seen in him—not even in the final days of our marriage, when everything between us had been crumbling under rage and grief and twisted devotion.
Tonight, he was different. Unhinged. Desperate. And when he turned toward me, the expression on his face made my stomach twist into a knot.
“You’re late,” he said, voice low but trembling.
“I came as soon as I could,” I replied, adjusting the modulator at my throat. My hands shook despite my efforts to appear composed. “What’s wrong?”
He laughed—a hollow, bitter sound that scraped against the walls. “What’s wrong? Really? You want to start there?”
I took a step back. His energy was too volatile. “If this is about the last time—”
“It’s about every time,” he interrupted, stepping closer. “Every meeting. Every lie you’ve told by omission. Every moment you let me touch you without ever letting me see you.”
I inhaled sharply. “We agreed on anonymity.”
“No,” he said, his voice cracking. “You insisted on anonymity. I agreed because I thought it didn’t matter. I thought the connection was enough. I thought maybe the mystery was part of what made this feel so… inevitable.”
I swallowed, throat tight beneath the modulator. “It has to be this way.”
“Why?” he demanded. “Why, when everything inside me tells me I know you? Why, when every time you breathe near me, I feel like pieces of my past are clawing up from the ground?”
I froze.
He saw something in my stillness—something I didn’t intend to reveal—because his expression softened, just slightly. “You’re trembling,” he whispered. “Please. Just tell me why.”
I stepped away, forcing air into my lungs. “We can’t do this.”
“Yes, we can,” he said, following me slowly. “We’ve been doing it. And I—” He broke off, running a hand through his hair, as if the words burning inside him were too much to contain. “I can’t keep pretending you’re just a stranger. I can’t keep pretending this doesn’t feel like fate twisting itself into my veins.”
“Don’t say things like that,” I whispered.
“I’m falling in love with you,” he said flatly.
The room tilted.
“No—”
“Don’t dismiss it,” he snapped, stepping toward me. “Don’t tell me I’m imagining it. Don’t tell me this is just lust or obsession or nostalgia.”
“It is obsession,” I countered, backing up until the wall met my spine. “You don’t know me.”
He pressed a hand to the wall beside me, caging me in without touching me. “But I do. My soul knows you. My body knows you. Every time you speak, I feel it. Every time you touch me, it’s like a ghost is clawing through my bones trying to remind me of something I can’t grasp.”
My breath faltered.
“You’re haunting me,” he whispered. “I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I can’t think. Not until I understand why you feel like everything I lost.”
I shook my head violently. “Stop.”
“No,” he said, voice rising. “I won’t stop. Not until you show me who you are.”
He reached for my mask.
I slapped his hand away so fast my palm stung. “Don’t you dare.”
He stared at me, stunned. Then his expression hardened. “Why not? What are you hiding? What could be so catastrophic that you’d rather suffocate behind that damn mask than look at me?”
“You don’t understand—”
“Then help me understand!” he shouted. “If you care at all—if any of this means anything to you—take it off.”
My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic drumbeat of panic. “Please,” I whispered. “Don’t push this.”
“I have to,” he whispered back, but his voice was shaking now—anger giving way to heartbreak. “Because I’m losing myself in you. Because every time I walk into these meetings, I hope tonight will be the night you let me in. Because I am falling in love with someone whose face I have never seen.”
A sob clawed up my throat, muffled by the modulator.
“Don’t do this,” I begged. “Don’t make this something it can’t be.”
He stepped closer, breath trembling. “It is something. And you know it. If it weren’t—if these meetings meant nothing to you—you wouldn’t keep coming back. So tell me why you won’t let me see you.”
I closed my eyes.
Because you already have.
Because the moment you see my face, everything between us—past and present—will explode.
Because I am betraying the man I married.
Because I am betraying myself.
Because you are still the one thing I cannot have.
“Hey…,” I whispered, voice cracking, “you need to stop asking.”
“No,” he said softly. “I need to know.”
His hand lifted again—slowly, gently—as if giving me time to stop him.
I panicked.
I shoved him away so abruptly he stumbled, shock splintering across his face. “No!” I cried. “No more. I can’t do this.”
Anger flickered through him. “What the hell is this to you, then? A game? A fantasy? Am I just some escape for you?”
“No,” I whispered painfully.
“Then what?” he demanded. “Tell me!”
“I can’t.”
He stared at me, chest heaving, eyes bright with pain he refused to let fall. “You’re breaking me,” he said quietly. “Whoever you are… you’re breaking me.”
Tears blurred my vision behind the blindfold. “I never meant to.”
“But you are. And I can’t keep doing this.” His voice cracked. “I won’t keep falling in love with a mask.”
I turned toward the door, choking on the words I couldn’t say. “Then it ends here.”
Matteo’s breath hitched—pain slicing through it. “Just like that?”
“It has to.”
“No,” he whispered. “You’re lying. You’re terrified. Just tell me why.”
But I didn’t look back. I couldn’t. I fled before my heart tore itself open.
Behind me, Matteo’s voice echoed—hoarse, furious, breaking. “Don’t you walk away! Don’t you dare leave me without the truth!”
But the truth was the very thing I could never give him.
Not without destroying every life connected to mine.
When I reached my car, my hands shook so violently I could barely grip the wheel. The mask lay beside me on the leather seat, taunting me with what I had almost revealed.
I had crossed every line imaginable.
And now the triangle—
me, Adrian, Matteo—
was stretched so thin it was ready to snap.
And when it snapped, none of us would survive it intact.