Serafina
The decision settled over me like a funeral shroud the moment the sun dipped behind the estate walls and the world slid into the blue-grey hush of evening. I stood before the mirror in my dressing room, fingers trembling as I fastened the mask I swore I would never wear again.
This was it—one final meeting, one final confrontation with the man who had unraveled the quiet order of my life. Either it ended tonight, or everything I had spent years rebuilding would collapse under the truth I could no longer outrun.
The wig felt heavier than usual, as though it sensed my turmoil and mirrored it. My reflection stared back at me—not a woman, not a lover, not a wife, not a leader, but something in-between. Something fractured. Something trapped between two worlds that could never coexist. I pressed a hand to the vanity, knuckles whitening.
“This ends tonight,” I whispered to myself, but even in the whispered vow, a tremor of longing betrayed me. Because ending it meant losing him again. Losing a part of myself I’d only recently dared to look at.
Behind my ribs, my heart beat like a frightened, frantic animal.
I slipped out of the estate silently, my feet knowing the path too well. The air outside carried the cold bite of anticipation, thick with the scent of rain that hadn’t yet fallen. Every step toward the car felt like stepping deeper into a shadow I no longer controlled.
When I reached the driver’s seat, my hands hovered over the wheel for several seconds—seconds that stretched, seconds that begged me to turn back, to go inside, to crawl into bed beside Adrian and pretend nothing had happened. To pretend I hadn’t opened a door to a past that refused to stay buried.
But pretending had already destroyed too much.
I started the engine.
The drive to the warehouse was unbearably silent. Every streetlamp that passed painted fleeting slices of light across the windshield, illuminating fragments of my heartbeat before plunging me back into darkness. I replayed the last conversation with Matteo—the bitterness, the way his voice cracked when he admitted his feelings, the fury when I fled. He had been injured, betrayed, exposed. And I had felt every ounce of it in my bones.
Tonight, I had to face him.
Tonight, I had to choose.
I parked a block away, staring at the old warehouse that loomed like a dying heartbeat against the skyline. The building was a shell of its former purpose, cold and hollow, yet it felt like the only place where the truth could breathe—where the disaster of us could unfold without witnesses.
My breath fogged the air as I stepped out. I wrapped my arms around myself against the night chill, but no amount of fabric or resolve could still the trembling running through my marrow. My heels clicked softly on the pavement as I approached the heavy metal door. Every step felt like a confession.
When I reached the entrance, I hesitated—my fingers hovering above the rusted handle.
A voice whispered inside me:
Turn back.
Save yourself.
Save them.
But another voice—the one I had tried to silence for years—whispered back:
He deserves the truth.
And so do you.
The door groaned open under my hand, spilling a wave of cold, stale air over me. Inside, the warehouse was darker than before, lit only by a single lamp Matteo must have set up. Its dim amber glow illuminated a narrow path toward the center of the room, where shadows pooled like thick smoke. My heartbeat thundered in my ears.
He wasn’t visible yet, but I felt him—every part of him—the tension, the anger, the yearning. The echo of him hummed in the air like static.
I stepped inside, my voice steady only because the modulator disguised its trembling. “Hey?”
There was silence.
My pulse stuttered. “I’m here.”
A figure shifted in the shadows, emerging slowly as though dragged forward by the force of whatever tethered us. When he stepped into the dull glow of the lamp, I inhaled sharply. He looked different—unshaven, eyes darker than usual, jaw clenched so tightly a muscle ticked beneath the skin. He was a storm restrained by the thinnest of threads.
“You came,” he said, but there was no triumph in his tone. Only a mixture of pain and exhaustion. “I wasn’t sure you would.”
“I said I would. You said it was important,” I murmured.
“People say many things,” he replied, stepping closer. “They don’t always mean them.”
I swallowed hard. “I meant this.”
He studied me—slowly, with a depth that made my skin prickle beneath the mask. “So,” he said quietly, “is this where you finally show me who you are?”
My breath caught. “No.”
His jaw tightened. “Serafina—”
The name snapped through the air like a whip. My body jolted.
He didn’t know. He couldn’t know. He was guessing. Testing. Reaching. But the sound of my name on his tongue, spoken into darkness, made the room spin.
“You think I’m her?” I forced out, the modulator warping my panic—but not enough to hide it.
“I don’t know what to think anymore,” he said, pacing a slow, furious circle around me. “All I know is that the woman standing in front of me tonight is the same woman who has been in my dreams every night since the moment we met in that club. I know that her voice haunts me. Her touch ruins me. And I know I am either losing my mind… or you are hiding something from me so big it should have destroyed us already.”
I shook my head quickly. “Don’t do this—”
“I have to,” he said sharply. “I can’t keep loving a ghost.”
His voice cracked on the word loving, and something inside me nearly shattered.
“I never asked you to—”
“You didn’t have to,” he cut in, stepping close enough that I felt the heat of him through every layer I wore. “You just had to exist. And now I am standing here, begging a masked stranger to tell me whether she is the woman who once tore my heart out and still holds pieces of it.”
Tears burned behind my blindfold.
I whispered, my voice a fractured thing, “I can’t show you my face.”
“You mean you won’t.”
“No,” I said, stepping back though my legs trembled. “I mean I can’t. Because the moment I do, everything ends.”
He stared at me—hurt, fury, longing erupting all at once. “Then tell me why. Tell me why this truth is so dangerous.”
I froze.
He saw the hesitation. The panic. The war inside me.
And something broke in him.
“You won’t choose me,” he whispered. “You came here tonight to break us.”
My throat tightened. “No—”
“Don’t,” he said, voice trembling with betrayal. “If you’re ending this, then say it. Say the words.”
I choked on my own breath. “This has to stop.”
He exhaled sharply—as if I’d stabbed him. For several seconds, neither of us moved. Then he turned away, head bowed, shoulders shaking with an emotion I couldn’t name.
“You’re killing me,” he whispered.
The words tore through me.
“I’m sorry,” I breathed.
“No,” he murmured bitterly. “You’re not. Or you wouldn’t be walking out that door.”
I stepped back.