Serafina
The air inside the warehouse felt heavier than the night outside—thick, trembling, almost alive with everything unsaid.
I could still feel the ghost of Matteo’s voice clawing at my spine as I stood with my back against the metal door, chest rising and falling in frantic bursts.
I had run only a few steps before I stopped, frozen by something deeper than fear. I could not keep running. Not from him. Not from myself. Not anymore.
I turned slowly, fingers shaking as they reached for the edge of my mask. Matteo stood several yards away, half in shadow, half in the faint amber light cast from the ancient lamp.
His shoulders heaved, his jaw clenched, his entire body taut with a mixture of fury and longing so palpable I could feel it across the room. He didn’t speak. He didn’t move. He simply watched me with an expression carved from disbelief and anguish.
“Don’t,” he whispered hoarsely as I lifted my hands to the straps behind my head. “If you take it off… everything changes.”
I swallowed hard. “It already has.”
His breath hitched, a sound closer to a wounded animal than a man. “Please,” he said, voice breaking in a way I had never heard before—not even in the worst of our past. “If you’re not who I think you are… tell me now. Please. Because if I’m wrong, I can still walk away.”
“But you’re not wrong,” I said softly.
And then I pulled the mask off.
His world stopped.
The leather dropped from my fingertips and hit the floor with a soft thud, but the sound echoed like gunfire. Matteo went rigid. His eyes widened, pupils dilating, breath stalling in his chest as if someone had pressed a blade to his throat. He stared at me—not blinking, not steady, not breathing.
“Serafina?” he said, barely audible.
“Yes,” I whispered.
His face crumpled. His knees almost buckled. And then the storm inside him erupted all at once.
“God, no,” he breathed, stepping backward as if the sight of me physically struck him. “No. No. Tell me this is not real. Tell me I’m drunk or dreaming or insane. Tell me—” His voice cracked violently. “Tell me you’re not her.”
“I am,” I said, every word trembling. “I always was.”
Silence swallowed us whole.
He dragged a hand down his face, shaking, eyes darting across my features as if he didn’t know where to land. “You,” he whispered. “It was you. All this time. You were the one in the club. You were the one messaging me. You were the one I…” His voice broke, and he turned away, both hands gripping his hair. “I have been falling in love with my ex-wife.”
I flinched. His pain hit me like shrapnel.
“Matteo,” I said, taking a careful step toward him.
“Don’t,” he snapped, spinning to face me again. “Don’t come closer. I can’t—” His voice shook. “I can’t look at you and not fall apart.”
I froze in place.
His expression shifted violently from anguish to anger. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you let me touch you in the dark without knowing who you were? Why did you hide behind masks and blindfolds? Why did you make me think—” He stopped, throat constricting around the words. “Why did you make me think I had found someone new when it was always you?”
“I didn’t plan it,” I whispered. “I didn’t know it was you that first night. I didn’t know you were going to—”
“Touch you?” he demanded. “Want you? Lose my mind over you?”
I swallowed. “Yes.”
He laughed, sharp and broken. “You should have run the second you saw me.”
“You were with women,” I whispered fiercely. “You were drunk. You didn’t recognize me.”
“You didn’t recognize me either,” he snapped.
“I did,” I admitted, breath shaking. “My body did. Before my mind could stop it.”
He froze again.
Something in him shattered at those words—something jagged, something old.
His voice softened to a whisper, torn and raw. “Serafina… do you have any idea what you’ve done to me?”
I felt tears pricking behind my eyes. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“You always say that,” he said quietly. “And yet we always end up bleeding.”
My breath hitched. “So do you.”
He stepped closer—slowly, painfully, as if gravity itself dragged him toward me. “You should have told me.”
“How?” I whispered. “How could I tell you when everything about this was wrong? When I didn’t even know what I was doing? When I didn’t trust myself around you anymore—because you still… because I still…”
I couldn’t finish.
He did.
“Because we aren’t done,” he said, voice trembling. “Not even after all these years. Not even after the damage. God, Serafina…” He closed his eyes, exhaling shakily. “I never stopped loving you.”
A sob ripped from my chest.
He opened his eyes, stepping closer until the space between us was electric, unbearable. “Even when I destroyed us,” he whispered. “Even when I betrayed you. Even when you walked out of my life. I thought losing you would kill the love. But it didn’t. It just broke me. I rebuilt myself around the shape of the wound you left.”
I shook my head, tears falling. “You shattered me, Matteo. You shattered us.”
“I know,” he said, lifting a trembling hand toward my cheek. Then he stopped, inches away, not daring to touch. “And still… still, when I touched you in the dark that night, something inside me recognized you before I even understood why.”
“I know,” I whispered.
“You should have told me,” he said again, voice cracking. “You should have given me the chance to love you honestly this time.”
“I’m married,” I choked out. “I have a life—Adrian—”
His expression hardened with heartbreak. “And yet you came to me.”
I flinched, guilt slicing deeply.
“You came to me,” he repeated, softer now. “Even when you shouldn’t have. Even when it destroyed you to do it.”
He lifted his hand again, finally letting his fingers brush my cheek. I closed my eyes at the contact—familiar, forbidden, devastating.
“We are a disaster,” I whispered.
“Yes,” he murmured. “But we’re the kind of disaster that never really ends.”
When I opened my eyes, he was staring at me with a mixture of agony and relief—as if having the truth at last was both a blessing and a curse.
“This triangle,” I whispered, voice trembling, “is going to destroy us.”
“I know,” Matteo said quietly. “But I would rather be destroyed by the truth of you… than live another day blinded by lies.”
And in that moment, as his fingers lingered on my skin, as tears burned my eyes, as the weight of everything collapsed between us—I understood something with bone-deep certainty.
Nothing would ever be the same again.