Matteo

“Get your fucking hands off me, Matteo.”

Serafina hisses this as we walk off the stage, and I’m struck by how different she sounds. Three days ago, she was whispering apologies for existing. Now she’s got venom in her voice that could kill a horse.

She looks absolutely incredible, though. That emerald dress, those jewels—she looks like she stepped off the cover of Vogue and decided to declare war on everyone who ever doubted her.

When did she become so… feisty?

This morning feels like a lifetime ago. I was sitting in Father’s study, going over quarterly reports, when I spotted the cream-colored invitation on his desk. Elegant script, expensive paper, the kind that screams old money and older secrets.

Don Antonio Dorian requests the honor of your presence…

My blood turned to ice.

“I have to go,” I told him.

“You’re not going.” Father didn’t even look up from his paperwork. “You’re divorcing her.”

“What do you mean I’m not going? She’s still my wife.”

That made him look up. His expression was the kind that usually preceded someone getting shot. “You think she’s going to take you back? After how you treated her? After you replaced her?”

“I didn’t know she was Antonio Dorian’s daughter.” The words came out strangled. “You never told us! You knew, didn’t you?”

He leaned back in his chair, suddenly looking every one of his seventy years. “Of course I knew.”

“And you said nothing? You let me—let us—treat her like she was nobody?”

“She was safer as nobody.”

“Safer?” I laughed, but it sounded bitter even to me. “She was dying in the house. We were killing her slowly, and you watched.”

“Better than her dying quickly.”

The casual way he said it made me want to put my fist through his face. But there was nothing I could do. The damage was done. Serafina was gone, and I was standing here like an idiot trying to figure out how to fix the unfixable.

I found Mother, Bianca, and Anastasia in the sitting room, all talking at once in that particular brand of female panic that sounds like a flock of very expensive, very nervous birds.

“Oh my God, we treated her so badly,” Mother was wringing her hands. “What’s going to happen to us?”

“She probably hates us,” Bianca added, pacing like a caged animal. “She has actual power now. Real power.”

Anastasia was the only one who looked calm, but I could see the calculation behind her eyes. “What are we going to do?”

“I’ll fix it,” I said.

Three heads turned toward me.

“How?” Anastasia’s voice was carefully neutral.

“She’ll become my first wife again.”

And now here I am, standing next to the most powerful woman in the room—possibly the most powerful woman on the East Coast—and she won’t even let me touch her.

She’s seething, practically vibrating with rage, and somehow that just makes her more beautiful. Dangerous beautiful. The kind that starts wars.

I feel a tap on my shoulder and turn around to see him. Antonio Dorian. The man whose daughter I married, ignored, humiliated, and nearly destroyed.

He’s shorter than I expected, older, but his eyes… Jesus. His eyes are exactly like hers. Dark, intelligent, and currently promising violence.

I do what any reasonable man would do when meeting his father-in-law for the first time.

I bow.

“Matteo Verrelli,” I say, straightening up. “Your son-in-law.”

The slap comes so fast I don’t see it coming.

The sound echoes across the room like a gunshot. My face explodes in pain, my head snapping to the side. The taste of blood fills my mouth.

Every conversation in the room stops. Every head turns. The string quartet misses a note.

I touch my cheek, feeling the heat radiating from where his hand connected. When I look back at him, he’s not even breathing hard.

“That,” he says quietly, “is for the last three years.”