Matteo

Her father’s words hit like a sledgehammer to the balls.

“So she could give you an heir after all. Sucks for you that you disposed of her like garbage.”

The casual brutality of it makes me want to put my fist through the hospital wall. But what really pisses me off is that he’s right. Completely, devastatingly right.

And there’s Adrian, standing behind Don Dorian like some kind of designer-suited shadow, wearing a smug expression that makes me want to rearrange his pretty face with a tire iron.

I hate him. Hate the way he looks at her like she’s some kind of miracle he discovered. Hate the way she looks back at him like he actually matters. Hate that he gets to be the hero in her story while I’m relegated to the villain who showed up three acts too late.

“I made mistakes,” I say, because apparently that’s my default response to everything now.

“Mistakes.” Don Dorian’s laugh could cut glass. “You call three years of psychological warfare a mistake?”

“I call it the biggest fucking regret of my life.”

“Good. Live with it.”

***

The Dorian ball is like stepping into a parallel universe where I’m the cautionary tale instead of the main character.

Two weeks since the hospital revelation, and I’m standing in the corner of a ballroom that screams old money and older grudges, watching my pregnant ex-wife work a room like she was born to it.

Which, technically, she was.

Serafina’s wearing emerald green. She looks like a fucking goddess who could order your execution and make it look elegant.

Every man in the room is watching her. Every woman wants to be her. And me? I’m the ghost at the feast, tolerated because technically I’m still her husband.

“Quite the transformation,” someone says behind me.

I turn around and there’s Vincent Torrino, nursing a whiskey and looking amused by my misery.

“She was always beautiful.”

“Beautiful, yes. But this?” He gestures toward where Serafina’s discussing territory negotiations with three family heads like she’s been doing it her whole life. “This is power. Big difference.”

Yeah. Thanks for the insight, asshole.

That’s when I see him. Adrian, moving through the crowd like he owns the place, heading straight for her with that confident stride that makes me want to break his kneecaps.

He says something that makes her laugh—actually laugh, the kind of genuine sound I haven’t heard from her in years. Then he extends his hand, and she takes it, and they’re moving toward the dance floor like they choreographed this shit.

The waltz starts, and I watch them move together like they’re made of the same material. He leads, she follows, but it’s not submission—it’s trust. The kind of trust I never earned and apparently never deserved.

“They look good together,” Bianca appears beside me, because my night wasn’t quite hellish enough.

“Shut up.”

“I’m just saying, she seems happy. When’s the last time you made her look like that?”

Never. The answer is never, and we both know it.

They’re talking while they dance, foreheads almost touching, and the intimacy of it makes my chest feel like someone’s taking a blowtorch to my ribs. This is what I threw away. This is what I traded for political connections and business advantages.

I’m contemplating whether homicide would improve my mood when chaos erupts.

A woman in a black evening gown and masquerade mask comes out of nowhere, moving through the crowd like a heat-seeking missile. Something glints in her hand—metal, sharp, definitely not part of the formal wear dress code.

It takes me exactly two seconds to recognize the walk, the posture, the particular brand of unhinged desperation.

Anastasia.

She’s got a fucking knife, and she’s heading straight for Serafina.

My body moves before my brain catches up. Years of combat training, street fights, and general violence kick in like muscle memory. I barrel through the crowd, knocking over waiters and probably several innocent bystanders.

Serafina sees the attack coming—her father didn’t raise an idiot—but she’s trapped between Adrian and a pillar, nowhere to run.

Anastasia lunges, blade aimed at center mass, and I tackle her like I’m trying out for the NFL.

We go down hard, her knife skittering across the marble floor. She’s screaming something about whores and stolen lives, but I’m too busy making sure she can’t try again to process the specifics.

“Get off me!” she shrieks, clawing at my face.

“Not fucking happening.”

Security arrives—finally—and hauls her off the floor while she continues her psychotic rant about rightful places and stolen crowns.

“Anastasia Ruffo,” Don Dorian’s voice cuts through the chaos like a scalpel, “is banned from this house, this property, and any event where my daughter is present. If she comes within a hundred yards of Serafina again, I’ll consider it an act of war.”