Serafina

The silence lasts exactly three seconds before Bianca completely loses her shit.

“This is fucking insane!” She’s on her feet, designer heels clicking against marble like bullets hitting pavement. “Some random bastard gets everything? Everything we’ve worked for?”

“Bianca, sit down,” Viviana hisses, but her voice lacks its usual authority. She looks like someone just told her gravity stopped working.

“No! I will not sit down while some Spanish whore’s spawn steals our inheritance!”

“Spanish noblewoman, actually,” Pemberton corrects with the kind of professional calm that suggests he’s witnessed many family meltdowns. “Sofia Vasquez was from one of Spain’s oldest families. Don Verrelli met her during a business trip to Barcelona twenty-eight years ago.”

“Noblewoman?” Matteo’s voice cracks like he’s going through puberty again. “My father had an affair with Spanish nobility and produced a secret heir while I was what—learning to tie my fucking shoes?”

“It appears so.”

“This is bullshit,” Bianca snarls. “Complete bullshit. Adrian’s nobody. He works for Ferdinand, he drives cars, he’s—”

“He’s more legitimate than either of you.”

Everyone turns to stare at Pemberton, who’s pulling out yet another folder because apparently this legal massacre needs more documentation.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Viviana finally speaks, and her voice sounds like she’s swallowed glass.

“It means Don Verrelli discovered some interesting information about his family bloodline before his death.”

Oh, shit. This is about to get so much worse.

“Matteo,” Pemberton continues, “is not Don Verrelli’s biological son.”

The room doesn’t just go quiet—it goes vacuum-of-space, black-hole-eating-sound quiet.

Matteo’s face cycles through disbelief, confusion, and rage in about two seconds flat. “What did you just say?”

“DNA testing confirmed it. You are not Don Verrelli’s child.”

“That’s impossible.”

“It’s documented science.”

Viviana makes a sound like a dying animal. “No. No, no, no, this can’t be happening.”

“Who’s his father?” I ask, because someone has to voice what we’re all thinking.

“Carlo Benedetto.”

Benedetto. Another family head. Another married man. Another spectacular scandal that’s about to destroy lives.

“You had an affair with Carlo Benedetto?” Matteo turns on his mother like she just confessed to war crimes.

“It was complicated—”

“Complicated?” Matteo’s laugh could power a small nuclear reactor. “You fucked another man, passed me off as Father’s son for thirty years, and it’s complicated?”

“Don’t you dare judge me—”

“Judge you? I’m processing the fact that my entire identity is built on a lie!”

Bianca’s just standing there, mouth opening and closing like a fish drowning in air. “If Matteo’s not… if Father isn’t… then what does that make me?”

“Illegitimate,” Pemberton says helpfully. “Both of you.”

“But I look like him—”

“You look like your mother. Who, genetically speaking, got around more than previously documented.”

Jesus Christ. Viviana didn’t just cheat—she built an entire family on lies.

“This is incredible,” I mutter, and honestly? I’m impressed. The sheer audacity of maintaining this deception for three decades while psychologically torturing everyone around you takes serious commitment.

“So let me get this straight,” Adrian speaks for the first time since the bloodline bombshell. “Don Verrelli left his fortune to me—his actual son—while the family that treated his daughter-in-law like garbage for three years turns out to be genetically unrelated to him?”

“That’s correct.”

“And he knew this when he wrote the will?”

“He discovered it shortly after your paternity was confirmed. The timing suggests it influenced his final decisions significantly.”

Adrian looks at me, and something passes between us that I can’t quite name. Understanding, maybe. Or recognition of the cosmic joke that is our lives.

“I don’t want it,” he says suddenly.

“What?” Pemberton blinks.

“The inheritance. I don’t want it.”

“Adrian—” I start.

“I renounce my claim to the Verrelli estate.”

“You can’t just renounce—”

“I can and I am. Transfer it all to Serafina.”

The room explodes again.

“Are you insane?” Bianca shrieks. “You’re giving everything to her?”

“She deserves it more than any of us.”

“She’s not even family!”

“Neither are you, apparently.”

Matteo’s just sitting there, staring at his hands like they belong to someone else. “My whole life is a lie.”

“Welcome to the club,” I say. “Population: everyone in this room.”

“This is unacceptable,” Viviana stands, trying to salvage some dignity from the wreckage of her life. “There must be legal recourse. Challenges we can file—”

“With what money?” I ask. “Your husband just left his fortune to his actual son, who’s giving it to the woman you spent three years torturing. Good luck affording lawyers.”

The look she gives me could melt steel, but I’m past caring about Viviana’s feelings.

“The paperwork will take some time to process,” Pemberton says, “but if Mr. Vasquez is serious about the transfer—”

“I’m serious.”

“Then congratulations, Mrs. Dorian. You’ve just inherited one of the largest fortunes on the East Coast.”

I should feel something. Victory, maybe. Satisfaction. But mostly I’m just tired. Tired of family drama, tired of secrets, tired of everyone treating love like a business transaction.

Adrian stands up, moves toward me while the Verrelli family implodes in real time behind him.

“We should go,” he says quietly.

“Yeah. We should.”

As we head for the door, Bianca’s still screaming about injustice and illegitimate bastards, Matteo’s having what looks like an existential crisis, and Viviana’s probably calculating how many Hail Marys it takes to wash away thirty years of lies.

Just as we reach the door, Adrian stops, turns back to me.

His voice is soft, meant only for me: “I don’t want the empire. I just want you.”