Seraphina POV
By the time Julian returned to the estate, the rooms had been scrubbed of my presence.
He would have found his mahogany desk cleared, save for a single manila envelope placed precisely in the centre of the leather blotter.
My burner phone rang as I sat on the floor of my safehouse, the bareness of the room a balm.
I answered, the cheap plastic cool against my ear.
“Return to the estate. Now,” Julian commanded.
His voice was a low vibration of possessive fury, the tone that made his Capos bow their heads.
“Sign the papers, Julian,” I said, my own voice flat and distant.
A dark, humourless laugh met my ear. “I tore your papers to confetti. The Falcones do not divorce, Seraphina. We make widows. You belong to me.”
“If you do not sign, the petition goes before the Underworld Commission,” I replied.
I did not press a button to end the call. I lowered the phone to the concrete floor and brought the heel of my boot down upon it, again and again, until the screen was a spiderweb of fractured glass.
I leaned my head back against the wall of the heavily secured apartment and, for the first time in three years, I breathed.
The air did not smell of his cologne or the metallic tang of blood. It smelled of nothing at all.
The next morning, I forced myself upright through a wave of cramps that seized my abdomen like a vice. The surgery had left me hollow and raw, the physical echo of what his violence had torn from me still fresh. I swallowed two painkillers dry and went to my legitimate business front—a small design studio in the civilian sector.
I was reviewing a contract when the plate-glass door imploded with a deafening crash.
My staff cried out, scrambling for the safety of the back rooms.
Julian strode through the ruined doorway.
Four of his enforcers followed, their presence filling the small space as they locked the shattered door and drew the blinds.
Julian came to my desk, planting his hands on its surface and leaning over me.
His eyes were black with a murderous calm.
“Come home,” he growled.
I opened a drawer, withdrew a fresh copy of the annulment papers, and slid them across the desk until they touched his knuckles.
Julian sneered. “A Don does not relinquish his assets. You are my wife.”
“As your mother was your father’s wife?” I asked.
Julian went still.
His hands gripped the edge of the desk so tightly the old wood groaned in protest.
I had taken the poisoned history of his bloodline and turned it into a weapon.
“Your father kept your mother in a gilded prison while he paraded his mistresses through the city. She took her own life in the estate greenhouse because she could no longer bear the suffocation. Is that the legacy you wish to continue?”
The light in Julian’s eyes seemed to extinguish. “You will not speak of my mother.”
I rose from my chair, meeting his gaze.
“I am not leaving because of Elena. I am leaving because the title of your Mafia Queen is a hollow, suffocating fiction. You have not truly seen me in three years. You want a doll to arrange in your house while you build an empire for another woman.”
Julian opened his mouth to speak, but his encrypted phone began to ring, the shrill tone designated for a crisis among his Capos.
He looked from the phone to me, a flicker of conflict in his eyes.
His pragmatism won. He answered the call, his attention shifting in an instant.
“This tantrum is finished when I return,” Julian said, his back already to me as he strode out through the broken door.
I sank back into my chair.
My hands were trembling, but my thoughts were sharp and clear.
I picked up my secure line and called Val.
“He will not sign,” I said.
Val sighed. “Then we gather evidence of his broken vows. Otherwise, the Commission will decree a two-year exile before they grant a dissolution.”
I ended the call and stared at the blank wall.
I thought of the unbreachable distance in my marriage.
Julian had not touched me in three years, save for a single, violent night of possession after a syndicate war.
That was the night he had sowed the seed that would later die under his fists.
I remembered waking the next morning, turning to see his phone on the nightstand.
I remembered seeing the encrypted messages from Elena, sent while I slept in his arms.
That was the moment I understood where his allegiance was truly housed.
I pressed a hand to my abdomen, feeling the dull ache that had become my constant companion. The scar inside me was still raw, but the wound I would carve into his empire would be far deeper. Julian Falcone still had no idea that the first blood had already been shed—and that it was his.
