The Lord's Plaything

Everyone warned me never to fall for Dante Moretti.

They said he was the ghost of the Velasco family—an underboss who ordered hits without blinking, his heart colder than the barrel of his gun. But when he bent me over that mahogany desk, his mouth against my ear commanding me to say his name, I was stupid enough to think that was possession.

It took me an entire year to see the truth.

The photographs locked in his study drawer were never of me. The woman in white waiting for him in the cathedral district on Sunday mornings was never me. The girl who took a bullet for him, the one he called his "salvation"—her name is Elena Abate.

And Elena happens to be my stepmother's daughter.

My father is trying to sell me to a half-dead Agosti heir for five hundred million to save the family. My stepmother is scheming to erase me from existence entirely. And the man I thought would burn this city to the ground for me? On the day I needed him most, he was lifting Elena up a flight of stairs, cradling her like something sacred.

They all thought I was just a pawn to be moved around their chessboard.

They were wrong.

If Dante can't let go of his precious white moonlight, his "salvation," then I'll become someone else's "widow." If Elena believes she's already won this game, I'll let her watch from the front row as a woman with nothing left to lose burns it all down.

My name is Serafina. Remember it. Because I am about to become the reckoning none of them saw coming.

I knew exactly what I was.

The men in my father's circles called me a little demon in red lipstick. The wives whispered "whore" behind their fans while their husbands couldn't stop staring.

Dante Moretti never stared. Not at first.

He was the underboss of the Velasco family—cold-eyed, sharp-suited, a man who could order a hit without blinking. They said he'd never shown interest in any woman.

They were wrong.

I still remember the first night. His penthouse, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. He'd summoned me to "discuss my father's debts." Twenty minutes later he had me bent over his mahogany desk, my dress pooled at my ankles, his mouth against my ear.

"Say my name."

"Dante."

"Again."

The affair should have been a one-time mistake. Instead it became a year of clandestine meetings. His private elevator. The back of his armored Escalade. Once, memorably, the confessional booth at St. Margaret's during a family baptism.

I was addicted. I was delusional.

I was about to learn the difference.

-

The hotel suite smelled of sex and expensive whiskey.

I lay in tangled sheets, listening to water run in the bathroom. My phone was already pressed to my ear.

"Father."

Chiara, my stepmother, picked up. "Serafina. Your father is occupied."

"Put him on."

"Darling, he's very busy with—"

"Put him on, or I swear I'll walk into the Velasco compound right now and tell Dante Moretti exactly which family has been skimming from his shipments."

Silence. Then my father's voice, oily and desperate. "Sera. Have you reconsidered?"

The old bastard didn't even pretend anymore. Three months he'd been working on me. The Agosti family heir was dying—some degenerative disease, barely conscious—and the family was offering five hundred million for a "bride" to stand at his bedside. Purely ceremonial. Until he died. Then she'd be a very rich widow.

Marry a corpse, save the family from bankruptcy.

"I'll do it," I said. "On one condition."

"Name it."

"I want emancipation. Legal. Complete. I am no longer a Leone. I take nothing from you, you take nothing from me."

My stepmother's sharp inhale was audible through the phone.

"Fine," my father said quickly. Too quickly. "Done. You'll leave by the end of the month."

I ended the call and let the phone drop onto the mattress.

The bathroom door opened. Steam billowed into the bedroom.

Dante emerged, towel hung low on his hips, water trailing down the hard planes of his abdomen. He was already reaching for his shirt, his mind clearly somewhere else.

"Something came up," he said, not looking at me. "I need to head out."

"Of course you do."

He paused at my tone. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing."

I swung my legs off the bed, not bothering to cover myself. Let him look. Let him see what he was walking away from.

His gray eyes tracked over my body, and something flickered there—hunger, maybe. But he suppressed it, jaw tightening.

"Don't start trouble, Sera."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

The door clicked shut behind him.

I waited exactly thirty seconds. Then I pulled out my second phone—the one he didn't know about—and opened the tracking app I'd installed on his car three weeks ago.

His dot was already moving.

Not toward the Velasco compound.

Toward the old cathedral district. Where a certain convent-turned-apartment building housed a certain fragile, dark-haired girl named Elena Abate.

The girl whose photos filled a locked drawer in his study.

The girl he'd once called his "salvation."

I dressed fast. Black jeans, black boots, a jacket dark enough to blend into shadows.

I'd known about Elena for six months. I'd told myself it didn't matter. Dante and I weren't official. We weren't anything. He'd never promised me exclusivity.

But he'd never told me I was just occupying his time while he waited for her to come home from Switzerland. From the treatment facility her father had sent her to after the incident.

The incident.

I knew about that too. A shooting. Elena had taken a bullet meant for Dante. Nearly died. He'd paid for everything—her recovery, her family's debts, her brother's legal troubles.

She was the saint. I was the sin.

But I hadn't known—couldn't have known—that Elena Abate was also the daughter of the woman my father married three months after my mother's suicide.

My stepsister.

The universe was about to deliver a punchline soaked in blood.