And she knew I wanted to.
I looked her dead in the eyes.
And with the smoothness of a lifetime of sin—
I lied with every shred of sincerity in my body. “Yes,” I said. “Three months. Then you’re free.”
A lie dressed as mercy.
She didn’t believe me—her eyes made that painfully clear. Distrust flickered in them like a warning light. But beneath it was something else, something harsher:
Resignation.
She was running out of exits, and she knew it.
“And after the three months?” she asked, voice low but steady. “They’ll force you to marry her again?”
I smiled.
Not a gentle smile—a slow, cold, surgical one, carved from bone-deep hatred.
“Seraphina will disappear long before the three months are up,” I said. “Permanently this time. Giovanni botched the last attempt. This time I do it myself. She’ll vanish from the face of the earth. I will never put that woman in my bed. Never give her my name. Never let her breathe the same air as your son.”
The last word—your son—landed between us like a dropped weapon.
I saw the moment her defiance faltered.
Saw the way her shoulders dipped a millimeter, the way her pulse jumped at her throat.
Not because she feared Seraphina’s fate—but because she understood mine.
This was not a man negotiating. This was a man fixated.
“Oh, so she’s unworthy of your bed,” she breathed, anger shaking through her, “but somehow I’m fit for it? Fit to be your wife?”
A knife of guilt slid between my ribs.
“Yes,” I said, and the truth shredded me on the way out. “Because you look like her. You talk like her. You move like her. You are Penelope reborn. And I am a selfish bastard who will take any piece of her I can get... even if it’s a lie.”
Her breath hitched.
Not fear exactly.
More like recognition.
She finally understood the depth of the madness she was bargaining with.
The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on.
I could hear her heartbeat—or maybe it was mine.
Then, so softly it was closer to an exhale than a word:
“...Yes.”
One syllable.
One surrender.
