Her gaze flicked to mine, something sharp and dangerous flashing beneath the porcelain calm.
“Oh, I will,” she replied softly. “But it will sound much sweeter coming from his wife.”
She leaned in, voice dropping to a whisper meant only for me.
“And if you refuse...”
A pause. A smile.
“...children adapt. Especially when they have no choice.”
Something inside me went very, very still.
She mirrored my smirk.
Only hers held no cracks—no pain, no desperation. Just ice.
“When you’ve convinced him to let me stay under his roof,” Seraphina said smoothly, each word placed with surgical precision, “with a room directly next to yours—”
Her eyes dipped briefly, deliberately, as if already imagining it.
“—then you’ll have your son.”
She didn’t wait for my answer.
She turned away, hips swaying with calculated elegance, heels crunching softly against the gravel as she crossed toward the Bentley like a queen retreating from a conquered battlefield.
Antonio finally moved.
That alone sent a chill down my spine.
He opened the driver’s door and slid inside without a word.
And why was Antonio acting so close to Seraphina, right there with the Orlovs?
But just before the door shut, his gaze flicked to mine.
The cigarette paused halfway to his lips. Smoke curled lazily upward, forgotten. His dark eyes narrowed—not in recognition, not in certainty, but in suspicion. Like a man staring at a ghost he refused to believe in, even as his instincts screamed otherwise.
You know, I thought savagely. You know it’s me.
The Bentley rolled away.
Its tires whispered over the gravel, smooth and effortless, as if nothing monumental had just occurred—no child stolen, no mother shattered.
Dust settled slowly around me.
I stood there shaking, humiliation crawling over my skin like ants. Eight guards remained—eight armed men spaced deliberately around the courtyard, their stares ranging from amused to openly predatory.
I counted them automatically.
Training. Survival. Futility.
I couldn’t fight them.
Not here.
Not now.
