Chapter 001: The Weight of Loss

SERENA’S POV

“I don’t love Isadora,” Michael’s voice rang out as he kissed his mistress. “I never loved her. She’s nothing to me, other than a sex toy and a live-in maid.”

For a moment, it felt as though my heart had stopped beating. He never loved me, really? For five years I stayed with him, for five years I loved and cared for him, but to him I was nothing but a live-in maid and a sex toy?

Loss? That was what sat heavy in my chest as I replayed those words over and over again in my mind. I had carried that word “loss” since I was nine, when my grandfather’s body folded over mine and the bullets meant for me tore through him instead. It’s been sixteen years and I have never forgiven myself for that.

Sixteen years had passed, but the guilt of that nine-year-old girl still lived somewhere inside me. The girl who had watched her grandfather take bullets meant for her. The girl who had spent years believing her family secretly blamed her for his death, even though none of them had ever said the words aloud.

“Don’t you think she will feel heartbroken,” Michael’s mistress whispered, bringing me back to the present. She giggled as she held his head steady in between her breasts. “It’s her birthday, Michael.”

It was indeed my birthday tonight. It was supposed to change something. For years, I had hated my birthdays. Twenty-one had taken Mama Rosa from me. Twenty-five was supposed to give me something back. I had pictured him dropping to one knee in the private suite of the hotel, asking me to build a family outside the world I had run from.

But instead here I was standing in the hallway with the door cracked open, watching him press another woman against the wall. His mouth moved over hers while his hands, the same hands that had caressed me only hours earlier, claimed her body.

“I don’t care if she’s heartbroken,” Michael replied, his voice dripping with lust. “I’ve been waiting for so long to break it off with her. I can’t wait to tell her—”

I pushed the door wider and stepped inside. The sound of my heels on the marble cut through whatever he had left to say.

He turned first as surprise flickered across his face before it hardened into something colder. His mistress stayed pressed against him, her lips still swollen, and her eyes bright with amusement.

“Wow.” Those were the only words that slipped from my lips despite the anger and betrayal I was feeling.

“Isadora,” he said, his voice smooth as if he was caught doing nothing bad. “What are you doing here?”

“You don’t… love me, Michael?” I asked, my voice trembling as I tried so hard to stop myself from breaking down totally right here. “You promised me. Did you forget, Michael? You said you loved me. You were going to propose today…”

He let out a cold, short laugh. “Did you actually believe that?” he asked as he stepped back slowly, straightening his shirt with deliberate calm. “You are boring in bed, Isadora. This is just one of the many reasons why I cannot be with you.”

His mistress giggled under her breath and stayed close, one hand resting on his arm like a claim.

“Oh come on, Isadora,” he continued, arching his lower lips in a smug smile. “In the past five years you should have known that I was never going to propose to you.”

I felt my heart shatter into a thousand more pieces. “Why?” I asked. “You can’t throw away five years like that, Michael. I still love you.”

He shrugged. “Wake up, Isadora,” he snapped. “I can’t be with someone like you.”

The air in the suite thickened. I stared at the man I had trusted with every quiet fear I carried. “Someone like me?” I asked, keeping my voice even.

“You’re nobody, Isa,” he said. “You’re just a struggling writer pretending her little books mean something. What exactly did you think would happen? That I’d marry a woman with no family, no name, and nothing to her name?”

His mistress giggled. “Oh come on, sweetheart,” she said, locking eyes with me as she ran her fingers possessively over his chest. “You are not in our class at all. You were just a convenient whore. Get over it.”

The words landed harder than any slap. I felt the ground shift under my feet.

“You can’t do this to me,” I whispered as tears ran down my eyes. “Please, Michael… I need you.”

He scoffed. “You heard my woman,” he said, his voice dropping into something almost gentle and therefore crueler. “I can’t be with someone who is mentally unstable. Someone who sees shadows and convinces herself she’s being stalked. No man in his right mind will picture a forever with someone who jumps at shadows and calls it stalking.”

And there was the final piece I needed to know that he was really done with me. Using my vulnerability against me was the height of it all. Heat flooded my face. Every secret I had handed him, he had turned it into a weapon aimed at humiliating me.

“Go get help,” he said, stepping closer, close enough that I smelled the woman’s perfume on his skin. “We are done for good.”

The suite felt too small. Voices from the hallway drifted in as hotel staff passed. Someone paused near the open door. Within a few seconds the scene was no longer private. I saw the glance his mistress exchanged with him, the shared satisfaction, and something inside me cracked open.

I turned without another word and walked out. The elevator ride down blurred as tears ran freely from my eyes. The moment I stepped out of the hotel doors and into the street rain hit my face. I had left my coat and bag upstairs. The only thing I had with me was my phone in my dress pocket and my wallet.

Water soaked through my dress within minutes, plastering the fabric to my skin and dragging my hair into heavy strands. Neon lights smeared across the wet pavement as I moved without direction.

My phone vibrated in my pocket. I took it out as I glanced at the name on the screen. Mother. I knew why she was calling. “Happy birthday, Mia preziosa figlia. When are you coming home? Your father and I miss you so much.”

It was the same gentle pressure she had applied every year since Mama Rosa died. I stared at the phone ring until the vibration stopped. I could not answer, certainly not tonight, not when every old wound felt freshly opened.

I kept walking until the glow of a high-end bar pulled me in. Dark wood, low lighting, and the quiet clink of crystal. A place that smelled of expensive whiskey and rain-damp coats. Water dripped from my dress onto the polished floor as I crossed to the bar and slid onto a stool.

For one night, I didn’t want to be careful. For one night, I didn’t want to be Isadora Hartmann. I didn’t want to be the woman who had spent sixteen years running from a past she could never outrun. I just wanted to be a woman who had lost everything and didn’t give a damn what happened next.

“Whiskey, please,” I whispered to the bartender.

The bartender took one look at my face and the soaked state of me and said nothing. He poured the first drink without asking. I drained it. The second followed. The burn settled in my stomach and did nothing to quiet the noise in my head. Third, Fourth, Fifth. Each one went down easier than the last.

I knew better than to sit here alone and drink this much. Old instincts whispered that I should leave. That I should never let myself become careless, never let my guard down for too long. Especially not now, not after the feeling of being watched had returned. Still I sat there and ordered another as Michael’s words rang steadily in my head.

My fingers closed around the sixth tumbler as I made the move to gulp it down. The glass never reached my lips when a hand shot out from the side and took it cleanly away.

I turned.

The man who held the drink was already settling onto the stool beside me as if the space had always belonged to him. Gray eyes, controlled posture, brown hair. Rain still beaded on the shoulders of his coat.

“You shouldn’t be here, baby girl,” he said.