Chapter 2

Seraphina’s POV

After I hung up, the silence felt heavier than before.

Five days from now would be my twenty-seventh.

If life had gone the way I once believed it would, that day should’ve been the beginning of us.

The day the promise finally came true.

Instead, it was the date of his wedding.

My birthday. His wedding.

Was that deliberate? His way of making sure I’d remember it forever—not as the day I got everything I wanted, but the day he made sure I lost it all?

Of all the dates in the world, why that one?

Why turn the day I’d waited six years for into the cruelest joke imaginable?

I turned a corner and found myself at the mouth of a dark alley.

And somehow, that was all it took for another memory to surface—the very first time I met Kael.

I was sixteen.

Father had taken me to one of his endless mafia gatherings, the kind filled with expensive suits, false smiles, and too many eyes watching too closely.

Halfway through the night, I escaped.

Slipped out the back doors and into the garden, desperate for air. The pond shimmered faintly under the lights, and I thought maybe, for a few minutes, I could just breathe.

The men inside always looked at me like I was a prize tag instead of a person. If not for my father’s name, I probably would’ve been treated as entertainment.

I was walking along the pond when a group of four men appeared from the shadows. I recognized one—he’d been in the party earlier.

“Miss  Dusk?” he called.

Every instinct in me said leave.

“Yes,” I answered, forcing my tone steady. “If you’ll excuse me.”

I turned to go, but another man stepped in front of me—a burly one with a scar across his eyebrow. His voice was almost amused. “Not so fast, young lady.”

Panic tightened my chest.

It was the first time I’d ever been surrounded like that—by people from my father’s world, yet so clearly against him. Against me.

“What’s wrong?” I managed, trying not to show how scared I was.

One of them laughed, sharp and low. “Your father’s becoming a problem. If he wants to stay alive in New  York, he should stop stepping on our toes.”

“I don’t know anything about his business,” I said, keeping my chin up. “But if you touch me, my father will kill you.”

That made them laugh harder.

“Kill us?” one sneered. “He wouldn’t dare. Your father’s a coward. If it weren’t for a few friends of his we’d rather not upset, he’d already be dead.”

The burly one leaned in, his breath stale and warm. The overhead light caught in his eyes, turning them into something sharp and gleaming.

“And as for you…” he said, grinning slow and cruel, “I’ll make sure you’re very comfortable.”

“Asshole,” I snapped, though my voice shook.

There were no rules in the mafia world. Not really. And I knew these men meant every word they said.

Panic clawed up my throat. I felt it—hot and rising. But then—

A voice cut through the tension, smooth and laced with something deceptively calm. “Are these scumbags bothering you, Miss Dusk?”

I turned.

A man in a tailored suit stood behind me. His hair was slicked back, his features clean and composed. Too composed.

He didn’t belong in this world. Or at least… that’s what I thought.

Until the men around me went dead silent.

The one who’d just threatened me actually cleared his throat and stepped back.

Another one dipped his head. “Mr. Viremont, we didn’t know—”

“You didn’t know she was Lucien’s daughter?” The man, none other than the Kael Viremont, took a slow step forward. “Or is that exactly why you were bothering her?”

The air around him shifted. The danger didn’t come from volume—it came from the way he spoke, like he was giving them a chance to dig their own graves.

It was the first time I saw Kael, and he saved me. Even now, with my heart still aching from what I’d overheard in his office, I couldn’t stop the memories from flooding in.