Chapter 17: the first rule

Serena’s POV

The car slows, then stops.

I don’t move right away. My hands are clenched in my lap, knuckles white against the pale fabric of the dress. The silence inside the vehicle feels deliberate, like I’m being given one last second to understand what’s coming.

Then the gates close behind us.

The sound is loud and final, metal grinding into place. I twist in my seat and look back, but the tinted glass shows nothing. There is no road, no city, no way out. Whatever life existed outside those gates is gone.

“Out,” Dante says.

I step down onto the gravel, my legs stiff, my body still sore. Cold air hits my face, sharp enough to wake me fully. When I look up, the estate towers over me, all stone and angles, more fortress than home. Cameras are fixed into the corners of the walls. Guards stand at even intervals, eyes forward, hands still. No one looks curious. No one looks welcoming.

The gates seal completely.

The silence afterward presses in.

“This way,” Dante says, already moving.

I follow because there isn’t another option. My phone is gone. My bag never made it out of the hospital. Everything I own is either on my body or already lost.

Inside, the doors shut with another heavy sound. My footsteps echo against the marble floor as we walk. We pass staircases without slowing, and unease settles in my chest when I realize he isn’t taking me upstairs.

Instead, we move down a long corridor lined with portraits. Men stare down from the walls, all sharp eyes and hard mouths. Generations of power. Judgment. I keep my gaze forward, but I can feel them watching.

Dante stops in front of a door and opens it.

“Inside.”

The study is dim and enclosed, the air thick with the smell of leather and something metallic beneath it. A large desk dominates the room. Shelves line the walls, filled with books that look more like statements than reading material.

The door closes behind me.

Dante walks to the desk and pours himself a drink. He doesn’t offer me one. He doesn’t tell me to sit.

I stand where I am, folding my hands together because I don’t know what else to do with them.

“Sit,” he says finally.

I lower myself into the chair across from him. It’s too big, my feet barely touching the floor. The desk feels like a barrier between us, solid and immovable.

He places two items on the desk. A leather-bound ledger. Then a small black device, which he switches on.

“What is that?” I ask.

“A jammer,” he replies. “No calls, no signals,no interruptions.”

My stomach tightens. “You didn’t tell me—”

“This is not a discussion,” Dante says evenly. “This is instruction.”

He finally looks at me.

“This is the part after the cameras,” Dante says calmly. “What the public doesn’t see.”

I swallow but say nothing.

“In public, being a Romano is simple,” he continues. “You exist as an image. You appear when required, you say what you’re told to say.”

He looks directly at me now. “Private life is different.”

“I’m your wife,” I say, forcing the words out.

“You are my responsibility,” he corrects. “Not my equal.”

He stands and walks around the desk. I tense when he stops behind me. His hands settle on my shoulders, heavy enough to remind me I can’t move without permission.

“I want you invisible,” Dante says. “A wife is a weakness. A ghost is not.”

My breath stutters. “Invisible how?”

“A ghost has no routine. No habits. No access,” he says evenly. “As long as you are undefined, you are difficult to use.”

“I don’t understand,” I whisper.

“You don’t need to,” he replies. “You need to follow instructions.”

My fingers grip the armrests. “People saw me today. There were cameras. They took pictures.”

“They saw a woman in a dress,” he says. “Not a name. Not a past. Not leverage.”

He gestures toward the jammer. “From now on, you do not exist unless I say you do.”

Fear coils tight in my chest. “That’s not protection. That’s control.”

“This world punishes mistakes,” Dante says. “And it never punishes the person who makes them first.”

The meaning lands hard.

If I make a mistake, someone else pays.

If I speak, someone else bleeds.

He leans closer, his voice low. “A ghost survives longer than a woman.”

I don’t cry.

I won’t because crying feels dangerous here.

Dante straightens and steps back. “Go to your room. A seamstress is waiting. You won’t need the clothes you arrived with.”

I push myself to my feet, my legs unsteady. “What happens to them?”

He turns toward the door and opens it. Voices echo faintly from the corridor beyond, unfamiliar and male.

“We burn the suitcase tonight,” Dante says, glancing back at me. “And you’ll learn quickly, Serena—ghosts don’t ask for what they lose.”

And somewhere between the gates that sealed shut and the suitcase that will be burned, I realize the truth I’ve been avoiding since I signed my name,

I didn’t marry into a family.

I vanished into a myth!!