The Lord's Plaything

I knew exactly what I was.

The men in my father's circles called me a little demon in red lipstick. The wives whispered "whore" behind their fans while their husbands couldn't stop staring.

Dante Moretti never stared. Not at first.

He was the underboss of the Velasco family—cold-eyed, sharp-suited, a man who could order a hit without blinking. They said he'd never shown interest in any woman.

They were wrong.

I still remember the first night. His penthouse, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. He'd summoned me to "discuss my father's debts." Twenty minutes later he had me bent over his mahogany desk, my dress pooled at my ankles, his mouth against my ear.

"Say my name."

"Dante."

"Again."

The affair should have been a one-time mistake. Instead it became a year of clandestine meetings. His private elevator. The back of his armored Escalade. Once, memorably, the confessional booth at St. Margaret's during a family baptism.

I was addicted. I was delusional.

I was about to learn the difference.

-

The hotel suite smelled of sex and expensive whiskey.

I lay in tangled sheets, listening to water run in the bathroom. My phone was already pressed to my ear.

"Father."

Chiara, my stepmother, picked up. "Serafina. Your father is occupied."

"Put him on."

"Darling, he's very busy with—"

"Put him on, or I swear I'll walk into the Velasco compound right now and tell Dante Moretti exactly which family has been skimming from his shipments."

Silence. Then my father's voice, oily and desperate. "Sera. Have you reconsidered?"

The old bastard didn't even pretend anymore. Three months he'd been working on me. The Agosti family heir was dying—some degenerative disease, barely conscious—and the family was offering five hundred million for a "bride" to stand at his bedside. Purely ceremonial. Until he died. Then she'd be a very rich widow.

Marry a corpse, save the family from bankruptcy.

"I'll do it," I said. "On one condition."

"Name it."

"I want emancipation. Legal. Complete. I am no longer a Leone. I take nothing from you, you take nothing from me."

My stepmother's sharp inhale was audible through the phone.

"Fine," my father said quickly. Too quickly. "Done. You'll leave by the end of the month."

I ended the call and let the phone drop onto the mattress.

The bathroom door opened. Steam billowed into the bedroom.

Dante emerged, towel hung low on his hips, water trailing down the hard planes of his abdomen. He was already reaching for his shirt, his mind clearly somewhere else.

"Something came up," he said, not looking at me. "I need to head out."

"Of course you do."

He paused at my tone. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing."

I swung my legs off the bed, not bothering to cover myself. Let him look. Let him see what he was walking away from.

His gray eyes tracked over my body, and something flickered there—hunger, maybe. But he suppressed it, jaw tightening.

"Don't start trouble, Sera."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

The door clicked shut behind him.

I waited exactly thirty seconds. Then I pulled out my second phone—the one he didn't know about—and opened the tracking app I'd installed on his car three weeks ago.

His dot was already moving.

Not toward the Velasco compound.

Toward the old cathedral district. Where a certain convent-turned-apartment building housed a certain fragile, dark-haired girl named Elena Abate.

The girl whose photos filled a locked drawer in his study.

The girl he'd once called his "salvation."

I dressed fast. Black jeans, black boots, a jacket dark enough to blend into shadows.

I'd known about Elena for six months. I'd told myself it didn't matter. Dante and I weren't official. We weren't anything. He'd never promised me exclusivity.

But he'd never told me I was just occupying his time while he waited for her to come home from Switzerland. From the treatment facility her father had sent her to after the incident.

The incident.

I knew about that too. A shooting. Elena had taken a bullet meant for Dante. Nearly died. He'd paid for everything—her recovery, her family's debts, her brother's legal troubles.

She was the saint. I was the sin.

But I hadn't known—couldn't have known—that Elena Abate was also the daughter of the woman my father married three months after my mother's suicide.

My stepsister.

The universe was about to deliver a punchline soaked in blood.