Chapter 3

Selene POV

Is he?

The words echoed in my head during the entire silent ride back to campus. Vincent dropped me off at the same corner where he'd picked me up, like nothing had changed, like I hadn't just been threatened by a man who spoke about my father like he was still breathing.

My father. The man I'd mourned my entire life without ever really knowing him.

I stumbled through the rest of my classes in a daze, my professors' voices fading to background noise. Every time I tried to focus on marketing strategies or consumer psychology, Caspian's arctic gray eyes flashed through my mind. Your father would be disappointed if you refused.

By the time I made it back to my dorm room, my hands were shaking so badly I could barely get my key in the lock.

"Selene?" Jessica looked up from her laptop, her expression shifting from casual interest to concern. "Jesus, you look like you've seen a ghost. What happened?"

I couldn't tell her. Couldn't explain that I'd been kidnapped by a man who claimed to be a mafia king, threatened with my family's safety, and told my dead father might not be dead after all. She'd think I'd had a breakdown.

Maybe I had.

"I need to call my mom," I said, my voice sounding foreign to my own ears. "Can you... can you give me some privacy?"

Jessica's frown deepened, but she nodded. "Of course. I'll be at the library if you need me." She paused at the door. "Selene? Are you okay? Really?"

"I don't know," I whispered, and it was the most honest thing I'd said all day.

After she left, I sat on my narrow dorm bed, staring at my phone like it was a loaded weapon. My mother's contact information glowed on the screen, but I couldn't bring myself to press call. What would I even say? Hi, Mom, did you lie to me about Dad being dead? Also, I'm being forced to marry into the mafia.

Instead, I found myself thinking about the envelope Caspian had slid across the table. My mother's medical bills. Our mounting debt. The scholarship Marcus needed for prep school. All the things we never talked about, the financial pressures that kept my mother working double shifts at the hospital while I scraped by on loans and part-time jobs.

How did Caspian know about all of that? How long had he been watching us?

The phone rang before I could lose my nerve.

"Mija?" My mother's voice was warm and tired, the way it always sounded after a long shift. "I wasn't expecting you to call tonight. Is everything okay?"

I opened my mouth to say yes, everything was fine, just checking in. But instead, what came out was: "Mom, I need to ask you something about Dad."

Silence stretched across the line. Long enough that I wondered if the call had dropped.

"Selene..." Her voice was different now. Careful. Guarded. "What about your father?"

"Was he really in a car accident?" The question felt like glass in my throat. "Did he really die when I was a baby?"

Another pause. Then: "Why are you asking me this?"

"Because someone today told me he didn't. Someone who seemed to know things about our family that they shouldn't know." I was pacing now, my small dorm room feeling like a cage. "Mom, please. I need the truth."

I heard her take a shaky breath. "Who did you talk to?"

"His name was Caspian Santoro. He"

"Dios mío." My mother's voice cracked like a breaking glass. "No, no, no. This can't be happening. Not now. Not when you're so close to"

"Close to what?" But I already knew. Close to graduating. Close to being safe. Close to aging out of whatever protection she'd built around me.

"I need to see you," she said, and I could hear her moving around, grabbing things. "I'm coming to get you. Pack a bag. We're leaving the city tonight."

"Mom, what are you talking about? We can't just leave. Marcus has school, you have work"

"None of that matters now." Her voice was sharp with panic. "If Caspian Santoro knows where you are, then your father knows too. And if he knows..." She made a sound like a sob. "Oh, mija, I'm so sorry. I thought I had more time."

The room spun around me. "So he is alive. My father is alive."

"Yes." The word was barely a whisper. "Lucien Marcellus is very much alive."

Marcellus. My last name. The name I'd been told came from my mother's first husband, a man who'd adopted me and then disappeared. But it wasn't an adoption, was it? It was my birthright.

"Why did you lie to me?" I sank onto my bed, my legs suddenly too weak to hold me. "All these years, why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I was protecting you!" The words exploded out of her. "Because your father is a monster, Selene. A man who destroys everything he touches. I couldn't let him destroy you too."

"But he's my father"

"He's a killer." Her voice was flat now, drained of emotion. "He runs an empire built on blood and fear. When I found out I was pregnant with you, I tried to make it work. I tried to be the perfect mafia wife, to raise you in that world. But I couldn't do it. I couldn't watch you grow up thinking that violence was normal, that power was worth more than human life."

I thought about Caspian's cold eyes, the casual way he'd threatened my family. The professional muscle in expensive suits, the restaurant that felt like a throne room. "So you ran."

"I ran." She laughed bitterly. "Stupid, naive Maria. I thought I could disappear and start over. I changed our names, moved across the country, and worked jobs that paid cash. For years, I thought we were safe."

"What changed?"

"You did." Her voice was soft now, full of love and regret. "You grew up. You started looking like him, acting like him. You have his eyes, his stubborn streak, his way of commanding attention without trying. And people in that world... they notice things like that."

I touched my face unconsciously, wondering what features had betrayed me. What invisible marker had led Caspian straight to me.

"There's more," my mother said quietly. "Something I never told you about why I really left."

"What?"

"I wasn't the only woman in your father's life. Lucien Marcellus doesn't believe in monogamy. He has a wife his first wife, from an arranged marriage that consolidated territory. She's... she's not a good woman, Selene. When she found out about you, about me, she made it clear that neither of us would survive if we stayed."

My blood ran cold. "She threatened to kill us?"

"She threatened to kill you and make me watch." The words came out flat, matter-of-fact. "She said she wouldn't let a bastard child inherit what belonged to her sons."

"She has sons?"

"Three of them. Your half-brothers. Men who've grown up in that world, who've been trained to see power as the only thing that matters." My mother's voice shook. "They don't know about you, but if they find out..."

I thought about the envelope of medical bills, Marcus's scholarship applications, all the ways Caspian had proven he could reach into our lives. "It's too late, isn't it? They already know."

"Pack your bag," she said again. "We can still run. We can"

"No." The word surprised me with its firmness. "I'm not running anymore."

"Selene"

"I'm tired of being afraid of ghosts, Mom. Of living like we're always one step away from disaster." I stood up, surprising myself with how steady I felt. "If this is my legacy, if this is what I was born into, then I need to face it."

"You don't understand what you're saying. These people your father they're not like us. They don't value life the way we do."

"Then maybe it's time I learned to speak their language."

The silence stretched between us, heavy with twenty-three years of secrets and lies and love that had tried to protect me from the truth.

"Caspian wants me to marry his son," I said finally. "He says it's the only way to keep us safe."

"Dios mío, no. No, mija, you can't trust him. Caspian Santoro is just as dangerous as your father. More dangerous, maybe, because he's smarter."

"But he's offering protection."

"He's offering a cage." My mother's voice was fierce now. "A beautiful, comfortable cage, but a cage nonetheless. You'll be trapped in that world forever, Selene. Your children will be trapped in it too."

Children. The word hit me like a physical blow. I'd never really thought about having kids, but suddenly I could see them dark-haired little ones who would grow up the way I should have, surrounded by violence and power games.

"There has to be another way," I said.

"There is." My mother's voice was quiet now, defeated. "We run. Tonight. We disappear so completely that even your father can't find us."

"And Marcus? What about his future? What about your medical treatment?"

"We'll figure it out. We always have."

But I could hear the doubt in her voice. The exhaustion of twenty-three years spent looking over her shoulder, working jobs that barely paid the bills, watching her children sacrifice their dreams because they were living in the shadow of a man who'd never even tried to find us.

Until now.

"I need to think," I said. "I need to understand what I'm really choosing between."

"Promise me you won't do anything stupid," my mother said. "Promise me you won't try to face this alone."

"I promise." But even as I said it, I knew it was a lie.

After I hung up, I sat in the gathering darkness of my dorm room, thinking about choices and cages and the weight of secrets. My phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number.

Tomorrow evening. Cristallo. Same room. Don't disappoint me. - C

I stared at the message until the words blurred together. Tomorrow evening, I would have to give Caspian Santoro an answer. Marry his son and accept protection from a world I'd never known existed, or refuse and watch my family pay the price for my father's sins.

But there was a third option he hadn't mentioned. One that might be the most dangerous of all.

I could meet my father myself. I could look Lucien Marcellus in the eye and ask him what he wanted from me. What he'd always wanted.

My phone buzzed again. This time, it was a photo message from the same unknown number.

The image made my heart stop.

It was a photograph, old and slightly faded, of a man with my eyes and my stubborn chin. He stood with his arm around a woman I barely recognized—my mother, but younger, happier, wearing a white dress and a smile I'd never seen before. In the background, I could see other people, other faces, but it was the writing at the bottom that made my blood run cold.

Lucien and Maria Marcellus, 1999.

But that wasn't what made me gasp. It was the second line, written in different handwriting:

Selene's christening - 6 months old.

I zoomed in on the photo, and there, in my mother's arms, was a dark-haired baby in a white dress. Me. At my christening, surrounded by people who looked like they'd stepped out of a movie about organized crime.

My father had been there. He'd held me, probably. He'd seen me take my first steps into the world he ruled.

And now he wanted me back.

A third message appeared, just two words that made my decision for me:

Welcome home.