Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 105679 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 528(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105679 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 528(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
“How could you?” I demanded, the words tore from my throat, raw with pain and fury. “How could you be so arrogant, so egotistical that you would take innocent lives just because you couldn’t be a father?”
Matteo stilled, his expression hardening.
For the first time since I had entered the room, I saw a crack in his composure.
His smirk fell, fading.
“Yeah, I fucking know,” I laughed bitterly, the sound harsh in the quiet room. “You’re infertile. You can never father a child, you would never have an heir, no legacy.”
His jaw tightened, a muscle ticking in his cheek. I had struck a nerve, hit the one insecurity that my perfect, arrogant brother had always tried to hide.
“And that’s why you took mine,” I continued, taking another step closer. “Because you couldn’t bear the thought that I would give the Salvatore the heirs they need, and you would be nothing. Forgotten in history.”
He was quiet for a second, his body so still he wasn’t even breathing. His fingers clenched the armrest, dark and ugly resentment in his gaze.
And then…
Matteo’s triumphant smirk returned. There was something more vicious about him now, that grin of his. “You are absolutely correct,” he confessed, his voice so cold it slithered down my spine and tightened around my throat like an icy chain. “And I feel no remorse for doing so.”
My finger twitched over the trigger. One small movement, and it would all be over. Years of pain, of loss, of rampage, would be avenged in an instant.
Matteo made a cold tsking sound.
“If I were you,” he said softly, his eyes never leaving mine. “I wouldn’t pull the trigger.”
And then I heard it.
The soft click of a gun being cocked, the cold press of metal against the back of my head.
I froze, my body going rigid.
A scent enveloped me—vanilla and familiar, something that was devastatingly, uniquely her.
My heart seized painfully in my chest.
She stepped around me, her gun never wavering from my head. Her movements were graceful, deliberate, as if she had been waiting for this moment just as long as I had been waiting for mine.
When she faced me, she slowly lowered the barrel to my chest, directly over my heart.
Her eyes, those beautiful hazel eyes, were cold, empty, devoid of any warmth or real human emotions.
The woman who had once trembled at the sight of blood now held a gun with steady hands, aiming it at my heart.
Thud.
“Serafina,” I breathed.
My wife smiled then, a slow, merciless curve of her lips that transformed her beauty into a monstrous canvas, so evil I almost didn’t recognize her.
Thud. Thud.
Her villainous smirk cut through me, carving open a wound so deep under my skin, so venomous, it rotted my flesh.
“Hello, Husband.”
Her voice…
Her voice, so fucking sweet, so fucking deadly.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
And then she pulled the trigger.
The last thing I saw was her face, beautiful even in her cruelty.
EPILOGUE
Serafina
Fear the Devil, for he was the master of trickery. He brought carnage and despair, wrapped you in an illusion and watched in the dark as chaos collided with the boundary of where calm resided.
But the Devil was a woman.
A woman scorned.
A woman who spent the last six years planning.
Waiting…and waiting for the right moment.
I was the perfect daughter.
I was the perfect wife.
And I was the perfect liar.
A cunning trickster. A wicked impostor.
There had been something devious about this game of his.
Adrian Salvatore thought he was in control.
But he was wrong.
He had been my pawn.
This was my story—
My vengeance.