Chapter 11 - THE WOMAN NICO ALMOST MARRIED
Serafina survived.
The bullet passed through muscle beneath her ribs.
No artery.
No organ.
She woke the next morning under guard.
Nico visited her once.
I was in the hallway when he entered.
I should have walked away.
I didn’t.
“You saved Tomas,” he said.
Serafina looked toward the window.
“I helped put him in danger.”
“Yes.”
“I helped kill Lucia.”
“Yes.”
“I came here to kill you.”
“Yes.”
She finally looked at him.
“Then why are you here?”
Nico took the fake necklace from his pocket.
Sterling silver.
Synthetic emerald.
The thing she had worn at the dinner table while pretending to become a Bellandi.
He placed it beside her bed.
“Because I wanted you to see this.”
She stared at it.
“You replaced one hundred years of my family with something worth two hundred dollars.”
Her mouth trembled.
Nico continued.
“But the cheapest thing you brought into my house wasn’t the necklace.”
She closed her eyes.
“It was every promise you made while wearing it.”
A tear moved down her cheek.
Nico turned toward the door.
“Your father has been informed you are alive.”
Serafina looked up.
“What did he say?”
“Nothing.”
Nico paused.
“He asked whether Rafael had the necklace.”
That destroyed something inside her.
Not because she had expected her father to love her.
Because some part of her had hoped he might ask whether she had been shot.
He hadn’t.
Nico opened the door.
“Nico.”
He stopped.
“I did love you.”
He did not turn around.
“Maybe.”
She cried silently.
Nico looked back once.
“But you loved the mission more.”
Then he left.
Serafina Rinaldi eventually testified.
Not because she became good.
Not because love magically erased what she had done.
Because her father abandoned her the instant she failed.
And because Rafael had kept records showing Vittorio Rinaldi intended to have his own daughter killed after the wedding.
She gave prosecutors names.
Accounts.
Locations.
Enough to tear the Rinaldi organization apart.
She would spend years in prison.
Saving Tomas did not erase Lucia.
May you like
Nothing could.
That was one lesson nobody in the Bellandi house tried to make prettier than it was.
