“He chose me.”
Silence stretched between us.
“Do you know why?” she asked softly.
I didn’t answer. I already knew the version of the truth she intended to sell.
“Because,” Seraphina said, pushing herself upright, “deep down, he’s always known you were nothing.”
There it was.
“A placeholder,” she continued calmly. “A stand-in for a woman he truly loved and lost. His first wife. The real Penelope. You were familiar. Convenient. Warm.” Her lips curved. “But never irreplaceable.”
Rage surged hot and violent, but I locked it down. Rage was what she wanted.
“I am Penelope,” I said instead, my voice low and steady. “And I never died.”
Seraphina’s laugh drifted through the room—soft, almost musical.
It reminded me of glass breaking under silk.
“Of course,” she said mildly, tilting her head as though indulging a foolish question. “I knew you were Penelope the moment you returned from Greece.”
She studied my face, clearly searching for cracks.
“Antonio knew,” she went on. “My entire family knew. You never fooled anyone who mattered.” A pause, deliberate. “Only Dmitri and Giovanni swallowed the little Pen performance you staged so carefully.”
She pushed away from the desk and began to circle the room, heels tapping against the marble floor with metronomic precision.
Each step felt timed—measured—as though she were counting down to something catastrophic.
“Do you remember,” she continued lightly, “when we had to take Vanya from Giovanni for those few precious hours—on the day of your secret little wedding to Dmitri—before we struck a deal that required me to return him?” She smiled faintly. “We snipped a lock of his hair.”
My breath hitched despite my effort to stay composed.
“Oh, don’t look so shocked,” she added, smiling. “We were meticulous. Gentle, even. We already had Dmitri’s DNA—from the Four Families summit months earlier. Men shed hair everywhere. Such careless creatures.”
Her eyes flicked back to mine.
“A simple DNA test,” she said. “The results were... predictable. Vanya is his son. Undeniably.”
The room seemed to constrict around me.
“You kidnapped a child,” I said, my voice dangerously quiet.
“Borrowed,” Seraphina corrected smoothly. “And returned without so much as a bruise. We’re not monsters.”
She stopped in front of the windows, sunlight gilding her profile, making her look almost angelic.
“We found it... amusing,” she went on, “that you kept up the lie. That you insisted on pretending to be some insignificant woman named Pen. That you allowed Dmitri to believe Vanya wasn’t his.”
Her gaze sharpened.
“It made everything easier. Dmitri could never fully love a woman he believed capable of lying about something so fundamental. A child. Blood.” She shrugged. “Men like him need certainty.”
She turned back to me slowly.
“So when the choice came in that warehouse,” she said, voice lowering, “save the liar... or save the woman who had always been honest—he chose me.”