SERAFINA’S POV
My office was suffocating. Not because it was small—Sebastian had built it like a command center, towering bookshelves, a thick mahogany desk, bulletproof glass—but because every inch of it held memories.
Memories of him.
And now, memories of a ghost who refused to stay buried.
I stared at the photo in my hand. My mother. Benedetta Castio. She had the same dark hair, same sharp eyes, same stubborn tilt to her chin. And standing beside her, arm lazily thrown around her waist, was a man I’d once tried to erase from my memory.
Giovanni Castio.
My biological father.
Il codardo.
He had haunted my nightmares for years. Not his face—because I barely remembered it—but the absence of him. The empty seat at school recitals. The missing hand when I fell off my bike. The cold si
