His Heartless Betrayal: My Escape from the Mafia

Seraphina POV:

When I arrived at the cemetery gates, Damian was already there, leaning against his black sedan. A storm was brewing, the sky a canvas of bruised purple.

"Why didn't you let me come with you?" he asked, his tone laced with a reproach that cast him as the victim.

"How did you know I'd be here?" I asked, my voice flat, stripped of emotion.

"I felt unwell last night, so I went to the hospital," he said, the lie rolling off his tongue. "Isabella mentioned you were coming today."

He took my hand. I didn't pull away. I let his skin touch mine, feeling nothing but a distant, clinical cold. "I see," I murmured.

At my parents' graves, a wave of genuine grief washed over me, a pain entirely separate from the fresh hell of my marriage. As I placed the flowers on the cold stone, Isabella put a comforting hand on my shoulder.

"They're gone, Sera," she said softly. "But you have Damian. He'll take care of you and the baby for the rest of your lives."

Damian stepped forward, vowing to protect me, to protect our child. The irony twisted in my gut like a blade. I looked from the headstones to the two people who had destroyed my life and whispered to the wind.

"Don't worry. I will find a new home."

A light rain began to fall, tracing silver lines down the windows as Damian drove. With me and Isabella in the back seat, he took her suggestion of a favorite French bistro in the city—a place they used to go.

A flicker of genuine enthusiasm crossed his face as he immediately changed course. He and Isabella slipped into an easy, nostalgic conversation about the restaurant, their travels, their shared past. I was a ghost in the backseat, an invisible spectator to their private reunion, trapped in a car that felt more like a hearse.

At the restaurant, he instinctively handed the menu to Isabella. Flustered, she quickly passed it to me. I ordered the first thing I saw.

Damian frowned. "You can't have that. It's raw fish. Have you forgotten the doctor's orders?"

Isabella's eyes glanced at my stomach. "You don't look four months along," she remarked, her tone deceptively casual.

Damian's chair scraped back as he stood, needing to see for himself. In his haste, he blundered straight into a server's cart. Everything slowed. A tureen of steaming soup launched from the cart, flying through the air in a perfect, scalding arc aimed directly at me.

In that split second, Damian's instinct took over.

He didn't lunge for me. He didn't shield his pregnant wife.

He threw himself in front of Isabella, pulling her out of harm's way as the scalding liquid seared across my arm and side. The pain was immediate, searing. I crumpled in my seat, a silent scream trapped in my throat.

Through a haze of agony, I saw them. Isabella, horrified, was pushing him back towards me. "Go to your wife!"

"Your hand is burned!" he snarled at her, his eyes wild with a panic I'd never seen. He was oblivious to the stares, to my own injury, to everything but her. "I'm taking you to the hospital first."

His voice broke, raw with an emotion he had never, not once, shown me.

"Don't you understand? In my heart, Seraphina will never be as important as you!"

Isabella's face drained of all color, her eyes wide with horror not at my injury, but at his monstrous confession. She stared at him, then at me, as if seeing us both for the first time.