"At that moment, I felt that marrying him was worth everything in this life."

I stood up.

"And now you're telling me to just let it go?"

"What he owes me cannot be settled."

Chapter 6

The second batch of information from Felix arrived slower than I had anticipated.

I waited a full five days.

When he called, his voice sounded rather strange.

"Are you sure you want to look at this?"

"Spit it out."

"Seraphina's background is sealed incredibly deep. It took a lot of effort just to pull the right strings."

"Get to the point."

"Her residency profile was only created three years ago under a different name. Her previous legal residence wasn't Savannah; it was Nashville."

"Nashville."

My fingers tightened slightly around the phone.

She had changed her name; Seraphina wasn't her original name.

"What was it before?"

The other end of the line went dead silent for two seconds.

"We're still looking into that. Her mother's information is under an even stricter lockdown. My people only managed to get a last name."

"What last name?"

"Madeline."

I froze.

"Madeline."

"Are you there?"

"Keep digging."

I hung up the phone.

The device felt hot in my palm.

Madeline.

Nashville.

The simultaneous appearance of these two details violently stirred up things I thought had long sunk to the bottom of the ocean.

I hadn't seen my mother since I was six years old.

Her name was Madeline.

When she divorced my father back then, she abandoned me to him, walked away, and never returned.

Later, my father sank into alcoholism and domestic abuse, and my stepfather became even more brutal.

She never showed her face once.

I didn't even know if she was alive or dead.

And now, Seraphina's mother shared the exact same name.

Seraphina's original hometown was Nashville.

After my mother left all those years ago, someone mentioned she had gone to Nashville.

I told myself it was just a coincidence.

It was a common name, and Nashville was a major city.

But the needle driven deep into my heart was already starting to draw blood.

That evening, Ethan came home.

He reeked of alcohol.

He leaned against the doorframe staring at me, remaining silent for a long time.

I stared right back at him.

"Lana."

He finally spoke, his voice slightly slurred.

"Why can't you just leave things be?"

"Why do you insist on pushing this to the point of no return?"

I stood up from the sofa.

"You came back just to tell me this?"

"I came back," he walked over and sat down across from me, "to tell you to stop digging."

A chill ran down my spine.

"You know I'm digging?"

"Your people tried to access some databases they shouldn't have." He rubbed his temples. "Lana, I'm begging you, don't look into this any further."

"Why?"

"There are some things you are better off not knowing."

"What could there possibly be that I am not allowed to know?"

He gave no answer.

He stood up and headed for the stairs.

"If you won't tell me, I'll find out myself."

He stopped on the third step of the staircase.

His back was turned to me.

"And what if you do find out? Will it make her cease to exist?"

He went upstairs.

The bedroom door clicked shut.

I stood frozen in place.

He had just said a very strange sentence.

There are some things you are better off not knowing.

If Seraphina were just an ordinary mistress, what could possibly be so dangerous about knowing her past?

Unless.

She was anything but an ordinary mistress.

Chapter 7

Early the next morning, Seraphina showed up again.

This time, she wasn’t alone.

Following closely behind her was a woman in her early forties, dressed in a haute couture suit. She was immaculately preserved, her makeup flawless.

I didn’t recognize her.

But the moment Seraphina stepped through the door, her entire demeanor shifted.

The last time she came, she at least bothered to play the part of a pitiful victim. This time, she didn’t even bother to hide it.

She walked straight over, sat in the armchair I usually occupied, and crossed her legs.

"Alaina, we left in a bit of a hurry last time. There were a few things I didn’t get to finish saying."

I stood at the turn of the staircase, refusing to walk down.

"Who gave you the audacity to bring a complete stranger into my home?"

Seraphina laughed.

"Ethan did, of course."

She casually jingled a set of keys in her hand.

"He gave me a spare key to this villa. He told me I could come over whenever I pleased."

The woman behind her sat down as well, casting a dismissive gaze around the living room, a faint sneer playing at the corner of her lips.

"Nice place. Ethan certainly turned out to be capable."

Seraphina glanced at the woman, then turned her eyes back to me.

"About what you did to me last time—I didn’t tell Ethan the truth. I told him it was an accident, not that you forced my hand."

She twirled a strand of hair around her finger, speaking in a slow, deliberate drawl.

"So, technically, you owe me a favor now."

I walked down the stairs.

I took a seat directly across from her.

"Did you come all this way just to tell me that?"

"Of course not."

She pulled a compact mirror from her purse and began touching up her makeup.

"I came to let you know that I’m pregnant again."

She stroked her flat stomach, her face bearing the exact expression of a soldier flaunting a war trophy.

"Ethan was absolutely ecstatic this time. He said he’s taking me for a full medical evaluation and hiring the finest doctors to oversee everything."

"He said that no matter what, we are keeping this one."

She snapped her compact shut and stared at me.

"So, Alaina, do you still want to try anything?"

"Last time, you caught me off guard, so I took the hit. This time, why don’t you look at who’s standing at the front door?"

I glanced toward the entrance.

Two burly bodyguards.

They weren’t my people.

Ethan had assigned them to her.

"Alaina, you’ve been married to Ethan for four years, yet you haven’t managed to give him a single child."

She stood up and walked right up to me.

"You did carry one once, didn’t you? Too bad you couldn’t keep it."

"If that child were alive today, it would be three years old by now, wouldn’t it?"

Behind me, Mrs. Higgins clenched her fists so hard her knuckles turned white.

My face remained entirely devoid of emotion.

"Are you finished?"

"Not quite."

Seraphina crouched down, forcing me to look her dead in the eye.

"Ethan told me that once the baby is born, he’s going to lay his cards on the table with you."

"What cards?"

"He’s going to make you accept me."

"Accept you?"

"Yes. He said he won't divorce you, but he won't give me up either."

"He told me the history between the two of you runs too deep, and he can’t bring himself to cast you aside. But he can’t live without me, either."

"So, he’s looking for a solution where he can have both."

A solution where he could have both.

I suddenly burst into laughter.

"Seraphina, do you know he killed a man for me years ago?"

Her smile faltered for a split second.

"Do you know he spent ten years in prison for me?"

"Do you know I suffered a miscarriage for him and nearly died on that operating table?"

"You say he can’t live without you."

I stood up, looking down at her from my full height.

"Then why don't you take a wild guess—can he live without me?"

"What exactly do you have to compete with me? A pretty face? A fertile womb?"

"The things he and I endured together are things you will never comprehend in your entire life."

Seraphina stood up.

The smug smile vanished from her face.

But within seconds, she forced her delicate, fragile facade back into place.

"You’re right. I didn’t endure any of those hardships with him."

"But what does any of that matter now?"

"The woman he holds right now is me. The woman he kisses is me. And the child he is desperate to protect is mine."

"No matter how glorious your past was, it’s still just the past."

The woman sitting behind her hadn't uttered a single word, but she was smiling.

That smile made me incredibly uncomfortable.

It wasn't Seraphina’s youthful, arrogant brand of triumph.

It was a deeper, far more insidious kind of satisfaction.

As if she were watching a play whose tragic ending she had orchestrated long ago.

"The men outside might belong to him," I said, walking over to the coffee table and picking up my water glass.

"But this house is registered under my name."

I raised the glass.