The Devil I Married

Serafina

The first rule my father ever taught me was simple:

Love is a liability.

I learned it when I was eight years old, standing barefoot on cold marble while men screamed behind a locked door. I didn’t cry. I didn’t ask questions. I learned that silence was survival, and obedience was currency.

Tonight, standing in my father’s office twenty years later, that lesson coils tight around my throat.

The room smells like cigars and old money—leather, smoke, blood scrubbed too clean to linger. The walls are lined with dark wood paneling imported from Italy decades ago, when the Vitale family still ruled from Palermo before New York became our throne. Everything in this room exists to remind people of power. The heavy desk. The low lighting. The men who stand silently along the walls, armed and expressionless.

And my father.

Don Alessandro Vitale doesn’t look at me when he speaks.

“The war ends,” he says calmly, tapping ash into a crystal tray. “Tonight.”

My fingers curl slowly at my sides. I keep my spine straight, my face smooth. I am wearing black—always black when business is being discussed. My hair is pulled back into a low, severe knot at the nape of my neck. I look like what I am meant to be.

A daughter.

A bargaining chip.

A weapon wrapped in silk.

“How?” I ask quietly.

He finally lifts his eyes to me then, sharp and assessing, the same eyes that taught me how to lie without blinking and how to smile while men bled at our feet.

“You will marry Dante Russo.”

The words land like a gunshot.

I don’t flinch. I don’t gasp. I don’t do anything as weak as react.

But something inside me fractures.

Dante Russo.

The name alone carries weight in this city. It is whispered with fear, spat with hatred, spoken only when necessary. He is the head of the Russo syndicate—the rival family that has been bleeding us dry for the last eighteen months. Ports shut down. Men disappearing. Entire crews wiped out and left displayed like warnings.

Dante Russo doesn’t wage wars.

He ends them.

“I see,” I say after a moment, because I was trained to respond even when my chest feels hollowed out. “And if I refuse?”

My father exhales slowly through his nose, like a patient man indulging a child.

“You won’t.”

A muscle tightens in his jaw. He stands, towering behind his desk, his tailored suit immaculate. This man raised me on strategy and sacrifice. He taught me chess before I learned how to read, politics before fairy tales.

And now, he is offering me up like a peace treaty written in flesh.

“The Russos demanded you,” he continues. “Not territory. Not money. You.”

I swallow.

“Why?”

A dangerous question—but I’ve earned the right to ask it.

“Because Dante Russo does nothing without reason,” my father replies. “And because marrying you binds him to us in blood. It makes betrayal… inconvenient.”

Inconvenient.

As if I am not the one being handed to a man rumored to execute traitors with his bare hands. A man said to have never taken a lover he did not control completely. A man whose enemies vanish so thoroughly that even their names are erased.

I lift my chin.

“When?”

“Three weeks.”

My breath stutters—but only once.

“That’s impossible,” I say. “There are protocols. Announcements. Church—”

“The church will be paid,” he interrupts coldly. “The announcements will be handled. You will leave this house in three weeks as Serafina Vitale.”

He steps closer, his shadow swallowing me whole.

“And you will return to it as Serafina Russo.”

The name feels wrong in my mouth. Heavy. Like a chain.

“What do you know about him?” I ask.

My father studies me for a long moment, his gaze piercing, calculating. Then—

“Nothing I can use against him.”

That terrifies me more than anything else.

I don’t scream when I leave his office.

I don’t cry.

I walk the halls of the Vitale estate with measured steps, my heels clicking softly against marble floors polished to a mirror shine. Guards nod respectfully as I pass. Servants avert their eyes.

Everyone knows something has shifted.

By the time I reach my bedroom, the walls feel like they are closing in.

I lock the door behind me and lean my forehead against the wood, breathing through the pressure building in my chest. My reflection stares back at me from the mirrored wardrobe—dark eyes, flawless makeup, a face that has never betrayed its owner.

I wonder how many times Dante Russo has looked at a woman and decided she belonged to him.

I wonder if he will see me as a prize.

Or a threat.

Or something far worse.

My phone vibrates in my hand.

A message.

Unknown number.

DANTE RUSSO:

You should pack light.

My blood runs cold.

I stare at the screen, my pulse pounding in my ears. Slowly, deliberately, I type back.

SERAFINA:

I wasn’t aware we were speaking yet.

The reply comes instantly.

DANTE:

We are always speaking. You just haven’t realized it.

A shiver crawls down my spine.

I don’t respond.

Another message appears.

DANTE:

Three weeks is generous. I would have taken you tonight.

My fingers tremble—just slightly.

SERAFINA:

Taken implies consent was never part of the discussion.

There is a pause this time. Long enough for dread to bloom.

Then—

DANTE:

You’re learning quickly, wife.

I drop the phone like it burns.

That night, sleep refuses to come.

I lie awake beneath silk sheets, staring at the ceiling, imagining a man I have never met and already belong to. Every rumor I’ve ever heard about Dante Russo circles my thoughts like vultures.

They say he doesn’t raise his voice.

They say he never touches what isn’t his.

They say once he claims something, he destroys anyone who tries to take it from him.

Including family.

I turn onto my side, clutching a pillow to my chest.

I have survived this world because I understand power.

And now, I am about to marry it.

Somewhere across the city, a man I have never touched is already deciding how I will kneel—or if I ever will.

And the most dangerous truth of all?

A part of me wants to find out.