Serafina
By the time I got home, my nerves were stripped raw. The press gauntlet, the staged smiles, the way Dante had used the room like a weapon—it all kept replaying. I locked the door, climbed the stairs on autopilot, and fell onto my bed. City light bled through the curtains in pale bars that snagged on the ring he’d slid onto my finger. It glittered back like a dare.
I pulled out my phone and called the only person who steadied me.
“Finally,” Amelia said, breathless and bossy all at once. “I’ve been refreshing ten different gossip feeds. Talk.”
“The conference was a circus,” I said. “He laced our fingers, said all the right words. I said them back. Cameras loved it.”
“I saw.” A beat. “And after?”
I stared at the ceiling. “After, he cornered me. Tried to turn a performance
