Shackled Hearts

Chapter Twelve

Serafina

The car ride home was a coffin of silence. Not the peaceful kind, but the suffocating, heavy kind that pressed down like stone. The hum of the engine filled the air, steady and unrelenting, while the city lights flashed against the windows in gold and red streaks.

My father sat in the front, shoulders stiff, jaw set so hard I thought he might break a molar. His hands were fists on his knees, and every so often I saw the faint twitch of his knuckles in the reflection of the glass. My mother sat beside him, folded neatly like a porcelain figurine, her hands laced tight in her lap. White knuckles. Lips pale. She looked as though she might shatter if anyone breathed too hard.

Beside me in the back seat, Amelia radiated the opposite—smug energy, satisfaction rolling off her like heat. Her arms were loose, her chin tilted up, and she practically vibrated with a sense of victory.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” my mother finally whispered. The sound was so fragile, it barely carried over the hum of the tires.

“Not in their house. Not in front of them.”

My laugh was sharp and humorless. “What would you have me do? Sit there and smile while they chain me to him? Pretend this is some fairytale?”

“You humiliated us,” my father snapped, his voice suddenly booming, breaking the fragile quiet like a whip crack. His fist slammed against the side of the seat so hard the sound ricocheted around the car. My mother flinched, shrinking into herself. “In front of Romano. In front of him.”

I turned my head, met his fury with steel. “Then maybe now you’ll understand how humiliating it is for me.”

For a moment, the car was silent except for the rhythm of the tires. Then Amelia leaned forward, her tone bright and poisonous all at once. “She’s right. You saw Old Romano’s face. You saw Dante’s. If anyone was humiliated tonight, it wasn’t us.”

“Enough,” my father barked, snapping his head around. The veins in his temple stood out, his voice thick with fury. “Do you think they’ll forget this? Do you think Dante will forget?”

The name sliced through the car like a blade. The air went thin, sharp in my lungs.

I turned to the window again, but the city lights outside blurred until they were little more than streaks of color. Dante’s face haunted me even there—the way he hadn’t flinched, the way he’d leaned back calm as stone. And then that smile. That insufferable, maddening smile, like I’d only given him another reason to play.

By the time we reached the house, my mother was trembling with the effort of keeping herself together. She bolted from the car the moment the driver stopped, retreating into the sanctuary of shadows and silence inside. Amelia stepped out with me, pausing long enough to squeeze my arm, a thrill still dancing in her grin. She was exhilarated. I envied it.

But my father stayed where he was. He turned slowly, looming in the open doorway of the car, his face caught in half-shadow beneath the porch light. He didn’t shout this time. He didn’t need to.

“You’ve started something you don’t understand,” he said, voice low and threaded with warning.

“Pray you can finish it.”

The words crawled under my skin like fire.

I climbed the stairs without answering, my heels digging into the wood with sharp, angry clicks. When I reached my room, I kicked them off with more force than necessary, sending them tumbling into the corner. My desk waited, silent, the envelope of photos lying there like an accusation. Evidence of what I’d done. Evidence of the fire I had struck.

Downstairs, Amelia’s voice floated up—cheerful, teasing, light. Like she hadn’t just watched me set a room full of wolves ablaze. I envied her ease. She could laugh in the face of consequences. I couldn’t.

I sat on the edge of my bed and buried my hands in my face. The quiet pressed in, so complete that the only sound was the furious hammer of my own heartbeat.

I had wanted to win. To prove I wasn’t some pawn to be pushed across a board. For a moment, I had. I’d seen it—Old Romano’s fury, my father rattled, the entire table thrown into chaos. That was victory.

But victory didn’t feel like this.

When I closed my eyes, I didn’t see them. I saw Dante.

I saw the way he hadn’t wavered. The way he’d leaned back like none of it mattered. Calm as stone. And then that damned smile—slow, deliberate, infuriating. Like I hadn’t cut him down at all but only fed him the rope he’d use to tie me tighter.

A shiver ran through me, equal parts fury and something else I refused to name.

“Damn you,” I muttered, dragging the envelope open, pulling out the photos. The glossy images gleamed under the lamplight, cold and unforgiving. Proof, I told myself. Proof of his betrayal, his arrogance. But even as I stared at them, I could hear his voice in my head: irrelevant.

My hands curled into fists.

I shoved the photos back into the envelope, stuffed it deep into the drawer, and slammed it shut. Out of sight. Not out of mind. Never out of mind.

I lay back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. The chandelier cast long, broken shadows across the plaster, shapes that stretched like bars across my vision. My father’s warning echoed in my skull: You’ve started something you don’t understand.

And maybe he was right. Maybe I hadn’t fully understood what I’d lit tonight. But it was too late to snuff it out.

Because the truth burned cruel and bright: I had drawn blood. But Dante Romano had looked at me as if I’d only woken the wolf.

And wolves didn’t stay leashed forever.

I turned my head into the pillow, jaw tight, heart racing. My father thought I was reckless. Maybe I was. But reckless or not, I wasn’t backing down.

If I had started a war, then I’d fight it.

And if Dante wanted to bare his teeth, then he’d learn something too—wolves might hunt, but queens never bow.