Chapter 7 The Chill of Blood
The D’Angelis estate loomed before Seraphina like a fortress carved out of cold ambition. Glass and stone gleamed in the moonlight, polished to perfection, sharp as the teeth of a predator. Every line of the sprawling mansion spoke of power without mercy, beauty without warmth.
It was not a home. It was a throne with walls.
As she stepped through the wrought-iron gates, Seraphina felt the weight of her choice press down harder than the night air. She had left behind the crooked walls of the orphanage, its cracked windows glowing with candlelight, its air filled with the sound of laughter. That place had been fragile, imperfect, alive.
This was sterile. This was suffocating. This was hers by blood.
For a fleeting moment, she wondered if she had walked into a dream spun from her hunger for belonging. The marble floors stretched endlessly beneath her boots, each step echoing into the cavernous halls. Chandeliers glittered like crystal tears, dripping gold light onto portraits of grim ancestors whose eyes followed her every move. Servants bowed as she passed, but the precision of their bows was laced with fear, not reverence.
In this palace of wealth, Seraphina did not feel like a daughter returned. She felt like an intruder.
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Alessandra walked ahead of her, every heel strike against the polished floor a metronome of authority. Her gown whispered as she moved, silk brushing marble, her posture regal and unforgiving. Vittorio followed just behind, his silence heavier than stone, his gaze dissecting Seraphina as though she were an unfamiliar weapon displayed for inspection.
“Your room is prepared,” Alessandra said at last, her tone clipped, cool, impersonal. “You will find everything you need there.”
Everything I need. The words coiled tight around Seraphina’s ribs.
All her life she had wanted only one thing, not marble, not chandeliers, not silk. She had wanted arms that welcomed her. A voice that soothed the raw ache of abandonment. A home where blood meant belonging.
Instead, she received walls polished to shine, words polished to cut.
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At last, Vittorio’s voice broke the silence. Deep, deliberate, commanding. “You have grown strong. That much is clear.”
His eyes raked over her, not with affection, but with assessment. “You survived. Even thrived. I expected nothing less of my blood.”
Seraphina’s hands curled into fists at her sides. His words should have sparked warmth, recognition, pride. But they dripped instead with ownership, with the satisfaction of a breeder admiring a beast bred well.
She longed for the warmth of a father’s voice. What she found instead was a commander testing the edge of a blade.
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The dining hall stretched like a cathedral of excess. A table long enough to seat fifty gaped before her, polished silver and gleaming crystal placed with surgical precision. Servants filed in and out with silver trays laden with delicacies Seraphina had once only glimpsed in black-market kitchens, pheasant, oysters, candied fruits that glittered like jewels.
She sat where they directed her, the distance between her and her parents at the head of the table stretching wider than any battlefield.
Alessandra lifted her glass, scarlet wine catching the light as she regarded Seraphina over the rim. Her eyes glittered, cold and sharp.
“You will learn, Seraphina,” she said, her voice silken but merciless, “that in this family, weakness is not tolerated. Not in business. Not in loyalty. Not in blood.”
The words fell heavy, like chains dropped onto the table.
Seraphina swallowed hard. Her appetite shriveled. The food before her glistened with excess, yet her stomach twisted with hunger of another kind, a hunger that had nothing to do with delicacies and everything to do with love.
So this was their welcome. Not warmth, but warning. Not family, but indoctrination.
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Milo’s small voice echoed in her mind. You’ll come back, right?
The memory was a knife now, sharp with guilt, sharper with longing. She had left behind a world where loyalty was given freely, where love was raw and imperfect but real. She had traded it for this cold masquerade, two strangers who shared her blood but none of her heart.
Her voice was steady when she finally asked, “Why now?” Her gaze cut across the expanse of the table. “Why return to me after all these years?”
Alessandra’s smile was thin, slicing. “Because now, you are ready. Before, you were only a burden. Now…” Her eyes gleamed with satisfaction, not tenderness. “Now you are an asset.”
The word slammed into Seraphina like a hammer.
Not my daughter. Not a child. Not family.
Asset.
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For a moment, the girl within her, the one who had once prayed for parents to come, the one who still bled with abandonment, rose up raw and trembling. But she crushed it swiftly, as she always had. She forced the Phantom back into her veins, wrapped herself in the shadows that had kept her alive.
Her lips curved into a smile sharper than glass. “Then perhaps,” she murmured, voice soft, lethal, “you’ll find I am sharper than any asset you have ever owned.”
The silence that followed was thin and dangerous.
Vittorio’s gaze darkened, unreadable. Alessandra’s fingers tightened imperceptibly around the stem of her glass. For a heartbeat, the mask of parents cracked, and Seraphina glimpsed the truth beneath: they had not brought home a daughter. They had tried to summon a pawn.
But what they had drawn into their gilded cage was not obedience.
It was a storm.
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The meal ended in brittle civility, the clink of silverware echoing like distant gunfire. Servants cleared the dishes, their movements as rehearsed as soldiers in formation. Seraphina rose when told, followed the path of gleaming corridors to the chamber prepared for her.
Her new room was larger than the orphanage’s main hall, draped in silks, perfumed with roses. Dresses lined the wardrobes. Jewels glinted in open boxes on the vanity. A life crafted, ready-made, waiting for her to step into a costume.
But when the door closed behind her, the silence pressed heavily.
She crossed the room, her fingers brushing over fabric she did not choose, jewels she did not earn. Every surface glittered with the illusion of belonging, yet none of it felt hers.
The only thing she claimed as her own was the reflection staring back at her in the mirror.
Seraphina. Phantom. Daughter. Asset.
She touched the glass, her voice low, a vow between her and the shadows.
“They will never own me.”
And as the moonlight spilled across the cold marble floor, Seraphina smiled, not the smile of a child seeking family, but the smile of a predator biding her time.
Her parents thought they had brought home blood to bind.
They had instead welcomed a blade.
And blades cut deepest when they are closest to the heart.