Morning arrived not with light but with humiliation.
Seraphina Moretti did not sleep—not truly, not in any way that counted. She lay curled in the plush guest bed, sheets tangled around her legs like pale, suffocating vines, staring into the darkness even long after dawn broke. Her entire body burned with a heat that refused to fade, a fever born not of sickness but of memory—of what she had seen, what she had done, and what she had left behind in his room.
The scarf.
Her scarf.
Her stupid, delicate silk scarf that she had clutched to her neck the entire night she first met Adrian's mother, eager to look refined… and which now sat in his room, with him, after she had fled like some shameful intruder.
Every time she closed her eyes she saw him again—towering in the dim glow of his room, the lines of his muscles sharp and unyielding beneath the low light, his shoulders wide, back sculpted like marble cut by a sculptor possessed by grief. The sight had stolen her breath and dignity in equal measure. She had pressed herself into that cramped little corner for hours, trembling like an addict starving for something she had never wanted until she lost it.
She could still remember how he looked when he entered—hair tousled from work, eyes blank and exhausted, movements carved from discipline rather than any softness she once knew. And when he undressed… God. The shame alone made her squeeze her thighs together under the covers.
She buried her burning face beneath a pillow.
You're disgusting, Sera. Disgusting, pathetic, desperate.You didn't even come because you care. You came because you can't stand losing what you used to mock.
She had hated him once for being a clingy, overeager heir with love spilling from his pockets like candy. She had wished—horribly—that he would disappear the way his parents had, because it made everything simpler. No obligations, no guilt, no fiancé she never wanted.
But now?
He was no longer that boy.He was a man carved from catastrophe.A man who moved like a storm with a human heartbeat.
And she was the one orbiting him now—pathetic, small, needy.
She slapped a hand over her face again.
"Oh my God… I actually hid in his room. I actually watched him. What is wrong with me…?"
There was no answer. Only the pounding throb of humiliation pulsing behind her ears.
When the staff knocked gently at her door announcing breakfast, her stomach rolled.
She never saw him at breakfast. Or lunch. Or dinner. He existed in another world, orbiting through the house like a quiet phantom—always leaving before dawn, returning after midnight, eating his meals at his office or not at all. She had eaten alone every day she had been here.
But she needed food—if only to keep herself from fainting if he confronted her about the scarf.
He can't know. He can't possibly know I was in there.Right? Right?
She spent nearly twenty minutes preparing herself, trying to look composed, elegant, innocent. She brushed her hair three times over, applied light foundation, picked a soft cream dress—something demure, something that could say I am a well-raised fiancée, not a pervert who hid in your closet for hours watching you change.
She practiced her expression in the mirror.
Calm. Graceful. Untouched.
Her cheeks betrayed her—still red, flushing with the memory of—
"Stop," she hissed at her reflection, slapping both cheeks lightly. "Get a grip."
She left her room.
The hallway felt colder today—as if it too remembered her trespass, holding the air tighter, judging her. She descended the stairs with the poise she had been born and groomed into.
And then she stepped into the dining room.
And froze.
Because he was there.
Sitting at the long table like an unmovable monolith, sleeves rolled to his forearms, sipping dark coffee as if this were the most ordinary thing in the world.
Her breath died in her throat.
He didn't look up at her immediately, but the moment her foot crossed the threshold, his eyes lifted—slowly, intentionally—locking onto hers with a stillness that made her knees nearly buckle.
He was calm.Too calm.The kind of calm that follows a long night of deciding things he wouldn't say aloud.
"Good morning," he said, voice steady as stone.
She swallowed, her throat clicking like a faulty mechanism.
"G-Good morning…"
She took a seat across from him, the wood chair suddenly feeling like an execution seat. She tried to ladle fruit onto her plate, but her hands shook; a blueberry rolled across the table like her dignity fleeing the scene.
He didn't comment.
He simply watched her. Unreadable, unbothered, unmoved.
And then he reached beside him.
Her heart stopped.
Because he placed it on the table between them—her scarf. Folded neatly. Clean. Untouched. Innocent-looking in the cruelest way.
Her vision went white around the edges.
She felt like the room had tilted, like gravity had shifted beneath her. That small piece of silk she had dropped—forgotten in her frantic escape—now sat like an execution order.
"You left something," he said quietly.
His tone was gentle.
Too gentle.
Which terrified her more than anger ever could.
She opened her mouth. No sound came out. She couldn't even muster a flimsy excuse. Her throat knotted itself like a terrified animal trying to disappear inside her ribcage.
He didn't blink. Didn't offer explanation. Didn't ask questions. His eyes held hers with no hostility, no warmth—just a deep, steady seriousness she couldn't read.
He tapped the table once with a finger.
"Do not," he said softly, "test my patience again."
Every word hit like a flat, cold hand to the face.
She felt tiny.Like a child scolded for something shameful.Like a trespasser who had not only crossed a line but betrayed it.
Her cheeks burned so fiercely she wanted to run out of the room, out of the mansion, out of the country. Shame licked up her spine, hot and cruel, because he was right. She had done something unforgivable, something twisted, something she would have mocked another girl for doing.
She blurted out the only thing she could think:
"I—I'm sorry—"
"You don't need to apologize," he interrupted.
Which somehow made it worse.
He lifted his cup again, indifferent as if her humiliation wasn't even something he needed to acknowledge.
"Just don't repeat it."
His attention returned to his tablet, his coffee, his work.
She was dismissed.Dismissed like someone who meant nothing.
And that, somehow, hurt more than the reprimand.
She stared at her plate, appetite gone, heart pounding, throat tight. His presence felt overwhelming. She felt like a voyeur dragged into the sun, stripped, exposed. The embarrassment churned inside her—hot, mortifying, violent.
She clutched her hands under the table to stop them shaking.
He didn't look at her again.
Not once.
And Seraphina Moretti—who had always believed the world bent for her—sat there feeling like a creeping intruder who had been caught stealing warmth she no longer deserved.