Fake Death, Real Exorcist, Don Never Forgot Chapter 07
I didn’t answer.
He asked again, “What’s his full name?”
“Cassian Castiglione. My last name.”
That day, Donovano stood at the foot of the steps for a long time.
In the end, he only said, “Settle Donna… Settle Miss Miller in so she can rest.”
At least he didn’t dare force me any further.
But that night, Lysandra came.
She wore a white suit. Her face had thinned, and the arrogance and old-money shine she once carried were long gone.
Two Visconti bodyguards stood behind her.
She didn’t look like a guest. More like a prisoner who had been allowed out of her cage for a few minutes.
When she saw me, she froze at first. Then she smiled. “So you really didn’t die.”
I smiled too. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
She glanced at the bodyguards behind her.
“I need to speak to Serafina alone.”
The guards didn’t move.
I lifted my eyes toward the doorway.
“Let her talk.”
The men by the door hesitated, then finally stepped back to the end of the hall.
Lysandra sat across from me and stared straight at my face.
“You know what I hate most about you?”
“You never have to fight for anything. You never have to take anything. Someone always brings the best of everything right to your feet.”
I poured myself a glass of water.
“Are you talking about my brother, or Donovano?”
Her expression shifted.
“You think Renaldi was some prize? He was a tool I chose.”
“Too bad that tool didn’t stay in your hand.”
Lysandra’s eyes turned cold at once.
“Serafina, you came back at the perfect time.”
“For five years, Donovano kept me trapped in New York. He stripped Voss of its docks, cut off every offshore account I had, but he never truly touched me. Do you know why?”
I looked at her without speaking.
The corner of her mouth slowly lifted.
“Because he was scared.”
“Scared you were really dead. Scared he would never find you again. So he kept me alive. The first person who told him how to call back a soul.”
She leaned forward slightly, her voice soft as venom.
“But now that you’re back, I’m useless.”
“So guess what? Who do you think he’ll protect first?”
Lysandra had come to drive a wedge between us.
And to test me.
She wanted to see if old feelings would flare up again. If I would soften.
What she didn’t know was that the one thing I had mastered over the past five years was hardening my heart.
I asked her, “Did you really want to destroy Visconti’s business back then?”
She gave a low laugh.
“Of course not. I only wanted to see him break his own rules for me. But he wouldn’t. So I refused to lose.”
She stared at me, her eyes twisted with pleasure.
“I made him believe you died because of him.”
“Then I made him believe you might not be dead after all.”
“The worst thing isn’t losing someone.”
“It’s getting them back, only to lose them again.”
I set down my glass.
“So you used my life to feed your pathetic love story?”
“Love story?”
Lysandra looked as if she’d heard something ridiculous.
“Serafina, you’re wrong.”
“People like us don’t want love.”
“We want to win.”
She rose to leave.
When she reached the door, she suddenly turned back.
“Oh, and there’s one more thing you don’t know.”
“The burned body left behind after your fake death? That wasn’t one of the people you arranged.”
My heart clenched hard.
Her smile turned vicious.
“Voss put that body there on purpose.”
“Because I wanted Donovano to hold it with his own hands.”
“Only then would he truly go mad.”
That same night, I repeated every word Lysandra had said to Donovano.
When I finished, he said nothing for a long time.
Only one desk lamp was on in the estate study. Outside the windows, the Hudson River lay black and heavy.
His profile was pulled tight, like a bow drawn to its limit.
“You believe her?”
I said flatly, “Whether I believe her doesn’t matter. What matters is whether Don Visconti has the nerve to investigate.”
The title Don Visconti clearly cut him again.
He closed his eyes for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was low and steady.
“Then I’ll prove it.”
And that investigation tore open an old case that had been sealed shut for five years.
The burned body had not been the substitute I arranged.
It had belonged to a cleaner secretly trained by the Voss family.
They also found that while Lysandra was overseas with Renaldi, she had used his name several times to access dock freight records, private security routes, underground casino ledgers, and equity files for several of Visconti’s legitimate businesses.
On the day the evidence was laid out, Lysandra finally stopped pretending.
She sat in the center of the Visconti family conference room, both hands pinned to the table, but her chin remained high.
“I did it. So what?”
“Why do all of you think you get to blame me?”
She looked at Donovano, hatred still burning in her eyes.
“If you had guarded that position for me back then, if you had let me become Donna, why would I have ever gone this far?”
Donovano looked at her with terrifying coldness.
“Your mistake is that even now, you still think other people should pay for your greed.”
Lysandra turned to me.
Then she suddenly laughed.
“Don’t get too pleased with yourself, Serafina.”
“Today, he can go insane trying to find you. Tomorrow, he can go insane again trying to keep you.”
“A mafia Don’s love is the cheapest thing in the world.”