Serafina Russo
Serafina Russo
Chiara Amato was married at twenty-one to seal a truce. Ten years later the truce is dead, the marriage is dead, and Chiara has nothing with her name on it. When she files for divorce, her husband's brother offers her a deal. Lorenzo Ferraro runs the family and is the only man Matteo is afraid of. Stay married six more months, keep the ceremonial face, and walk away with money, a passport, and no one following. She takes it. Six months becomes nine. She sits through dinners and funerals and learns the names of every man who runs the family - and then one of them threatens her sister. Chiara stops playing. She goes to a commissioner who has been building a file for two years and gives him everything except one name. The family is dismantled from the top. She is not. She leaves with an apartment of her own and a passport in a drawer she does not open.