Chapter: Chapter 42Milene's POVNobody slept much that night. The house stayed lit long after midnight, guards moving through hallways I still didn't fully know the shape of, Enzo's voice carrying low and urgent from somewhere near the study every time I passed close enough to catch fragments of it.Angelo found me eventually in the room Mara had prepared for me, the same wing, apparently, that had been mine before the crash, though nothing in it stirred any recognition beyond that same wordless ache that seemed to follow me everywhere in this house now. He'd cleaned the blood from his lip, though the bruise along his jaw had already started to darken, and he stood in the doorway like he wasn't sure he had the right to come further without being asked."Come in," I said.He crossed the room slowly, sitting on the edge of the bed beside me, close enough that I could feel the exhaustion radiating off him like heat. For
Last Updated: 2026-08-20
Chapter: Chapter 41Milene's POVThe drive back to the estate felt nothing like the first time I'd made it, months ago now, though I had no memory of that first drive to compare it to, only what Angelo had told me in the quiet stretches of the last few weeks. Iron gates. Trimmed hedges. A house too big to belong to anyone who actually wanted to live in it.None of it looked familiar. And yet something in my chest tightened the second the car turned up that long driveway, some wordless recognition my mind refused to hand over properly even as my body seemed to know exactly where we were."You don't have to do this today," Angelo said, watching my face carefully from the seat beside me. "We can wait. Regroup. Go in with more of a plan than we currently have.""Every day we wait is a day he gets more comfortable in a house that isn't his," I said, surprising myself with how steady it came out. "I want this over. However it happens."Enzo had gone
Last Updated: 2026-08-19
Chapter: Chapter 40Milene's POVSecurity showed up within the hour, two men Angelo introduced only by first names, quiet, watchful presences who took up posts I barely noticed until I went looking for them and found them exactly where I expected. The apartment, small as it was, started to feel less like a refuge and more like a place under siege, curtains drawn earlier than they needed to be, a schedule for grocery runs that no longer felt casual.I didn't complain. After what Angelo told me, I understood the fear driving it too well to resent the walls closing in slightly tighter around me.The weeks that followed settled into a rhythm I hadn't expected to find comforting, but did. Dr. Alvi twice a week, gentle, patient sessions that mostly amounted to me describing fragments and him cataloging them with the careful attention of a man building a puzzle out of pieces that refused to show their edges. Dr. Ferrer once a week, watching the pregnancy progress with qui
Last Updated: 2026-08-18
Chapter: Chapter 39Milene's POVI didn't sleep much that first night in the apartment, my mind circling too many questions to let my body settle into anything close to rest. Angelo had taken the couch without me having to ask, insisting on it before I'd even worked up the nerve to bring it up myself, and I lay awake in the unfamiliar bedroom listening to the quiet sounds of a stranger who apparently wasn't a stranger moving carefully around a space too small to fully avoid each other in.By morning, exhaustion had worn down enough of my guard that I found him in the kitchen, making coffee with the kind of careful concentration of a man trying to give his hands something to do besides shake."You're up early," he said, not turning around right away."I couldn't sleep.""Neither could I." He finally turned, two mugs in hand, sliding one across the counter toward me. "I kept waiting to hear you crying out. Habit, I think. You used to have nightm
Last Updated: 2026-08-17
Chapter: Chapter 38Milene's POVI gave him the address of the laundromat instead of the shelter itself, some instinct telling me not to hand a stranger, even one who apparently knew the exact shape of my old grief, the exact location of where I slept every night. Teresa didn't argue when I told her the next morning, just studied my face for a long moment before nodding once."You're sure," she said."No," I admitted. "But I need to know. Whatever I find out, I need to actually know it instead of guessing.""Fair enough." She squeezed my shoulder, brief and businesslike. "I'll be in the office. You need anything, you shout."He arrived faster than I expected, less than a day after the call, which told me something about the resources a man like that apparently had at his disposal even before I saw the car pull up outside, sleek and dark against the cracked pavement of a street that had never seen anything like it before.I watched him get out from behind the la
Last Updated: 2026-08-16
Chapter: Chapter 37Milene's POVI didn't call that night. I told myself I needed time, though really, I think I was scared of what picking up that phone might undo, some fragile equilibrium I'd built out of nothing but Teresa's blunt kindness and my own careful, guarded days.I carried the card with me everywhere for three days, tucked into the pocket of whatever cardigan I was wearing, tracing the edges of it with my thumb the way I used to trace patterns on tables I couldn't remember sitting at. Angelo Rossi. I said the name out loud once, alone in my narrow little room, testing the shape of it the same way I'd once tested my own.Nothing came back. No flood of memory, no sudden clarity. Just that same aching, wordless grief that had been sitting under my ribs since the first night I woke up in Nadia's care, except now it had a name attached to it, and somehow that made it worse instead of better."You haven't called," Teresa said on the fourth morning, setting my breakfa
Last Updated: 2026-08-16
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