Novel-novel oleh TalesByHagar

Nina povThe town wakes slowly.Not like the city did. Not with sirens and engines and restless ambition. Here, mornings stretch instead of snap. The bakery opens before the sun fully rises. The same old man walks his dog past the square at exactly seven-twelve. The church bell rings even when no one is inside.I’ve learned the rhythm.My mother leaves early for the schoolhouse, her hands always smelling faintly of chalk and paper. She kisses my cheek before she goes. Sometimes she lingers. Sometimes she watches me like she’s afraid I might disappear.The café opens at eight.It isn’t large. Four small wooden tables inside. Two outside when the we

Dante povThe first explosion isn’t loud.Not where I’m standing.It’s a controlled demolition—surgical, timed to rupture steel without leveling concrete. A flash on the security feed. A bloom of orange from the edge of Dock 14. Then smoke, thick and rolling, swallowing crates that were never meant to be inventory.They were meant to be leverage.I stand in the operations room, lights dimmed, screens lining the wall in a grid of live feeds. Each one shows a different artery of Silvio’s empire. Ports. Storage units. A warehouse in the industrial district that hasn’t officially existed in three years.Alpha checks in through my earpiece.

Dante povSix months is enough time for flesh to close.Not enough time for what tore underneath it.The scar near my heart has faded from angry red to pale silver. It pulls when I twist too fast, when I reach too far. The doctors said I was lucky the bullet missed the artery by millimeters.Millimeters.I think about that sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night—how thin the line was between breath and silence.I push open the steel door.The hinges groan softly.The room greets me the way it always does—quiet, contained, heavy.

Nina povDante is still here.But he isn’t with me.I feel it in the way his gaze drifts past things instead of landing on them. In how his body is present—solid, breathing, healing—while something essential has pulled inward, retreating to a place I can’t reach with words.Grief has weight. And it’s pressing him down from the inside.I stand close to him in the hospital bathroom, the hum of fluorescent lights filling the silence between us. He sits on the edge of the sink, shoulders bare, a towel draped loosely around

Dante povRecovery is quieter than I expected.Not peaceful—just muted. Like the world has wrapped itself in cotton and decided to let me exist without fully participating. The rehabilitation wing smells less like antiseptic and more like time passing slowly: warm sheets, faint disinfectant, coffee gone cold somewhere down the hall.I sit in a chair most days.Sometimes I stand. Sometimes I take three careful steps with a therapist hovering too close, hands ready like I might shatter if I tilt wrong. My chest still burns when I breathe too deeply. My shoulder protests every movement. The scar pulls—an invisible reminder that my body remembers something my mind keeps circling without landing on.Nina is al

Nina povI’m already on the floor with him.I don’t remember getting there—only that my knees are burning against concrete and my hands are slick with blood, and Dante is too still beneath me. The world has narrowed to the rise of his chest. Too shallow. Too uneven. Every breath feels borrowed.“Stay with me,” I say, over and over, the words tearing out of my throat like I can stitch him together if I repeat them enough times. “Dante, look at me. Don’t close your eyes. Please—please don’t—”My hands press harder against his chest, useless pressure, frantic and shaking. Blood wells between my fingers, warm and terrifying. I try to wipe it away and only smear it wider, red streaks across his shirt,