Chapter Six: The Anatomy Of Fire

ELARA

The body remembers what the soul tries to forget.

Pain didn’t announce itself anymore. It hummed. A silent, steady rhythm under my skin, a haunting baseline to every movement I made. Recovery wasn’t linear. It wasn’t poetic. It was cruel. Relentless.

Physical therapy began two weeks after the bandages came off. I’d assumed surviving meant I’d done the hard part.

No.

The hard part was learning to live again.

Every morning started with an ache so deep it felt ancestral. My legs, though miraculously spared from the worst of the impact, trembled when I stood. The bones in my arms screamed with the memory of catching myself as I fell. The skin around my ribs, tight and new, pulled like it didn’t trust me to move.

The therapist was a kind woman named Alina, with a voice like chamomile and eyes that didn’t flinch when they saw my scars. She spoke Italian, but her patience translated well enough. I didn’t speak back—not yet. But she understood the winces, the sharp intakes of breath, the rigid way my fingers curled.

Every step was war.

Every stretch was a truce I had to beg my body to sign.

And every night? Every night was its own battlefield.

---

The nightmares didn’t wait until I slept. They crept in during moments of stillness. A spoonful of soup too quiet. A shadow crossing the hallway. The feel of water against my skin.

The sea haunted me.

I’d wake drenched in sweat, silent screams lodged in my throat, throat raw from the phantom echo of a voice that had once screamed Milo’s name as we tumbled.

Milo.

My little boy.

Some nights I saw his face in the window reflection. Other nights, I heard his laughter behind me, turning quickly only to find empty rooms and the guilt of being alive when he wasn’t.

---

Damien came often.

Never unannounced. Never demanding. He moved like a ghost made of steel—solid, present, and yet somehow distant.

He brought food. Books. An old record player I refused to touch. Not because I hated music. But because silence was safer. Music cracked the walls I worked so hard to keep intact.

He spoke little. Asked less. But he always noticed.

When I clenched my jaw too tight. When my hands trembled after therapy. When I sat too long in the dark.

And every time, he waited.

Waited for me to come back to myself.

Waited for the girl who used to laugh with her whole chest and trust with her whole heart.

Even if he never knew her.

But that girl was gone.

He knew it.

He never said it.

But he never asked for her back either.

---

One afternoon, after a particularly brutal session where my knees buckled and I hit the mat harder than I should've, I stayed on the ground. Breathing. Just breathing. Sweat dripped down my back. My heart pounded like it wanted out.

Damien crouched beside me.

"You lasted seven minutes longer today," he said.

I didn’t answer.

"You want to quit?"

I shook my head. I wasn’t sure if it was defiance or defeat.

He reached down and offered a hand. I stared at it. Then at him.

He didn’t flinch.

He didn’t ask again.

He just waited.

I took it.

His hand was warm. Calloused. Real.

He pulled me up slowly, like I was something valuable. Breakable. Sacred.

"Good girl," he murmured, more to himself than me.

Something cracked.

Something inside me curled toward that voice like it had been starved for it.

I hated that.

But I needed it.

---

That evening, I found myself sitting by the open window, knees tucked to my chest, the chill air licking my skin. The city below pulsed with life.

I wondered what they saw when they looked up. If anyone ever noticed the broken woman watching them from the dark.

Damien walked in, a tray in his hands.

"Soup. Hot. No mushrooms. You’re welcome."

I tilted my head.

"Don’t look at me like I don’t know your tells," he said, setting the tray on the table. "You flinched the first time they brought mushroom risotto. It was subtle, but I clocked it."

Smart, observant and dangerous.

I should’ve been scared of him.

But all I felt was seen.

I reached for the bowl and took a slow sip. Warm, salty and gentle.

Like him.

He didn’t sit. He just leaned against the wall and watched me.

"I need to ask you something," he said.

I raised a brow.

"You sure this is revenge you want? Not closure?"

I set the spoon down.

Then, slowly, I reached for the notepad beside me and wrote:

What’s the difference?

He took a moment. Then said, "Closure is an ending. Revenge is a beginning. One puts the past to rest. The other makes it bleed."

I stared at the words. Then wrote:

What if I want both?

He smirked. "Then you’ll need to know exactly what you’re made of. Because one of those paths will try to destroy you."

I didn’t ask which.

I already knew.

And I wasn’t scared.

Not anymore.

---

Days turned into weeks.

My movements became smoother. The limp faded. The tremors dulled. My reflection became more unfamiliar. Not beautiful. Not yet. But more unfamiliar.

The face, the woman in the mirror wasn't me.

My face was still red and swollen but the doctor said it'll go eventually.

My voice, though, remained stubborn.

Whispers. Gravel. Breaths that trembled too easily.

But I made peace with silence.

It let me listen better.

One night, I found Damien outside on the terrace, a cigarette balanced between his fingers though he never smoked it. Just held it like a ritual.

I stepped beside him, wrapped in a blanket, hair still damp from a bath.

He glanced at me. "Couldn’t sleep?"

I shook my head.

"Nightmares?"

A pause.

Then I nodded.

He didn’t offer comfort.

He offered presence.

And sometimes, that was louder than any lullaby.

---

Eventually, he brought me a name.

Just one.

The man who catered Ethan and Sienna’s engagement party.

They planned on hiring him as a private chef.

What better way to have intel from within?

"He has a daughter. Diagnosed with leukemia last year. Expensive treatments. Ethan paid for them."

I looked at the file.

"You sure you want to start there?" Damien asked.

I nodded.

He didn’t smile.

But he didn’t stop me.

The burn had begun.

Not a blaze.

Not yet.

Just a flicker.

But oh, how it would spread.