PEACE

Camila’s POV

It’s funny how quiet feels like peace… until you finally get it. Then it feels like punishment.

I drop the keycard onto the side table and step inside the hotel room, not bothering to turn on the lights. The door clicks shut behind me with finality. The room is pristine, warm-toned, calm, everything I thought I wanted. But the moment I stand still, it hits me harder than I expected.

There’s no Matteo yelling from another room, no step-sister calling for water she could easily get herself.

No forced small talk or tight smiles, It was just silence and me.

Still bleeding, even if the wounds are invisible now.

I sink down onto the edge of the bed, keeping my spine straight because slouching hurts too much. My body aches, dull and deep in my side, and sharper in my chest. I press a hand to my abdomen, and my palm stays there for a long time, as if it might find something. As if it might feel what used to be.

I had a baby in there. I hadn’t said the word out loud, not even once, not even to myself but it was true. And now… it’s not.

I lie back and stare at the ceiling, letting the silence creep in further. It settles into my bones, heavy and familiar. For a moment, I close my eyes and pretend none of this happened. Pretend I’m just a nurse with a long shift behind me, in a hotel for a conference or a weekend off. Not a woman who was gutted by her own husband, abandoned on the floor, and delivered to the hospital by a stranger who didn’t even stay to give his name.

That thought floats up again, uninvited, and I can’t ignore it any longer.

Who brought me to the hospital?

Not Matteo, he left me there. Dr. Lin was clear. Some man walked in, carrying me like I weighed nothing, and vanished the moment he knew I’d be taken care of.

I sit up slowly, a cold knot curling in my gut. It’s not the pain from the incision. It’s the knowing. The echo of something, someone, I haven’t let myself think about in years. Something tells me this wasn’t a stranger. Someone had been there. Someone who knew where I lived. Someone who was watching.

The thought should terrify me but strangely, it doesn’t.

I wrap the hotel blanket around my shoulders and fold into the corner of the bed. I don’t bother crying. The tears are gone. I cried enough on that hospital bed, when Dr. Lin gently placed a hand on my arm and said I lost the baby.

I remember that exact moment. The way my world narrowed into the tiny black space between two heartbeats. I’d lost something I hadn’t even shared yet. Something pure. Mine. A secret hope I’d clung to in the dark, thinking maybe just maybe, it would give Matteo a reason to come back to me. Something that would finally be ours.

And now there’s nothing.

I don’t realize I’ve picked up the phone until I see my father’s name glowing on the screen. My thumb hovers over the call button. We haven’t spoken in over a year. Not since the last time he tried to visit and I made excuses.

Back then, I was still trying to prove to myself that I hadn’t made a mistake. That marrying Matteo had been worth the price. That walking away from my family had meant something.

I press the button before I can change my mind.

It rings. Once and Twice then he picks up—“Hello?”My throat catches.

“Camila?” His voice hasn’t changed. Still deep, steady. The kind of voice that once made me feel like nothing in the world could shake me.

“Hi… Dad.”

I hear him exhale sharply. “Is it really you?”

“Yeah.” I try to smile, but it doesn’t reach my eyes. “It’s me.”

The silence on the other end stretches for a moment, thick with emotion, before he speaks again. “You don’t know how long I’ve waited for this.”

“I’m sorry.” My voice cracks, shame crawling down my spine. “I should’ve called sooner.”

“No. Don’t apologize. I don’t need that. I just… are you okay?”

I hesitate. The truth sits on the edge of my tongue, bitter and unspoken. I lost a baby. I’m sick. Alone and Empty.

But instead, I say softly, “I’m tired. That’s all.”

There’s something in his silence again, grief, maybe. Or guilt.

“I left him,” I finally say. “Matteo. I packed my things and walked out.”

His breath catches again. “Good.”

I flinch a little at his words, but not because it’s harsh. Because it’s the truth. And because I needed to hear it.

He says it again, slower this time, with a weight that makes me feel seen.

“Good.”

The tears come silently this time, wetting the edge of the blanket I’ve pulled around me like armor.

“I didn’t know where else to go.”

“Come home, Camila,” he says gently. “You don’t need anywhere else.”

“I thought maybe you’d hate me.”

“You’re my daughter,” he says firmly. “I never stopped loving you. I just couldn’t reach you through all that noise. But I knew… I knew you’d find your way back.”

A soft laugh breaks through my tears. “I didn’t find my way back sooner..”

“I know,” he says, and I know my father must’ve heard from someone at the hospital. Maybe even Dr. Lin. His voice grows heavier. “And I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you woke up. But if you come home… I’ll make sure you never feel that alone again.”

Silence passes between us, long and warm until he says “There’s something else,” he adds after a moment. “I’ve been meaning to tell you. But I didn’t want to pressure you.”

I brace myself.

“I’m stepping down,” he divulges “From everything. The foundation and the surgical board. All of it.”

“What?” I sit up straighter.

“I’m tired too, Camila. I’ve spent my whole life building something, and now I want to pass it on. To someone I trust. I want you to take over.”

I’m stunned. “You want me?”

“There’s no one else I’d even consider. You’ve always had the mind, the heart, the instincts. You just needed time.”

“I’m not even your biological—”

“You’re mine,” he cuts in. “Biology doesn’t change that. You were always mine, Camila. You just forgot for a while.”

I press my hand to my chest again, where the pain throbs. But this time, it feels like it’s easing.

“Thank you,” I said. “For still believing in me.”

“I never stopped.”

We sit with that for a long moment before I spoke out again. “I’ll come tomorrow,” I tell him.

“I’ll have someone waiting to pick you up when you arrive,” he says. “He insisted.”

“Who?”

There’s a beat then, quietly, he says, “Matias.”

Everything inside me stills. Matias?

The name comes with a hundred memories I don’t know how to process. His cold eyes. The way he’d look at me without ever really smiling. That unreadable expression he wore like armor. I was young, and he scared me, not because he was cruel, but because he saw me. In ways Matteo never could. In ways that made me want things I wasn’t supposed to want.

He disappeared the day I got married and now he’s back?