LOGINELLIEVittorio was never found.That's the thing I've had to learn to sit with — not the clean ending I spent months building toward, just the absence of him. An empty space where the answer should be. Lorenzo says the exposure is its own punishment, that a man like Vittorio can't breathe in the light, that he's somewhere watching everything he built get taken apart brick by brick and there's nothing he can do about it. I believe him. I also know it doesn't feel finished, and I've stopped pretending it does, because pretending costs more than just admitting the truth.You learn to carry things. That's what no one tells you going in. You don't get over them — you just get stronger than they are, and eventually the weight stops being the first thing you feel when you open your eyes in the morning.Eventually.Elijah died on a Tuesday.Lorenzo told me at the kitchen table, hands flat on the surface, eyes on mine, and I knew before he finished the sentence. Hung himself with his sheets. I
The door opens.I don't startle — I hear the handle, I have fast reflexes even horizontal — and I turn my head and Lorenzo is standing in the doorway. He takes in the room. Me, Noir, the general state of the window seat and the clothes that took a detour. His expression doesn't change. Not remotely. But his eyes move over us and there is heat in them, and he lets us see it for exactly one second before his face settles back into itself."Apologies," he says, not sounding apologetic. "I knocked.""You absolutely did not knock," I tell him."I thought about knocking." He leans against the doorframe with his arms crossed, and his eyes go from me to Noir and back again, and the heat in them does another slow pass. "I think it's time we go back to Milan."Noir's hand resumes moving in my hair."When?" I ask."Few days. I want to be settled before we move on the next step with Vittorio." Lorenzo's eyes settle on me. "We've been here long enough.""Okay," I say.He looks at me for a moment l
Chapter 134ELLIEIt's raining, and I wish I could say I was used to the weather but it entralls me every time.Singapore does rain like it means it.It is not the polite drizzle of European cities but this full-throated downpour that hits the windows like it has a grievance, and I've been sitting on the window seat in my room for twenty minutes watching it come down when Noir appears in the doorway.He doesn't say anything. He leans his shoulder against the frame and looks at me, and I look back at him, and the rain fills up the silence between us."Hey," I say finally, giving him a small smile to which he returns almost immediately. He's been doing more of that now and it is by far the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen."Hey." He pushes off the frame and crosses the room and sits on the window seat across from me, his back against the wall, his long legs stretching out beside mine. He's in a grey t-shirt and he's cut his hair, I've been noticing it for days, the way it sits at his
ELLIE Somewhere around the end of the second week, it starts feeling almost like before. Not fully, none of us are pretending it's fully anything, but there are mornings where I come downstairs and Silas is already in Noir's face about whatever meaningless thing he's decided to care about today, and Lorenzo is at the table with a book, and the coffee is already made, and I stand in the doorway and my chest does this small, quiet thing where it loosens. Just a little. Just enough to breathe differently. We fall back into each other the way you find your footing after a bad fall. Carefully first, testing each step, and then less carefully, and then not at all. Silas engineers reasons to be in whatever room I'm in, which is so transparent it should be annoying and isn't. Noir's hands find my waist when he passes me in the kitchen...this two-second press of warmth that goes as quickly as it comes... and I've stopped pretending it doesn't do things to my pulse. Lorenzo reads beside me i
ELLIESomewhere around the end of the second week, it starts feeling almost like before.Not fully, none of us are pretending it's fully anything, but there are mornings where I come downstairs and Silas is already in Noir's face about whatever meaningless thing he's decided to care about today, and Lorenzo is at the table with a book, and the coffee is already made, and I stand in the doorway and my chest does this small, quiet thing where it loosens. Just a little. Just enough to breathe differently.We fall back into each other the way you find your footing after a bad fall. Carefully first, testing each step, and then less carefully, and then not at all. Silas engineers reasons to be in whatever room I'm in, which is so transparent it should be annoying and isn't. Noir's hands find my waist when he passes me in the kitchen...this two-second press of warmth that goes as quickly as it comes... and I've stopped pretending it doesn't do things to my pulse. Lorenzo reads beside me in t
ELLIEThe ceiling is wrong.That's the first thing I register before anything else — before the dull throb at my temple, before the brightness of the room, before the fact that I'm in a bed that isn't mine wearing clothes I don't remember putting on. The ceiling is too high, pale plaster with a thin crack running toward the window, and the window is throwing morning light at an angle that matches no room I've woken up in for the past six months.I sit up too fast and the room tilts violently and my hand flies out to grip the edge of the mattress. That's when I feel the pull at the inside of my elbow.I look down.IV line. Taped to the crook of my arm, running up to a drip stand beside the bed.My heart slams up into my throat so hard I feel it in my teeth.I swing my legs over the side, plant my feet on the floor, stand — the room sways and I grab the drip stand and drag it with me to the door and yank it open, and the two men standing in the hallway spin around fast, hands going to t
ELLIE "Be a good girl and strip for me." He sounded like a completely different person, brown eyes almost black with pure heat burning in those depths. It wasn't a request but a command, his eyes stayed on me as I took a step back, away from him, breathing hard. My lips tingled and ached, much l
ELLIETwenty minutes later, I was dressed in dark jeans, a plain black sweater, and a baseball cap I'd found in my closet. Nothing flashy, nothing memorable. Just another face in the Milan crowd.Silas was waiting by the garage entrance, looking anything but ignorable in worn jeans and a gray hoodi
ELLIE I went back to my room after that, setting the shopping bags aside before sinking into the mattress with a heavy sigh. I was back here. Despite how much I tried to convince myself that this wasn't a prison, I still found myself wishing I was outside. I had such a good day, the best ive ha
ELLIEI woke to the sounds of low conversations and the low incessant buzz from my ears. At first, I thought I was still dreaming. Noir's arm was still around me, his breathing steady, he'd actually managed to sleep, and I wasn't going to wake him. But the voices kept getting closer, which meant I







