All Chapters of The Chosen Bride: Chapter 101

Elena MorettiGrief doesn’t announce itself.It doesn’t always crash through the door or scream its way into the room. Sometimes it arrives quietly, settles into your bones, and refuses to leave. It becomes the way you breathe. The way you stand. The way you learn to keep moving even when something essential has gone missing.The night my mother died, the Moretti estate felt hollow.Not empty — hollow. Completely hollow.The house still hummed with the sounds of guards. Whispered conversations, radios crackling somewhere deep in the corridors, doors opening and closing softly as people tried to be useful. But the sound had changed. It echoed too much, like the walls themselves had lost something they couldn’t replace.I couldn’t stay in my room. I had to get out.Every surface smelled like her. Lavender and bergamot. Ink and old paper. The faint sweetness of the tea she drank every night before bed. I stripped off the dress I’d worn through the endless hours of condolences and closed