All Chapters of HIS STOLEN PRIDE: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Spring came quietly that year.The world moved on, as it always does after chaos — unaware that it had once stood on the edge of something that could have erased it completely.Elena watched the morning unfold from the balcony of a small apartment overlooking Florence. The city below shimmered with sunlight — church bells, laughter, market chatter. Life.Her fingers rested on a cup of coffee gone cold, the lion pendant warm against her skin.For months, she’d dreamed of that night in the Black Sea bunker — Matteo’s voice, the light, the silence that followed. Sometimes she still woke expecting to hear his words again: If pride is memory, then remember.And she did. Every day.Lucia arrived late that morning, sunglasses perched in her hair, laptop under one arm.“Morning, sunshine,” she said, plopping onto a chair. “You look like a tragic painting.”Elena smiled faintly. “I was thinking.”“Dangerous habit.”“About Matteo.”Lucia’s tone softened. “Still?”Elena nodded. “Always.”Lucia s

The storm had stopped, but the silence was worse.It wasn’t peace. It was the kind of stillness that felt like the world was holding its breath — waiting.Elena knelt beside Matteo’s still body, her trembling fingers tracing the faint outline of his face. His skin had lost its glow, the golden veins gone. Only a fragile warmth lingered under his fingertips — the ghost of a heartbeat.Lucia crouched beside her, eyes red, voice barely a whisper. “Elena… we need to leave. The structure’s unstable.”“I can’t,” Elena murmured.Alessandro, standing by the doorway, shifted uneasily. “She’s right. Power’s fluctuating. The entire bunker could collapse.”Elena didn’t move. Her pendant — the small lion Matteo once gave her — was glowing faintly against her chest. She hadn’t noticed it before.Lucia saw it too. “Elena… your pendant.”Elena looked down. The lion’s eyes flickered gold. Once. Twice. Then steady.Her throat tightened. “He’s still here.”Lucia shook her head. “It’s residual data. The

For a moment, there was no sound, no light, no air.Just the echo of her own heartbeat — and another one, deeper, buried beneath it.Elena’s knees hit the floor as the warmth in her chest pulsed like fire. The pendant had vanished, but its energy still burned through her veins.Lucia and Alessandro stared at her, frozen.“Elena,” Lucia said, barely breathing. “What did you do?”Elena’s eyes opened slowly — gold flickered behind the brown, faint but real. “He’s inside me.”The words trembled out of her mouth, equal parts wonder and horror.Alessandro took a hesitant step forward. “Matteo?”Her voice cracked. “Yes. And no. He’s... in pieces. But I can feel him.”Lucia fumbled with her laptop, shaking hands trying to track anything that made sense. “You said you gave them peace. How the hell—”“I didn’t mean to,” Elena whispered. “They were suffering. I just wanted to end it. But they… gave themselves to me.”Her hand pressed against her chest, where the light still pulsed faintly. “Ever

The golden light lingered long after the tremor faded, hanging over Florence like dawn caught in slow motion. Outside, the sky had turned the color of liquid fire, clouds moving in deliberate patterns that no natural wind could form. The air was thick with energy, humming like a living organism; every car, every phone, every faint electrical pulse seemed to sync to one invisible rhythm. Elena stood in the center of it, trembling, her reflection glowing in the glass windows, eyes bright like stars burning too hot. She could feel everything—the data moving through cables beneath the streets, the signals bouncing off satellites, even the faint electromagnetic heartbeat of the world. Matteo’s presence filled her veins, a warmth that was both comforting and suffocating. “You see it now,” he whispered from somewhere inside her, his tone quiet, almost reverent. “This is what they took from me—the ability to feel. Now it’s ours.” She wanted to deny him, to scream, but the words stuck in her t

When the golden sky cracked apart, the world went silent. The storm of light that had consumed Florence burned itself into the horizon, leaving behind a city half drowned in shadow, half washed in dust. Alessandro lay on the cobblestones of the cathedral square, the air heavy with the metallic scent of ozone and ash. Around him, people were waking as if from a trance—blinking, crying, clutching one another—but no one spoke. The lion symbol that had filled the heavens only minutes earlier had vanished. What remained was a faint shimmer on the stones, fading like breath on glass. He sat up slowly, pain burning across his ribs, and saw Lucia kneeling where Elena had stood. The ring of light that had surrounded her was gone. So was Elena.Lucia looked up at him, her face streaked with tears and grime. “She’s gone,” she whispered. Her laptop was still open beside her, its screen dead. Alessandro stared at the emptiness where Elena had been, a hollow ache spreading in his chest. He couldn’t