جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 70

* Miranda *We took the road back to the mansion, while on the way my heart was hammering like crazy. Those men were trying to get to us and God knows what they have in mind.Lorenzo drove the car. He had insisted on it with that calm authority that does not ask permission. The engine hummed low, steady, as though it too understood the necessity of silence after violence. Behind us, the rest house receded into darkness, guarded now by more men than beams of timber. Security has been tight.I watched the faint outline of his profile in the dim dashboard light. His hands rested firmly on the wheel, but not rigidly. He looked calm, like he was used to this.It unsettled me how composed he was.The night outside the windows smelled of damp earth and river wind. Fields passed like shadows drifting across a memory. I folded my hands in my lap, but they did not stay still for long. They remembered the sound of gunfire even when my mind tried not to."You are quiet, Miranda," .he said at last

* Miranda * For a moment I lay still on top of my bed, listening. Then my mind replayed what happened last night. The house is silent, as usual in this mansion. Then there was always the low movement of duty, a door eased shut, distant footsteps, the faint clink of porcelain somewhere below. But there was something else threaded through it now. Lorenzo’s voice. The space beside me was already cold. Of course, he did not sleep beside me last night. I wrapped a robe around myself and stepped into the corridor. The floor felt cool beneath my bare feet, grounding. The guards stationed at the far turn gave brief nods but did not speak. The study door was not fully closed when I reached. Light spilled through the narrow opening, like a thin gold line across the floor. I would have passed by, I told myself I would have, if I had not heard the name spoken through the room with restrained weight. "Father." Lorenzo's voice carried differently when he spoke to Salvatore. "..

* Miranda *The next day was the same, Lorenzo was focused on tightening the security of the mansion and the unfinished rest house. Eveyone was moving carefully not to offend him.I've thought about my family, it's been over one month since I last talked to my sister. My phone felt small in my hand, an ordinary thing inside an extraordinary silence.I dialed Yolly's number.It rang longer than I expected. For a moment, a strange fear pressed into my chest, the kind that does not belong to danger outside, but to distance.Then her voice burst through, bright and alive."Miranda? You're called!"A warmth spread through me at once. Some bonds refuse to be thinned by walls, distance, or wealth that never truly belonged to us."How is the university?" I asked softly. "Are your classes difficult?"She groaned dramatically. "Economics is trying to kill me. But I passed my last exam. And the professor finally knows my name."I smiled without meaning to. I could almost see her, hair tied poorl

* Miranda *The light near the window had grown warmer, but my skin felt strangely cold beneath it. I'm not feeling one hundred percent my usual self today.At first, it was only a faint unease, a heaviness low in my stomach, a quiet pressure that did not belong to hunger or fatigue, it was something different. I pressed my palm there absently, as if touch might explain what thought could not.Something was... different in me.I rose from the chair too quickly. The room tilted, soft at the edges. My breath shortened with just that. A sharp wave climbed my throat without warning.I barely reached the washroom as I struggled to get inside as fast as I could.The sound of retching broke the fragile quiet of the morning. My hands clutched the porcelain, fingers trembling, my body folding in on itself as another wave seized me. There was nothing graceful in it, only helplessness and heat behind my eyes.When it passed, I remained there, my forehead resting against the cool edge of the basi

* Lorenzo *Fatherhood was not a word I had ever allowed space for in my life. It's strange but somewhere deep inside of me a tiny excitement or a bit of anxiousness has started to grow.Responsibility, yes I know of that. Power, yes is also a part of it since it would be a De Luca child. Protection would always be needed for both of them. Miranda and the baby.Baby. The word felt fragile in my mind. Too fragile for the world I live in. The kind of people that we are, my brother is notorious and my father I can't even find words to describe him.Miranda sat beside me in the car, her hand resting over her abdomen again, almost instinctively now. Every time she did it, something inside my chest tightened, not with weakness, but with a force I did not know how to name.A life is now forming inside of her. Mine. Ours. The reality is more vivid now after the doctor's confirmation.I had faced men with guns without my pulse changing. Negotiated with criminals without blinking. Yet the thoug