Lahat ng Kabanata ng Forbidden Never Felt This Good: Kabanata 101 - Kabanata 110

0102~Aria~I didn’t sleep.Not even close. I lay there staring at the ceiling, the whole house quiet around me, my mind running through everything that had happened.Wife.Isabella’s mother. Luca’s wife.The words sat heavy in my chest. Sharp too. The kind that doesn’t soften no matter how many times you go over it. I went over it again and again from midnight to five, and it felt the same every time.I thought about the park.The first day we met. How easy it felt. How I kept thinking she looked familiar but couldn’t place it.His eyes.She has his eyes.I noticed it and still missed it.I thought about every call he stepped away to take. Every day he disappeared without explanation. I told myself it wasn’t my business and moved on.The drawing.That small folded paper. A man and a child holding hands. He slipped it into his pocket. I found it. I asked him about it.He looked me in the eye and told me a child at a café gave it to him.I swallowed.I felt stupid.That was the word th

0104~Aria~ Another day.Same routine. Same armor every morning. Same car. Same office. Same careful control over a life that had cracked and was now being held together by discipline and not much else.I had turned it into a system.Wake up before the house does. Get dressed before anyone steps into the corridor. Leave early enough that the kitchen is empty, that the morning belongs to me, that I do not have to think about who is where.Come back late enough that dinner is over. That the house is quiet. That moving through it feels easier.In between, work.Only work.The kind that fills every space if you let it. And I was letting it.Céline had stopped asking if I was alright. She had adjusted. Matched my pace, my tone, my distance. She understood that the best thing she could do was be good at her job and not ask questions.She was very good at her job.I heard them sometimes.Not saw. I had managed not seeing. The house was big enough for that if you were intentional.But I hear

0106~Luca~ Sleep had not been an option.I had tried. Laid on the bed, stared at the ceiling, closed my eyes, waited for my brain to cooperate. It didn’t. After an hour, I gave up and sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the wall.Three days.Three days of watching her move through the house and the office, deliberately avoiding everyone. Everyone in the house. Even her own father. All caused by me. Three days of her eyes passing over me instead of landing on me. Three days of the professional version of herself like she was relating with her bodyguard and not Luca.One-word responses, nods that said received and nothing else. She was entirely right to do so. But it was destroying me.I had let my Aria slip through my fingers.I had done this. That was the thought I kept circling back to. Not Joan. Not timing. Not circumstances. Me.My decision to wait for the right moment. My certainty that I could manage the situation. I didn't think it through, I didn't know it was going to blo

0108~Pierre~Landon had been asking me to go out for three days.Not in a pushy way. That wasn’t him. Just steady. He mentioned it once, then again, then casually brought it up whenever the moment allowed until it stopped feeling like a suggestion and more like something inevitable."One evening," he said. "That’s all. No commitment. Just show up.""I’m fine," I told him."You’ve said that four times this week," he replied, "and none of them sounded convincing."He wasn’t wrong. And I didn’t have the energy to argue with accuracy.So I got dressed, put on a jacket, and went.---The club was exactly the kind of place Landon liked. Good music, just loud enough, the right crowd, the kind of energy that made a Friday night feel like it had earned itself.He already had people there. Familiar faces. Not close friends, but enough to sit with, talk to, exist around without effort. That kind of company where no one expects anything from you.I was there.At least physically.I had a drink,

0110~Aria~The ceiling was unfamiliar.That was the first thing I noticed.I lay there on my back, still and slightly disoriented, my head pounding in a slow, steady rhythm. For a few seconds, I did not know where I was or how I got there. Everything felt distant, like I was waking up from something heavy.I stayed still.Let it come back on its own.The ceiling. Clean. Neutral. The kind of space that felt expensive without trying too hard. The sheets were soft, the pillow smelled like fresh linen, not mine. Light filtered through curtains that were not mine either.Then the rest followed.The club.The drinks. Too many.Josie.The music. The lights. The way everything blurred at the edges.And then the words.The things I said.I closed my eyes for a second, then opened them again slowly.Pierre’s apartment.Of course.A quiet kind of embarrassment settled in my chest.I had said all of that to Pierre.I lay there without moving, replaying fragments. Not everything, just enough to f