Todos los capítulos de THE TERMS OF OUR MARRIAGE : Capítulo 1 - Capítulo 6

Grief has a smell. It smells like overbrewed coffee, wilted funeral flowers, and strangers sitting too comfortably in your living room.Three days after we buried my parents, the house was full. Not with comfort but with opinions.Aunt Teresa stood in the kitchen wearing Mama’s apron like it had always belonged to her. Uncle Vittorio occupied Papa’s armchair, legs spread wide, flipping through company files he had no right to touch. Cousins hovered near the staircase, whispering in low voices that stopped when I walked past. They had come to “help.” I would have said something but I was too grief striken. If only Luca was here,he would have told Aunt Teresa to take off Mama’s apron and Uncle to get off Papa’s favourite chair and also probably make our cousins leave the staircase and Mama always warned us against just hovering around it.Luca was still in the hospital. I had just returned from a morning meeting with a neurologist who spoke gently about long-term rehabilitation and occu

Morning arrived without mercy.Elena had learned that hospitals did not care about exhaustion. Bills did not care about grief and hunger did not care about pride.The envelope waited on the small plastic table beside Luca’s bed. It was an unapologetic final notice in red ink. She stared at it long enough for the letters to blur.Across the room, Luca sat propped up by pillows, conscious now but weak, his movements slow and deliberate. Recovery had come in fragments—eye contact first, then speech, then careful physical therapy sessions that left him trembling. He was healing but healing cost money.“Elena?” he asked quietly, noticing her silence.She folded the paper before he could read the numbers on her face.“Just paperwork,” she lied.She could not darethat the amount was larger than the monthly stipend they received from Uncle Vittorio even if they saved it for three months.Larger than her savings. Larger than what remained of the jewelry she had sold.She had called Uncle Vittor

The sunlight poured into the Vale Manor study, golden but not warm, as if the world outside had forgotten how to care. Adrian Vale sat behind the massive oak desk, fingers steepled, eyes trained on the ledger before him, but he wasn’t reading numbers. Not really. He was listening.“Adrian,” Mr Giovanni Vale said, his voice steady but with a sharp edge Adrian hadn’t heard in years. The old man’s hands, gnarled with age but still firm, rested on the armrest of his chair. “We need to talk about your… future.”Adrian looked up, one brow arched. Future. That word had felt irrelevant since the day he had lost both parents. Since the day Camilla had betrayed him, emptied his accounts, and walked out of his life with no regard for loyalty or love. Since then, future had been just a concept for other people.“I don’t understand,” Adrian said flatly. “What do you mean?”Giovanni’s gaze was unyielding. He leaned forward, the weight of his years pressing into the room. “I mean your grandfather do