Todos los capítulos de After I Faked My Death, He Suffered Agony: Capítulo 21 - Capítulo 30

“Valen?”Damian’s voice shook. “It’s really you.”I stepped aside and let him enter. Ruth waited in the back room, close enough to hear if I called for her.I poured Damian a cup of coffee and set it on the table.He caught my wrist. His hands were scarred. Tears fell onto my skin.“Do you know what this year has been like for me?”I pulled free and wiped my hand.“Did you come all the way to Ireland to tell me how much you suffered?”He sank to his knees.“I learned the truth after the funeral. Claudia staged the crash. She planted the transfer record. I gave her confession to the lawyers. I answered to the family council.” He looked up. “And on our anniversary, I had removed the explosives. I never meant for you to die.”I had heard the same last sentence in my mind long before he spoke it.“You meant for me to believe I would die,” I said. “That was the point.”He lowered his eyes.“For seventy-nine attempts,” I went on, “you wanted me to suffer first and die afterward. Claudia retu

Antonio and his wife arrived at the workshop three days later.His wife stopped in the doorway when she saw me. Then she crossed the room and held me so tightly I could barely breathe.“Valen. My girl.”I held her back.For all the distance I had put between myself and Chicago, I had missed them. That did not make returning possible.I brought them inside and made tea. Antonio sat at the small table while his wife touched my face, as though she needed to be sure I was truly there.“Come home with us,” she said. “Damian has been put out of the main house. You needn’t see him. You can live there as our daughter.”I shook my head.“When I lost my first child and wanted to divorce him, you asked me to stay. When Claudia’s plane crashed, you asked me to believe he had changed.”“We thought—” Antonio began.“I know what you thought. I know you loved me. But Chicago was where I kept agreeing to a life that hurt me.”His wife began to cry. I took her hand.“I’m not asking you to stop being my

I traveled through Finland and continued north to a town in Iceland where winter days were brief.I wanted quiet. Instead, half a month later, Damian stood outside my hotel in the snow.Ruth had found no sign that Luca had spoken to him again. Damian had other resources. For years, I had helped build the intelligence network he now used to track me.This time I walked straight up to him.“You keep asking for a chance to make amends.”“Yes.” His face brightened despite the cold. “Tell me what I can do.”“Go through what you put me through. The avalanche. The gas. The electrified pool. The horse. The fire in the locked cabin. Send your guards away. After you’ve survived every one of them, ask me again.”He stared at me.I did not soften it. I wanted him to hear the weight of the things he kept asking me to put aside.“All right,” he said.He believed I had given him a way back. I had given him no such promise.“Damian,” I said, “even if you do it, I may still say no.”He heard me. I saw

The explosion had caused severe injuries.Surgeons had amputated both of Damian’s legs below the knee. Smoke and heat had permanently damaged his lungs and vocal cords. For days he remained unconscious.Antonio spent much of that week dealing with the family’s affairs. His wife spent hers at the hospital. I stayed in Chicago to be with them, not because I expected Damian to wake while I was there.One afternoon Maria came to see me.“I kept your violin,” she said.“I know. Ruth brought it to me.”Maria smiled through tears. “I wondered if she would.”We sat together in a small waiting room. She told me about the garden at the estate and about the roses that had begun growing again near the burned conservatory.“You don’t have to tell me about him,” I said when she hesitated.“I wasn’t going to.”She reached across the table and held my hand.At the end of the week, I went once more to the ICU window. Damian looked unfamiliar beneath the tubes and bandages, yet I could still see the sha

In spring, I went to see my parents’ old estate on the Sicilian coast.I took Noah and Ruth. Antonio had returned the deed after Damian recovered it from Claudia. For months, I had kept it locked away, unsure whether I wanted to enter the house itself.The gates were rusted. Parts of the garden had gone wild. From the terrace, I could see the sea.I carried Noah through rooms I remembered only in fragments. A tiled hall. A staircase wide enough for a child to sit on halfway up. The small study where my father used to spread maps across a table.Most of the furniture was gone.Ruth found old maintenance records in a cabinet. I stood by the window with Noah and tried to recall my mother’s voice in that room. I could not. What came instead was the memory of her violin resting in its case.“We can restore the house,” Ruth said.“Slowly.”I did not want a grand reopening or a family announcement. I wanted to know the place as it was now, not force it to become what it had been before my par