He withdraws his hand and steps back a fraction, straightening his shoulders, pulling the familiar armor over himself again.
“I’ll get the doctors,” he says. His voice is steadier now, his expression already rearranging itself into the version of Valerio the rest of the world is allowed to see. “And I’ll call Matteo. Your father’s here too. He was notified and flown in from Florence."
He turns to go, then hesitates. Just for a heartbeat. His gaze drops to my hand, the one that, moments ago, he had been holding like a prayer.
“Do not do that again,” he says softly, without looking up. “We’re not built to lose you.”
Then he leaves, and the door clicks shut behind him.
The room feels bigger without him there, but not empty. The echo of his words, the feel of his hand, the sound of Daniele’s voice from the void, they all linger, layered over the frantic flashes of light and the shouted “clear” that dragged me here.
I lie there, chest aching, lungs stinging, heart sore but steady, and I know one thing with absolute certainty.
I had one foot out of this world. For a moment, I almost let go.
But their love, their fear, their voices—and the pull of everything I’m not ready to leave behind—dragged me back.
Back to a worldthat isn’t finished with me yet.
35
MATTEO
The phone rings before dawn, a sound too sharp, too deliberate to belong to anything good.
I haven’t slept in days. Not in any way that matters. I stayed at the hospital with Daniele until the nurses began giving us the looks that meant there was nothing left to do but wait, pacing antiseptic corridors while machines did the work my body could not, keeping my wife alive by inches and numbers on a screen. I only left when Daniele finally folded into a chair, exhaustion breaking through his stubbornness, and I understood that someone had to stay standing. I told myself I would go home, scrub the smell of disinfectant from my skin, change my clothes, close my eyes for an hour at most, then come straight back to her.
I should never have left.
I reach for the phone without thinking, already braced for impact, because no call at this hour comes without teeth.
“Yeah,” I answer. My voice sounds like it doesn’t belong to me.
Valerio doesn’t speak.
That is the first fracture. He is not a man who wastes silence. Every pause from him is intentional, weighed, chosen. When he holds back, it is because what follows will not fit easily into words.
Then he says my name.
“Matteo.”
The air locks in my chest.
“What happened?” I ask.
There is a sound on the other end. Not quite a breath. More like the moment before one breaks.
“It’s Beatrice.”
The room narrows. “What about her?”
I already know. Death moves the same way every time. Quiet. Relentless. You feel it before it arrives.
“She’s gone,” he says. “Cardiac arrest.”
The world drops out from under me.
For a second there is nothing. No walls. No floor. Just the echo of those words crashing through my body until they lodge somewhere deep and unmovable.
