“No.” The sound tears out of me. “No. That’s not possible.”
I’m shaking my head even though he can’t see me. “No, Valerio. The doctor said she was stabilizing. I paid for the best specialists. I made sure of it. You told me she was out of danger.”
Silence.
I’m already moving, keys clenched in my fist, blood roaring in my ears. “I’m coming. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Matteo,” Valerio says, and this time there is no restraint left in his voice. “Wait.”
Something in it stops me cold. Not authority. Not command. Something heavier. Something final.
“There’s more.”
The floor tilts.
“Her father signed the cremation order.”
The words land without sound, without movement, like a bullet that doesn’t hurt until you realize where it struck.
“I’m sorry,” Valerio says. “You don’t get to say goodbye.”
I close my eyes, but it doesn’t blunt the impact. Nothing does. The pain moves inward, carving, stripping me down to something raw and hollow.
“No,” I say, because denial is the only thing keeping me upright. “No. I’ll stop it. I’ll get there. I’ll?—”
“It’s done,” he cuts in. “The hospital pushed it through immediately.”
“You’re lying,” I say, the word low and vicious. “Her father can’t do that.”
“I wish I was,” Valerio replies. “I stepped out for minutes. I had to meet the cardiologist you flew in. When I came back, she was gone. There was nothing left to stop.”
I press my hand to the wall to keep from collapsing.
Minutes.
That is all it took to erase her from the world. No body. No proof she ever lay there breathing under those lights.
I stand in the quiet, the phone heavy in my hand, while something inside me fractures beyond repair. The silence swells until it roars, my pulse hammering hard enough to hurt, and I know with a terrible clarity that this moment has just divided my life into before and after.
And nothing will ever be whole again.
No goodbye.
No last touch.
Just fire and ash.
Grief claws up my throat, but beneath it something darker coils tight and deliberate. Something old. Something I buried the day I brought her into my home and promised her safety.
This was no accident.
No body means no autopsy. No autopsy means no answers. Just a file. A cause of death typed neatly onto paper that can be forged as easily as it can be stamped.
Someone wanted her silenced.
Someone orchestrated her final moments and wiped the evidence clean.
And now there is nothing left to prove it.
