"Yes."
"Watching? Planning?"
"According to Giovanni, yes."
"Does she know about us? About the wedding?"
"I don't know for sure." His arms tighten around me. "Giovanni didn't have any leads on her location. Just that she contacted him six months ago."
"Six months." The timeline burns through my brain.
"We took his phone. Vittoria will search everything she can find." His hand strokes my hair, the gesture meant to comfort but it just makes everything worse. "Until then, you need to stay calm. Let me worry about this."
I pull back to look at him. Blood has dried dark on his skin, someone else's life painting him in violence. But that's not what makes my stomach turn.
It's the way he said her name.
Luna's alive.
Not "the woman who betrayed me." Just Luna. Like her name still means something. Like it always meant something.
"You're shaking," he says.
I'm not scared of what Luna might do to me. I'm not worried about some ghost from Lorenzo's past coming to hurt us.
I'm terrified of something much worse.
What if he still wants her?
The thought slithers through my mind like poison. She was his first love. The one who broke him. The one he's never really talked about except in fragments of pain. And now she's alive, breathing somewhere in this world, maybe watching us right now.
"Sophia?" Lorenzo's thumb brushes my cheek. "Talk to me."
But what am I supposed to say? That I'm drowning in what-ifs? That every kiss we've shared suddenly feels like borrowed time?
What if he loved her more than he could ever love me?
What if seeing her again awakens something that never really died?
What if I'm just the replacement, the consolation prize, the young girl who threw herself at him when he thought his real love was gone?
"I need a shower." He steps back, and the loss of his warmth feels like prophecy. "Get some sleep."
"Okay."
He pauses at the bathroom door, looking back at me. For a second, I think he might say something.
Instead, he just goes inside and closes the door.
The second I hear the water turn on, I collapse onto the bed. The sob tears out of me before I can stop it. I press my face into the pillow, biting down on fabric to muffle the sound.
She's alive.
Another sob escapes. I press harder into the pillow, my whole body shaking with the effort of staying quiet. He can't know I'm falling apart. Can't know that three words have shattered everything I thought we were building.
What if he realizes he never stopped loving her?
What if our whole relationship has been him trying to forget her, and now that she's back, he won't need me anymore?
