I still didn’t truly belong to that world.
Not yet.
THIRTY-TWO
VALENTINA FERRARA
I was in one of the random rooms of the house, sorting through boxes—something that should’ve been simple, until I realized the weight of everything I touched.
Old photos. Folded notes. Crayon drawings with colors faded by time. Every piece of paper had a memory stuck to it. And I didn’t have the time—or the stomach—to relive them all.
I separated things slowly: what I needed close, what could disappear into a storage room or the back of a drawer. What I could bear to keep. What I couldn’t.
I heard his footsteps before I smelled him.
He always arrived like that—quiet, as if he had no guilt at all for entering places I hadn’t offered.
“Do you have a built-in radar?” I asked without looking up, pretending to focus on a stack of photos. “Like a chip tracking where I am in this house?”
“Coincidence,” he replied, voice low and far too casual to be honest.
“Sure.”
I kept sorting, but heat crept into my face anyway—betraying how aware I was of him. Or maybe it wasn’t just awareness.
Maybe it was something I refused to name.
Enrico moved closer without hurry, stopped behind me for a moment, then sat down beside me without asking permission.
Because he never asked.
“What is all this?” he asked calmly, picking up a sheet from the floor and studying it with quiet curiosity.
“None of your business,” I said coldly, still not meeting his eyes.
He gave a short laugh, sarcasm contained, and started flipping through the papers like he owned them too.
“You’re funny, Valentina.”
I ignored him.
Or I tried.
But from the corner of my eye I registered everything anyway: the way his gray shirt fit over broad shoulders, the dark pants slightly wrinkled, his hair messier than usual, falling forward like he’d stopped pretending to be perfectly composed.
And his cologne.
That cursed cologne that filled the room with memories I fought to bury.
Enrico handled Clara’s drawings with an infuriating kind of reverence—as if he were reading contracts, not crayon flowers and crooked stick figures.
Sunlight slipped through half-open curtains, turning the papers on the floor into gold. He picked up one drawing, then another.
We sat in silence for a long time.
Not comfortable silence.
The kind that hangs in the air like a secret no one wants to admit.
