Bianca Benedetti.
The results load. Recent photos from a medical school event. An article about her research on cardiac regeneration. A fundraiser she helped organize for underserved communities.
She looks healthy. Successful. Exactly what I wanted for her.
She also looks tired. Thinner than I remember. There are shadows under her eyes that hadn't been there before.
I zoom in on one photo—her at a podium, presenting research findings. She is smiling for the camera, but I know her well enough to see that it doesn't reach her eyes.
Fall in love with someone who deserves you, I told her.Someone kind, someone normal.
I scroll through more photos. Event after event, always alone. No boyfriend in the backgrounds. No ring on her finger. No evidence that she's moved on at all.
She is still waiting.
I close the app and sit in the darkness, her face burned into my memory.
The heart forgives, she told me once.With the right intervention, even the most damaged heart can heal.
I've spent eighteen months proving her wrong. Staying away. Trying to forget. Pretending that what we had was just a temporary madness, easily cured by distance and time.
But she is still waiting.
And I am still watching.
Some hearts don't heal, I think. Some hearts just scar over, hardened and closed, going through the motions of beating without ever feeling alive.
I start the car and drive home to my empty apartment.
Tomorrow, I will go back to being the monster. The enforcer. The Kashkin who feels nothing and fears nothing and needs no one.
But tonight, alone in the dark, I let myself remember what it felt like to hold her. To dance with her in her tiny kitchen. To believe, for four impossible months, that even the most damaged heart could heal.
Tonight, I let myself grieve.
Chapter 1 - Bianca
The human heart beats approximately one hundred thousand times per day.
I know this the way I know my own name—intimately, automatically, without having to think. It's the kind of fact that lives in my bones now, after two years of medical school. Two years of cadaver labs and endless flashcards and nights spent memorizing the architecture of the organ I've dedicated my life to understanding.
One hundred thousand beats. Sixty to one hundred per minute at rest. Faster when you're stressed, slower when you sleep, always adapting, always compensating, always working to keep you alive.
Right now, mine is racing at probably one hundred forty.
"Bianca." My brother Enzo's voice is flat. "Get dressed. We need to go."
I stare at him from my position on the couch, textbook open in my lap, highlighter frozen mid-stroke. He stands in the doorway of my apartment like he belongs there, though I haven't invited him in. The lock—I'm certain I locked the door.
"How did you get in here?"
"Papa gave us a key. Years ago." He checks his watch, impatient. "You have five minutes."
Behind him, my other brother Sal leans against the wall, arms crossed. He isn't looking at me. Hasn't looked at me since they appeared in my living room like specters, interrupting my study session for tomorrow's cardiovascular pathology exam.
"What's going on?" I set the textbook aside, my pulse climbing higher. "Is Papa okay? Is he hurt?"
"He's fine. There's a family matter that requires your presence."
