Because that’s when I see it.
The suitcase.
Half-packed, careless in its haste, as though someone started the motion before they could stop themselves. Clothes folded too quickly. An old pair of sneakers, which miraculously escaped the purge, shoved in without care.
The passport lying on top like a final shock. The final fucking insult.
My vision sharpens instantly, the world narrowing down to that single object.
Slowly, I look back at her.
“What is the meaning of this, Lucia?”
Lucia freezes where she stands, her entire body going still in a way that tells me she already knows what this looks like.
“It’s nothing,” she says too fast.
“It’s just a suitcase,” I reply, my voice flattening into something dangerous. “Half packed with your things. It’s absolutely not nothing.”
Her mouth tightens, her jaw working as if she can grind her way out of this conversation through sheer will.
“I was…thinking.”
The word hits like a slap.
Thinking.
Of leaving.
Again.
My voice drops, controlled only by force.
“You were thinking,” I echo, and oh yes, I actively despise the acid devastation in my voice. “And thinking involved packing a bag? Did thinking involve breaking your promise?”
“I did not do it,” she fires back, immediate and fierce. “I didn’t go anywhere.”
“But you thought about it,” I say, stepping closer, because the thought is the betrayal even before the action.
Her eyes blaze, bright with defiance and something that looks too much like panic.
“Yes, I did. For like…one second.”
“One second is all it takes,” I tell her, voice low and lethal. “One second is how wives disappear in my world.”
Her throat works.
“I changed my mind, Giovanni.”
“Why?” I demand, because I need the truth more than I need the argument.
“Because—” Her voice cracks, and the rawness of it punches straight through me. “Because I don’t want to die alone on a beach.”
The honesty lands hard, brutal in its simplicity.
She swallows, perhaps furious with herself for saying it, most likely furious with me for pulling it out of her.
“I didn’t want to leave,” she admits, quieter now, as though the words cost her something. “I wanted to know if I could. And I…I couldn’t.”
