But it didn’t.
The sobs came anyway.
Broken. Muffled.
Shaking through my body in quiet, uneven waves that I tried—and failed—to suppress.
My shoulders trembled.
My chest tightened with each breath.
Small, fragile sounds escaped into the fabric beneath my face, swallowed by the pillow but still somehow too loud.
I had endured cruel words before, many of them from Vincenzo himself, but tonight was different.
These words didn’t just hurt—they pierced, tearing through me like a sharp needle sinking into my heart.
My head ached.
Not the kind that comes and goes, but something steady and heavy, pressing against my thoughts, dulling everything that tried to rise to the surface.
My chest followed—tight, sore, each inhale feeling slightly too small, like my lungs were working against me.
And my knees—
God.
My knees ached in a way I couldn’t explain.
It wasn’t just pain.
It was... deeper.
Like grief had weight, and it had chosen that exact place to settle—pressing down, rooting itself into my bones, refusing to let go.
I turned my face deeper into the pillow, as if I could smother the feeling there, as if I could push it down into the fabric and keep it contained.
But it didn’t stay quiet.
I squeezed my eyes shut, my fingers tightening around the pillow as if it were the only thing keeping me from falling apart completely.
And then—
In that fragile, broken silence—
I made myself a promise.
A quiet one.
The kind you don’t say out loud because speaking it might make it less real.
I would never let him have this power over me again.
Whatever foolish hope I had carried, whatever feelings I had allowed to grow—I would tear them out, root and all.
I would build something cold in their place.
Something untouchable. So that no word of his would ever cut me again.
