The same faint scar cutting through his left eyebrow—the one he’d gotten in a bar fight when I was seven years old.
He wore a simple black shirt.
Sleeves rolled to the elbows.
A cigarette rested between his lips, smoke curling lazily upward as though nothing around him mattered at all.
He watched me.
Not with urgency. Not with concern.
But with detached amusement.
My breath hitched violently.
My entire body went rigid.
“No...” I whispered under my breath.
It wasn’t possible.
It couldn’t be.
He was dead.
He had to be dead.
My family had died in a plane crash just days before I turned sixteen.
I remember the moment clearly—I was in the backyard of my father’s house, kneeling in the grass, when the news came.
I screamed until my throat burned raw. I cried until my chest ached.
I had lost my mother, my little brother, and my father all at once—a heartbreak that shattered me completely.
And yet... here he stood.
Alive.
Smoking. Smirking.
Watching me like I was nothing more than a curiosity.
Matteo stopped a few paces away.
Close enough that I could smell him.
Whiskey.
Sharp. Burning.
It clung to his breath, mixing with the faint scent of expensive cologne and dust, like a man who didn’t care how he carried himself anymore—only that he was seen.
He glanced over his shoulder toward my father and smiled.
“Surely,” Matteo said smoothly, his voice carrying easily across the open space, “seeing your father again after over a decade isn’t what you expected, Elena.”
The words settled into my chest like something heavy.
