How instinctively.
And something inside me twisted painfully.
I wondered—
Bitterly.
Had he moved like this when I was missing?
When I was locked in that concrete room at Matteo’s estate, holding a gun to my own father’s head while praying—begging—that someone would come for me?
That he would come?
I doubted it.
I knew it.
Because I was the one he discarded.
The unwanted wife. The inconvenient truth.
The mistake.
And Violet—
Violet was everything.
Yet still—
I kept following.
Why did I keep following?
I didn’t have a clear answer.
Maybe because he had left me standing there like discarded trash.
Or maybe—
Because some stupid, stubborn part of me still believed I deserved to be seen.
To be acknowledged. To matter.
Even if only for a moment.
Even if only as someone following behind him like a shadow he couldn’t shake.
Even if it hurt.
Especially if it hurt.
Because pain meant I was still here.
Still fighting.
Still refusing to disappear quietly into the life he had already decided for me.
I watched him slip into the private ward.
