My voice shook.
“I would never—”
My eyes burned.
“Never touch something that belonged to your mother.”
The words broke slightly.
Can’t you see that?
Can’t you hear me?
“Can’t you—at least once—believe I’m telling the truth?”
Chapter 27
ELENA
Silence.
That was his answer.
He didn’t argue. Didn’t accuse further. Didn’t defend me.
He simply held the ring between his thumb and forefinger like it was something fragile—and something lethal at the same time.
A piece of the past he had guarded like a secret wound.
His eyes lifted to mine.
Dark. Unreadable.
“You kept asking me to believe you, to trust you—even once—but the situations were always impossible to trust, Elena,” he said quietly, each word precise.
“If we’d found it on your bed, you could’ve claimed someone planted it. In your wardrobe? Same excuse. But tucked in the most private part of your body—between your breasts? Come on. How about you grow a spine and tell me the truth... for once.”
“I didn’t put it there.” I said, my voice thin, strained under the pressure. “
But even as I said it, my eyes betrayed me.
They flicked.
Just once. To Violet.
She stood a few paces back, one hand resting beneath her swollen belly, the other loosely folded over it as if cradling something precious.
Her lips curved. Just slightly.
That satisfied, quiet smile.
The kind that didn’t belong in a moment like this.
Then my gaze shifted again.
To Ciro.
Stone-faced. Unmoving.
