That was the easy part.
Even after he disappeared, I kept it.
The tattoo—an exact duplicate of his—still lives beneath my ribs. I see it every morning when I look in the mirror. These days, I have to lift my breast slightly to see it, because ten years… because a baby… because time is not gentle. My chest tightens until breathing hurts.
He's a bad man. I know that.
But he's the only one who never looked at me like a symbol. Or a bargaining chip. Or a liability. He looked at me like I was real. And now my son is gone.Our son.
I stare at the door, at the walls of my childhood bedroom, at the careful safety my father has turned into a cage. If I stay here, Amauri dies.
If I go to him… I don't finish the thought. Because I know the risk. Have calculated it before. A man like Massimo would want his son, no matter the consequences to the mother. He would take him from me. I have no doubt.
I slide off the bed, knees weak, heart hammering, and press my forehead to the cool wood of the door.
"I'm sorry," I whisper. To Amauri. To myself. To the girl I used to be.
Then, finally, I say his name. "Massimo."
The man who vanished. One day, he was waiting for me behind the bleachers. The next, he wasn't. Not the day after. Not the one after that. The disposable phone he'd given me stayed silent until it went dead. No longer in service. Weeks passed.
I was a governor's daughter. Pregnant. Alone. Carrying a secret that could get my child killed. So I chose survival. I married a man who betrayed me. I had my son. I lived a lie.
Then one day, I saw it on the news:Vittorio Manetti and his three sons killed in apparent home invasion. Massimo Manetti swears vengeance.
He was alive. Suddenly, his face was everywhere.
He wasn't dead.
He had simply… forgotten me. Ripped my heart out. Left me.
I swore I'd never reach for him again. And I didn't.
Until today.
Today, he doesn't get to disappear.
If there is one man who can bring my son home, it's Massimo Manetti.
My gaze moves through my childhood room.Daddythinks he's clever. He isn't. This room was never a prison to me. It was a challenge. I learned its weaknesses years ago, back when I was a teenager sneaking out in borrowed dresses and filled with bad intentions, slipping past guards who underestimated a girl who smiled too easily.
The door is locked.
The window isn't.
The false security of the third floor.
I don't shower. Don't change. Don't look at myself in the mirror. Blood, dust, and cactus needles still cling to my skin and hair, but I don't care. All I see when I close my eyes is Amauri's face in that helicopter. Pale. Terrified. Looking for me.
I move on muscle memory alone. The dresser scrapes softly as I push it aside, just enough. The window opens with the same quiet complaint it always has. I swing one leg out, then the other, ignoring the protest in my ribs, the sting in my palms. Warm night air hits my skin as I lower myself onto the narrow ledge, fingers searching and finding familiar cracks in the stone. I used to do this barefoot. I still am.
Down the trellis. Over the ivy. Onto the gravel path thatDaddynever bothered to light because no one was supposed to be back here.
I don't stop.
The outer wall looms ahead, high but not impossible. I scale it the same way I always did, knee, elbow, breath, patience. I drop down on the other side with a soft grunt, landing hard and steady. My body might be older, but hours in the gym finally pay off. I'm out.
Without looking back, I walk, realizing and regretting too late that I should have tossed a pair of shoes down before I started to climb, but I've long learned that regrets are ghosts that don't rattle chains, they just sit quietly beside you.
