My father’s men. Men I grew up around. Men whose voices filled hallways and doorways and long dinners where I learned, very early, how to keep my face smooth and my mouth shut. Men who called me sweetheart and princess while they built a life around me that felt more and more like a locked room.
I wait for the grief to come.
For guilt. Horror. Some ugly, heavy thing to rise up and remind me that this was still blood, still history, still the world that made me.
But there’s only this strange looseness in my chest.
Not emptiness. Not numbness.
Relief.
“There’s no one coming for me,” I say. It’s not quite a question.
Dario meets my eyes. “No. The deal died with your father. Restrepo isn’t looking for you. There’s no one left to deliver you, and no one coming to collect.”
The words sink into me like stones dropping into water.
No deal. No arrangement. No cage.
I wait for it to feel more complicated than this. For the grief to hit, or the anger, or some tangled mess of emotions that I’ll have to spend years unpacking.
It doesn’t come.
All I feel is light.
“You okay?” Luca’s voice pulls me back. He’s watching me with that look he gets sometimes, like he can see straight through to the parts of me I try to keep hidden.
“Yes.” I blink, surprised to find my eyes stinging. “I just... I didn’t really have a family. Not in any way that mattered.” I swallow hard. “So this doesn’t feel like losing something. It feels like...”
“Freedom,” Luca finishes.
“That, yes.” The words crack slightly. “It feels like freedom.”
Dario clears his throat, then looks at Luca. “I’m going to head out. Try not to start a fistfight with any nurses before tomorrow.”
“No promises.”
He nods to me before slipping out, pulling the curtain closed behind him. A moment later, I hear the glass door click shut too.
Quiet settles over the room. Just the monitors beeping and the distant sounds of the hospital beyond the walls.
Luca gives my hand a small tug. It’s all the invitation I need. Before I can think better of it, I climb carefully onto the bed beside him, mindful of his shoulder, his ribs, all the places still mending.
“Hey.” His arm curves around me, pulling me into his side. “Come here.”
I rest my head on his chest, right over his heartbeat. Steady. Strong. Alive.
“Are you really okay?” he asks, his voice low. His fingers card through my hair, gentle and unhurried.
I think about it. Really think.
My father murdered my mother and let me believe I killed her for twenty-three years. My brother hurt me whenever he felt like it. I was raised in a house where love didn’t exist and obedience was survival.
And now they’re all dead.
“I am,” I say. “I know that probably sounds messed up. They were my family. I should feel something.”
“Should is a bullshit word.”
