Some cages you never leave. Even when the door opens.
Sitting on the bed, I finally let a tear out. One for my friend who took her own life and about a million for the one killed by the man I love.
I go back on the fifth day. And the sixth. And the seventh. And then I don't leave.
I lie on Elena's bed with my clothes on, my eyes on the plain ceiling until my eyes close.
I sleep.
Not the broken, surface-skimming thing I've been doing next to him. Actual sleep. The deep, black, dreamless kind that pulls you under like water and doesn't let you think.
When I wake up it's morning.
I lie there for a minute, blinking at the blank ceiling, and something in my chest loosens. Not by much. But enough to notice.
It would be silly of me to assume that Elio wouldn't notice that I'm gone. But he's letting me have my space, understanding that I must need it.
During the night, I hear his footsteps in the corridor. They stop outside the door, then turn before they go back the way they came.
In the morning, there's a tray outside Elena's door. Tea. Toast. A small glass dish of apricot jam, I once mentioned was delicious.
I take the tray inside and eat standing at the window.
The garden below is empty. The stone bench is empty. The morning light moves across the wall the same way it always does. Gold over stone. Inch by inch. Indifferent to the turmoil inside me.
The jam is good.
I learn Elena’s room the way you learn a wound you’re not allowed to touch.
I start with the outline first. The shape of the silence in here, the way the air feels heavier than it should, the faint cedar smell from the empty closet that somehow makes everything worse. Then the details start crawling in whether I want them or not. The bed frame creaks on the left side near the headboard where the joint has loosened. I try the window latch and find it stiff, but with a bit of effort it opens. The curtain billows every time someone walks past in the corridor outside, not from a draft but from the pressure change of a body moving through the hall. The drawer in the bedside table sticks on the right. I keep pulling at it anyway, even though I know there’s probably nothing in it.
I tell myself I’m not looking for anything, yet I can't stop.
On the ninth day, I bump into Elio.
For one second his face does the thing it always does when he sees me. It softens. The jaw eases, the eyes warm, andhis shoulders unclench like the whole architecture of him just remembered how to breathe.
Then he remembers, and his eyes become weary, like he's not sure how to talk to me without scaring me off. Like I'm a wounded animal he's trying to approach.
"How is your search going?" I ask, unsure what else to say to break the awkward silence between us.
"The search?"
"For the American."
His expression flickers from surprise into suspicion. "It's going. We've had some really good leads and we're closing in on the people who took you from here."
My spine straightens. "Oh, really?"
"Yes, Violet. And when I find them they will pay for every single day they kept you away from me. For every scrape and bruise on your body."
I blink. "How?"
"I’ll start with their hands,” he says quietly, like he’s discussing the weather. “Fingers first. One by one. Slow enough that they feel each joint separate. Then the wrists. Then the elbows. I want them to understand exactly how much they took from me before I move on to the parts that actually matter. When they’re begging, when they’re offering me anything I want, I’ll take their tongues so I don’t have to listen to the screaming anymore. And only then, when there’s nothing left but pain and the knowledge that they’re never walking out of that room, will I let them die.”
He says it all without raising his voice. Without blinking. Just flat, factual, the way a man describes the steps he’ll take to balance an equation.
I stay very still.
