I haven’t cried yet. Not on the street where it happened. Not when Rory stood in front of me, offering escape like it was something I could still choose. Not when I said no to it.
Not after Alessandro’s office?—
I stop that thought.
Too late. It’s already there.
The door closing. The shift in the air. The moment a line was crossed.
My body remembers it differently than my mind does.
I haven’t cried; I haven’t cried since I was twelve. That was the year I learned tears made men either gentle or impatient, and both responses were worse than silence. My mother had been dead three years by then. That grief had already been folded into me, stored somewhere out of reach.
But one of my father’s men came back from a failed collection with his face open and his shirt soaked red, and I saw bone where bone was never meant to be seen.
I cried in the pantry. Quietly. Completely.
My father found me. He didn’t comfort me. He closed the door, sat on a flour sack, and waited. When I was finished, he handed me a cloth.
“Wipe again if you need to,” he said. Then: “Wash your face before anyone sees.”
That was kindness. That was love.
I try to cry now. God, I try. I want something to break. Something clean. Something visible. But nothing comes.
My chest tightens. My throat burns.
My eyes stay dry.
This isn’t the kind of weight that leaves. This is the kind that stays. Settles. Becomes part of the structure.
I lift my head slowly. Water runs into my eyes. I blink it away.
The mirror stares back. Same woman. Same crack. Better hidden.
I push myself to my feet. Control is a choice. And I have already made too many irreversible choices.
The water runs a moment longer. Then I turn it off. Silence fills the room.
I step out. Dry my face. Steady my hands. I don’t look at the mirror again. I already know what it will show.
A woman carrying something she cannot put down. A woman who chose to stay. A woman who will survive this, whether it breaks her or not.
I unlock the door and step back into the house, where everything is still exactly where I left it.
Chapter 12
She Finds Out
POV:Evie
The first sign is that coffee smells offensive. Not unpleasant. Not slightly wrong. Offensive.
Teresa brings it at seven-fifteen, black as requested, the same way she has every morning since I arrived. The smell enters the room ahead of her like an accusation. Bitter. Thick. Impossible to ignore.
My stomach tightens so sharply, I have to turn my face toward the window and pretend I’ve seen something interesting outside. There’s nothing interesting outside. A hedge. Rain. A man with a gun, trying very hard to look like landscaping. He’s doing an admirable job. If I didn’t know what to look for, I might even believe him.
Still preferable to vomiting in front of Teresa.
