One minute. Negative is possible. Negative means coffee’s temporary treachery. Stress. Lack of sleep. Grief rearranging the body, because grief is apparently an interior decorator with poor taste. Negative means the plan remains damaged but intact.
Dante. Alessandro. Proof. Leverage. Find the thread. Pull carefully. Don’t let the house feel the tension until the fabric is already coming apart.
Two minutes.
Positive means…
No.
Not yet.
Don’t negotiate with possibilities before they exist. That’s how people become stupid.
I look at the door. Count. Door. Window. Vent. Drain. Mirror. Door again.
Six. Always six. The numbers sit where they should. Ordered. Contained. They don’t help.
Three minutes.
I look down.
Two lines.
Unmistakable. Rude.
For a moment, nothing happens. No gasp. No collapse. No dramatic hand to the stomach. I simply stand there, looking atthe small white test on the basin, and understand that the world has narrowed. A corridor becoming a tunnel. A door becoming a wall.
Positive.
The word forms without sound. My first thought istimeline. Four weeks, maybe. Five, at most. Early enough that nothing shows. Early enough that it can still be hidden.
My second thought is Alessandro. His system. His house. His rules. The medical channel. Everything routes through him eventually.
Everything.
My third thought is worse.
I cannot leave. Not with this inside me. The exits are still there. Door. Window. Vent. Drain. Mirror. Door again. Six.
None of them works. Not anymore.
I pick up the test. Wrap it in tissue, then wrap it again. And again. Because apparently control is mostly repetition when the body has already betrayed the larger strategy. I drop it into the bin beneath the sink, then reconsider, retrieve it, wrap it once more, and place it deeper, beneath other things, as if concealment is a physical act that can be improved through layering.
I brace my hands on the edge of the basin and look at myself in the mirror. Same face. Same eyes. No visible difference. And yet, everything has shifted.
I should tell him.
The thought arrives fully formed, practical and horrifying. Alessandro Vitale controls this house. Its guards, its doctors, its doors, its silences. If there is a protocol for this, it will belong to him before it belongs to me.
He would already know what to do. How to contain it. How to manage it. How to use it.
That’s the problem.
No.
Not yet.
This is the only thing in this house he doesn’t know. For now, it stays mine.
