“None of them will work.” He smirks.
I roll my eyes. “Overconfidence makes a man fall.”
“Not me.” Arrogance drips from every syllable.
My brother hoards all the arrogance in the world. Thinks he’s better than God. I can’t wait to watch Lyn bring his smug ass back down to earth.
My gaze wanders to the couple beside us, lost in their own world.
I tug Avi away from Zo. “Let him keep his ‘asexual’ image for one day. He doesn’t look very asexual staring at his sister like that.”
“Like what?”
I drag her out of the dining room.
“Like he wants to devour you alive. There’s always been tension when you look at each other, but now it’s so thick you could cut it with spoon.”
She starts to laugh, but it dies in her throat.
She glances around, then whispers, “I forgot to tell you... Leo and Zoan know about your crush on your kidnapper.”
My head whips toward her. My eyes go wide.
She nods. “I don’t know what Uncle and Daddy know, but Leo and Zoan know everything. And I think they’re still looking for him... to finish him.”
The color drains from my face.
She squeezes my hand. “They pieced it together from our conversation. We need to be careful now, they have eyes and ears everywhere.”
Chapter 26
Salvario
A few days are enough to change a life entirely. It took only eleven to burn mine to ash.And it took only eleven for her to breathe life back into those ashes.
Today, eleven days have passed since I sent her back home in that coffin, carrying the life she brought with her. I have become more dead than I was before her.
I look at the withered flowers. They haven’t had water in eleven days. The piano is covered in dust. I don’t have the will to clean it, don’t have the purposeto tend the plants.
This rose garden and this piano were here in memory of my mother. But now, I only see her here. I don’t see my mother from memory, playing the piano. I see a woman with hair like waves, eyes like honey, who feels like a fragile rose beneath my touch, who smiles for no reason at all.
I only see that woman sitting on this bench, playing music that first unsettles my heart, then soothes it. Music that whispers promises to my soul. Promises of life.
Before her, I made loneliness and silence my home. Then she filled it with her laughter and melodies. She filled my hollow soul with light. And now she’s gone. Gone is the laughter, gone the melodies. Gone is the light.
What remains is silence. A loneliness that’s killing me every day. I can’t even die—she’s manipulated my heart into beating with hope. That hope won’t let me go.
I rise from the bench and, with tired steps, walk out of the garden.
I walk toward Bruno’s room. Maybe I’ll find some peace there.
Warm light falls across the corridor from his room. I stop. I don’t walk closer. Instead, I slide down to the floor where the yellow light meets the darkness of the corridor.
After a few minutes pass, Antonio emerges from Bruno’s room and stops in front of me.
“Why are you sitting here?”
“I want to believe she’s still in there.”
