SOPHIA
Seventy-two hours.
I’ve stopped saying it out loud. Saying it makes the number feel like a stone in my throat, heavy and impossible to swallow.
But seventy-two hours is how long it’s been since Ian bought him back, since I finally felt his arms around me again—warm, solid, alive—only to watch them turn into something else.
Something that trembled with the need to push me away.
Seventy-two hours of watching the man I love fight a war inside his own skin. Every minute of it has carved something new and jagged out of my chest, leaving raw edges that bleed every time I breathe.
And since he won’t let me near him, I do what I always do when I’m inside my own head too much. I bake. And I’ve ruined the dough twice this morning.
By now, Andrei has started quietly intercepting the worst of it before it leaves the kitchen.
Yesterday, he scraped an entire tray of something that was supposed to be focaccia directly into the bin without comment, just a look that said let’s pretend that didn’t happen.
Last night, Ian ate two of the lopsided cupcakes standing at the counter and declared them, with a completely straight face, “structurally ambitious.”
Between the two of them, they’ve quietly become the unofficial taste-testers of whatever comes out of this kitchen—eating things that don’t deserve to be eaten so I don’t have to throw away the evidence of my own hands needing somewhere to go.
Today, it’s bread again. A focaccia that’s gone too dense because I forgot the second rise, my mind somewhere upstairs with him instead of on the dough.
My fingers push into the mass that refuses to cooperate, and for a moment I imagine it’s something I can fix.
Something I can knead and coax and make right.
But it’s just bread. And I’m just a woman who can’t stop her hands from shaking, flour dusting my wrists like ash, the yeasty scent clinging to my skin in a way that feels both comforting and mocking.
The kitchen feels too bright under the warm overhead lights, the marble counters cool beneath my forearms as I lean into the work, trying to lose myself in the rhythm that used to ground me.
But nothing grounds me now.
Not the soft hum of the refrigerator, not the distant tick of the clock in the hall, not even the faint trace of his scent that still lingers on the collar of the oversized shirt I stole from his room—leather and smoke and that sharp winter edge that always made my pulse stutter.
The doctor was here earlier. He comes every day now, sometimes twice, and today his face had a different quality to it when he came down the stairs—not relief, exactly, but something adjacent to it.
A cautious loosening around the eyes, the kind of expression professionals wear when they’re trying not to promise miracles to desperate people.
“The worst of the physical symptoms have passed,” he told us, standing in this same kitchen with his bag still in his hand, voice low and measured like he knew every word could either anchor us or shatter what little hope we had left.
“The acute phase. Seventy-two hours, give or take—we’re past that now. ”
I remember the specific, stupid hope that flared in my chest at that sentence. Bright and sharp and dangerous, like a match struck too close to dry tinder.
For one fleeting second, I let myself imagine him walking down those stairs under his own power, eyes clear, that rare half-smile tugging at the corner of his scarred mouth as he reached for me like he had in Paris, like the mountain house, like every stolen moment that had rewritten my understanding of what wanting could feel like.
“That doesn’t mean it gets easier,” he continued, and the hope contracted back down to something smaller, more fragile, curling in on itself like paper in flame.
“It means it changes shape. The body stops fighting as hard. But this next stretch—four days to a week—this is when the depression sets in. Real depression, not just exhaustion. Anhedonia. He may not be able to feel pleasure in anything, even things he used to love. Insomnia, but different than what you’ve seen—not the body unable to rest, but the mind unwilling to let him.
And whatever guilt, whatever shame he’s carrying—” He paused.
Chose his next words carefully, eyes flicking between me and Ian like he understood the weight of what we were carrying, too.
“That tends to surface hardest right about now. When the body isn’t screaming loud enough to drown it out anymore. ”
I think about that conversation while I knead bread that’s already failed, my knuckles whitening as I press into the stubborn dough.
The physical war is ending. The tremors, the sweats, the violent retching that had left him hollowed those first endless nights—they’re fading.
But the other one—the one that lives in his head, in his heart, in all the places Valeria broke and left jagged—is just getting started.
And I am so fucking terrified I won’t be enough to help him through it.
That the woman who once wrote diary entries about wanting to be consumed by love might not be enough.
There are footsteps behind me, but I don’t turn around right away. I already know it’s Ian by the way he moves—quiet but deliberate, the way someone walks when they’re carrying too much and trying not to show it.
The soft scuff of boots on tile, the faint rustle of fabric, the exhaled breath that carries the exhaustion of a man who’s been standing guard at the gates of hell for days.
When I finally glance over my shoulder, the sight of him stops me cold.
A fresh black eye blooms across the left side of his face, dark and angry, the skin around it swollen and split at the corner, turning shades of purple and green that speak of violence barely contained.
His lip is fat on that side too, cracked and glistening under the kitchen light.
He looks like he went ten rounds with someone who hits like a freight train.
Because he did.
Reth.
Last night. The craving had hit him hard—harder than the night before. He’d woken up shaking, sweating, begging for something to make the pain stop.
I heard the chaos. The screams, the cursing, the thuds. I was on the other side of it, in the hallway just like I’ve been every night since they bought him back. When I knocked on the door and asked if everything’s okay, Ian just gave me a short, “Everything’s fine.”
And now I see that it’s not.
Ian catches me staring and gives a small, tired shrug, like a black eye is the least of his concerns.
“Morning, Crazy,” he says, voice rough, the words scraping out like gravel under tires.
He moves to the counter, pours himself a cup of coffee with the hand that isn’t bruised, knuckles swollen and raw.
“Bread again?”
I nod, throat tight, the words catching somewhere behind the lump that’s lived there for days.
“What happened to your face?”
He touches the swelling absently, wincing a little as his fingers brush the split skin.
“He went for the door last night.”
“And?”
“I was in the way.”
I grab a pack of frozen veggies from the freezer, the plastic crinkling coldly in my grip, and go stand beside him, rising onto my toes to place it gently on the side of his face. The contact makes him hiss softly, but he doesn’t pull away.
“Doctor said the worst of the cravings should be over now,” I say, assessing the damage to his face.
“Phase two,” Ian mutters, then takes the veggies from me and moves to the other side of the kitchen, creating distance. I hate it. “Emotional destruction. The part where the ghosts start whispering loud enough to hear.”
“You’ve dealt with this before,” I note quietly, watching the way his shoulders tense under the worn fabric of his shirt.
“My dad was an asshole.” Just that. Nothing more. The words drop like stones into still water, rippling out with implications I don’t press. We’re all going through enough as it is. Dragging up ghosts from the past can be on our to-do list another day, when the present isn’t trying to drown us.
“I’m sorry,” I say, leaning back against the kitchen counter, the edge digging into my spine like a reminder to stay upright.
“For what?”
“Your face.” I shrug, the movement small and helpless. “The fact that I can’t do more—”
“Don’t.” He says it gently, but it lands with the weight of a door closing, final and protective.
“Don’t apologize. We’re both doing what we have to in different ways.
And right now, my way is the one that can take a punch and still come back tomorrow.
” He throws the veggies back in the freezer with a soft thud.
“Besides, something tells me you’re gonna be of more help with phase two.
The quiet war. The one that needs soft hands and words that don’t cut. ”
I scoff, the sound brittle even to my own ears. “You saw him. He doesn’t want me near him. Every time I try, he looks at me like I’m another chain waiting to lock around his throat.”
“Give it time. We have no idea what the fuck he’s been through down there.” Ian’s voice drops, heavy with the kind of knowledge that comes from seeing too much darkness and surviving it.
A hollow feeling settles in my stomach, deep and aching, like a stone dropped into an endless well.
I’ve been playing out so many scenarios inside my head—flashes of blood and paint and screams that match the fragments he’s let slip in his fevered delirium—but something tells me the worst things I can imagine doesn’t even scrape the surface.
Valeria didn’t just break his body; she remade him, piece by jagged piece, into something that still flinches at kindness because it’s never come without a price.
He grabs one of the half-decent cupcakes and heads for the stairs, his steps heavy with the exhaustion we’re all wearing like second skin. “If he doesn’t eat this on his own, I’m shoving it down his goddamn throat. Stubborn son of a bitch.”
The timer goes off, and I pull the bread out of the oven—too dense, I already know without cutting it, the crust cracking under the weight of my disappointment—but I let it cool on the rack anyway because throwing it straight in the trash feels like one defeat too many for today.
Then I notice Ian’s phone on the counter where he left it charging.
Face up. Unlocked, the way he never bothers to lock it, trusting the fragile sanctuary of this house more than the world outside it.
I pick it up before I let myself think about why, my flour-dusted fingers leaving faint prints on the screen like evidence of my unraveling.
My fingers find the browser, and I type her name before I let myself think about that either.
Valeria Capello.
The first page of results is exactly what I expected and somehow still manages to turn my stomach.
Galas. Charity boards. A foundation with her name attached to something about arts education, photographs of her in floor-length gowns beside senators and minor royalty, always smiling the specific practiced smile of someone who has never once been caught off guard by a camera.
She’s beautiful in the way old money is beautiful—understated, expensive, the kind of beauty that doesn’t need to announce itself because everyone in the room already knows, and fears, what it costs to maintain.
But I see past it. I see the monster wearing silk. The devil who sank her claws into a little boy and twisted until he believed he was nothing more than her weapon.
My hands start to shake as I scroll, a violent tremor that has nothing to do with the failed bread and everything to do with the woman staring back at me from the screen.
How dare she look so polished, so untouchable, while Reth lies upstairs fighting demons she planted in him like poisonous seeds? How dare the world celebrate her after what she did to him, turning a guardian into a ghost?
I scroll, heart hammering against my ribs like it wants out.
More of the same. A profile calling her “one of America’s most quietly influential women.
” A donation to a children’s hospital wing bearing her family’s name.
One of the wealthiest families in the country, maybe even the world, their empire built on shadows and silk, blood money polished until it gleams.
I keep scrolling. Page four. Page five. The results thinning, getting smaller, less polished, the digital equivalent of whispers in dark rooms.
And then.
Valeria Capello’s Ties to Trafficking Allegations—No Evidence Found, Case Quietly Closed.
One article. An outlet I’ve never heard of. A byline that doesn’t appear anywhere else in any related search, like whoever wrote it stopped existing professionally the moment the piece went up, erased as cleanly as the lives she touches.
I click it.
The page loads slow, the layout a decade out of date, pixels flickering like they’re reluctant to reveal the truth.
The article is short. Allegations without named sources.
Whispers of parties where the powerful indulged in the forbidden while she watched with that serene, predatory grace.
A line at the bottom noting the journalist could not be reached for comment on a follow-up that, as far as I can find, never got written.
No follow-up. No second piece. No further coverage anywhere. Just one article, buried five pages deep, that someone wrote once before the story disappeared the way everything around this woman seems to disappear—people, evidence, hope.
I sit there in the kitchen with flour still on my hands and I think about a boy in a room with a door that only opened from the outside, about the scar that twists across Reth’s face like a signature.
Something in my chest goes very cold and very still, a quiet fury blooming beneath the fear, roots sinking deep into the love I have for him.
She didn’t just own him. She tried to unmake him. And now, even from whatever gilded cage she’s retreated to, her shadow still reaches for the man I refuse to let her have back.
I close the browser, set the phone down exactly as I found it, and stare at the failed bread cooling on the rack. My hands are steady now, not from calm, but from resolve.
Seventy-two hours. And however many more it takes. I’ll be here—kneading dough that fails, holding space for the man who once gave me his broken pieces—until the only thing left of Valeria Capello in his mind is the echo of her name on lips that finally know how to say mine without shame.
Because he’s worth every ruined loaf, every sleepless night, every scar we’ll trace together until they feel like stories instead of chains.
And I’m not going anywhere.