40. Victoria
VICTORIA
Ido not sleep long.
When I open my eyes, the fire has burned low, and the study has changed with the morning.
Pale light slips through the windows, softening the edges of the room—the books, the table, the papers that someone has already gathered into neat stacks.
The fading heat of the mattress still clings to my back, but the silence between these walls has shifted.
It is no longer heavy with what just passed between us; it is heavy with the reality of what remains outside these dark sheets.
The air feels different now. Cooler. Quieter.
Lorenzo is not beside me. For one wild second, I wonder if I dreamed everything.
Then I find him standing by the window. He is dressed in black trousers and a shirt left open at the collar because of the bandage around his neck. One hand rests against the frame while he looks out over the estate grounds below.
He does not turn, but he knows I am awake.
“You should still be sleeping,” he says.
My fingers tighten around the wool throw. “You should still be in the clinic.”
The corner of his mouth shifts. “I don’t take orders from Luciano.”
“You don’t take orders from anyone.”
Now he looks at me. The room changes the moment our eyes meet. It is not because he moves, but because my body remembers him before my mind can catch up.
I look away first. I hate that weakness.
Sitting up, I pull the blanket tighter around myself. My clothes are folded neatly on the chair beside the sofa. I reach for them because I need my hands occupied, and because sitting here wrapped in his blanket makes it too easy to forget there is still another life waiting outside this room.
Elsie. Olivia. Mrs. Abena. My mother. My apartment. My classroom.
A whole life existed before Lorenzo Nero stepped into it and turned every certainty into another question.
“I need to go to my apartment.”
The words settle between us. He says nothing.
I dress beneath the blanket as best I can before standing. My legs still feel unsteady, but I keep my chin high. I won’t have this conversation looking defeated.
“My life has changed,” I continue. “I need time to think. I need to decide what happens next.”
His eyes never leave mine. He doesn’t interrupt. That should make this easier, but it doesn’t.
“I have a job.”
“You have one here too.”
I look at him. “Lorenzo.”
“You get paid a handful.”
A short laugh escapes me, stripped of any real humor. “You cannot be serious.”
“I am when it comes to your safety.”
“You know what I mean.”
His jaw shifts.
“I’m a teacher, Lorenzo.” My voice catches on the words, and I swallow down the emotion. “I love what I do. I need to see my mother. I haven’t spoken to her properly. I haven’t explained any of this. I haven’t even had time to understand what’s happened to me.”
He stays silent, but the quiet has changed. It is heavier now, the kind that makes every word feel like stepping closer to an edge.
But I am already there.
“I’m standing on the edge of a life I don’t recognize,” I whisper. “I don’t know what I’ve done to myself. And I don’t know what you’ve done to me.”
His hand closes once at his side. Nothing more. No command, no anger, but the tension ripples through the space between us.
“I can’t stay trapped between two lives,” I say. “I can’t spend every day being the prisoner of the father of my child and still...”
The words refuse to come cleanly. Speaking them makes them real. I spent so many nights hating him, only to find myself needing the safety I feel beside him. He frightens me, yet I trusted him with Elsie before anyone else. When bullets found us in the dark, he chose her survival before his own.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped pretending I wasn’t already falling.
Lorenzo takes one step toward me. I should step back, but I don’t.
“Finish the sentence, Victoria.”
My heartbeat pounds against my ribs.
“I can’t have feelings for my captor,” I whisper, forcing the truth out. “The man who is also the father of my daughter.”
Silence stretches. His eyes don’t widen; they grow quieter, and that is worse. It means he is exercising total restraint.
“You think I don’t know that?” I ask, emotion finally bleeding into my voice.
“You think I don’t wake up carrying it? You took me.
You kept me here. You decided where I went, who I could see, what was left of my life.
And then you held my daughter as though nothing in this world would ever touch her. ”
His expression changes when I say Elsie’s name. It only lasts for a heartbeat, but I catch it.
“You made it impossible for me to hate you the way I wanted to,” I whisper.
He walks closer. This time I move back until my hip meets the edge of the table. He stops before closing the final step between us, leaving the choice to me.
“You are not my prisoner,” he says.
His voice is so quiet I almost think I imagined it.
“What?”
“You are free to leave.”
I stare at him, searching his face for the catch, for the wall hidden inside the door he has just opened. Lorenzo does not give gifts without weight, and he does not loosen his grip without keeping a finger on the pulse.
“What did you say?”
“You can leave.”
A slow breath leaves me. “With Olivia?”
“Yes.”
“Mrs. Abena?”
“Yes.”
“And Elsie?”
He doesn’t answer immediately. His eyes hold mine, making me wait for the bond to snap or hold.
“For Elsie...” His voice remains steady. “You can too.”
I go completely still.
“But I don’t compromise when it comes to my blood.” There is the line I expected. It settles deep into the floorboards. “I’ll make sure my daughter is safe every moment of every day, Victoria. And the mother of my daughter will be protected too.”
“I know I’m safe.”
His expression barely changes. “You don’t.”
“I do.”
“No.” He steps closer until the distance vanishes and the warmth of him reaches me again. “You know this house. You know my men. You know the gates, the guards, the walls. You know the danger that has a face.”
He pauses, his eyes searching mine.
“But you haven’t seen the rest.”
The tyres hum against the road, the steady vibration travelling through the floor beneath my feet.
After almost three months spent running from death, glancing over my shoulder at every shadow, sitting in the back of a moving SUV feels strangely unreal.
The world kept turning while mine fell apart.
A red light brings us to a stop.
My stomach tightens before I can stop it.
The memory comes without warning.
Headlights.
Gunfire.
Running until my lungs burned.
I blink and force myself back to the intersection.
People cross with shopping bags.
A cyclist waits beside a bus.
Cars move through the city with ordinary purpose.
Normal.
The light changes.
We pull away.
A silver hatchback cuts sharply into our lane.
My breath catches.
My fingers close around the fabric of my skirt.
The woods.
The chase.
Branches striking the car.
Lorenzo standing between us and the men hunting us.
I breathe out slowly, forcing the panic back where it belongs.
Normal.
I have to remember what normal feels like.
My hand slips around Elsie’s.
She squeezes my fingers without looking up.
Lorenzo’s final words before we left the estate keep circling through my mind.
I’ve taken care of the threat.
Simple words.
They leave behind far more questions than answers.
I stare through the window.
What does that mean to a man who lives outside the law?
Lorenzo doesn’t call the police.
He doesn’t send his enemies to court.
Is Francesco sitting somewhere signing away everything he owns?
Or is he already gone?
Buried where no one will ever find him?
The thought settles heavily inside me.
I don’t know how I feel.
Relieved.
Uneasy.
Free.
All at once.
I look down at Elsie.
She’s completely absorbed in the little plastic toy in her hands, pausing only to point excitedly whenever a bus or shop catches her eye.
The older she grows, the more she resembles him.
The shape of her jaw.
The crease between her brows when she concentrates.
The quiet way she watches the world before deciding what she thinks of it.
She is slowly becoming her father’s daughter.
A smile touches my lips.
Without meaning to, my thoughts drift back.
To the night she was conceived.
Only fragments remain.
A silk mask.
Darkness.
His hands.
Heat that blurred everything else.
There isn’t enough left for me to rebuild the night.
Only enough to feel it.
But after last night...
Last night changed every memory that came before it.
Now, every time Lorenzo touches me, the past fades a little further away.
Nothing feels borrowed.
Nothing feels familiar.
Everything feels new.
A warmth rises to my face before I can stop it.
I lower my eyes to my phone.
Too late.
Olivia catches me.
Of course she does.
One eyebrow lifts.
I suddenly become very interested in my screen.
She lets out a quiet snort.
“Thinking about him again?”
Heat climbs my neck.
“No.”
“Liar.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You had that look.”
I sigh.
“What look?”
“The Lorenzo look.”
I groan.
Olivia laughs.
It fills the car.
Real laughter.
Not forced.
Not hiding fear.
Just Olivia.
I look back at my phone.
Lorenzo slipped it into my hand moments before we left the estate.
Such a small gesture.
Yet it felt larger than it should have.
Freedom resting in the palm of my hand.
For months, a phone meant danger.
A signal.
A trail someone could follow.
I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to hold one without fear.
I unlock the screen and search for my mother’s number.
Then I notice another contact already saved.
A smile finds me before I can stop it.
Lorenzo.
Of course he’d added himself.
The simple thought warms me.
He made sure I could reach him if I needed to.
Just a name in a contact list.
Yet it feels strangely comforting.
A quiet promise that distance doesn’t mean I’m alone.
Movement outside catches my attention.
A black sedan.
Three cars behind us.
I watch it through the rear window as it follows every turn.
The same sedan that left the estate after we did.
My smile returns.
Lorenzo.
Of course.
He agreed to let me leave.
That doesn’t mean he’ll stop protecting me.
The sedan keeps the perfect distance.
Close enough not to lose us.
Far enough not to attract attention.
I shake my head.
Some habits will never leave that man.
My thoughts drift ahead.
My apartment.
Is my car still in the garage?
Has dust settled over it?
Will it even start?
Are my plants dead?
Will the place still smell like home?
Or did I leave that life behind months ago?
The closer we get, the harder my heart beats.
Street after familiar street passes by.
Corners I’ve walked a hundred times.
Buildings I’ve barely noticed before.
Pieces of the life waiting for me.
Then—
My street.
The gate comes into view.
I stop breathing for a moment.
The brick wall.
The chipped paint.
The overgrown roses.
Home.
After everything...
After the fear.
The running.
The nights I thought I would never come back...
The driver eases the SUV to the curb.
The tyres roll to a gentle stop in front of the gate.
Warmth rises into my throat.
I never imagined four walls could feel this precious.
Right now...
Home feels a little like heaven.