Chapter Nine - Lira
Silk Root, Dantès Estate
When I open my eyes, the light feels wrong.
It’s soft and golden, too warm for morning and too steady to be natural. My lashes stick together as I blink, slow and dry, and for a second—just one—I think maybe I’m home. Maybe the room is mine. Maybe the past few months never happened.
But then I see the vent.
The new screws. The faint scrape in the wall where the old grate hung. And I remember.
My stomach curls in on itself.
I try to sit up, but my arms are weak, trembling as I drag myself toward the edge of the bed. My muscles protest the movement, tight and clumsy. Each breath tastes like iron and lavender, and the scent makes my throat close up. I cough —just once—but it’s enough to make my vision blur at the edges.
My fingers find the bed frame and I clutch it like it might keep me from dissolving.
I look around.
The same walls. The same smooth stone floor. The same heavy door without a handle on my side. Nothing has changed. Nothing.
I’m still here.
Still breathing.
Still trapped.
A tear slides down my face before I feel it coming. It slips off the edge of my chin and disappears into the blanket pooled in my lap. I don’t wipe it away. My hands are shaking.
I let my head fall forward, hair spilling over my shoulders, and I whisper into the space between my knees.
“Why?”
My lips are cracked. My voice comes out broken, barely a thread.
“Why am I still here?”
My hands shake when I try to wipe the tears away, and I miss.
They keep coming, slipping down the corners of my mouth, warm at first, then cold as they reach my throat.
My whole body hurts. It’s not the ache of something broken—but something bruised in many places all at once.
My chest tightens, but it isn’t breathlessness.
It’s shame.
The kind that lives just under the ribs. The kind that pulses with each beat of your heart and says, you failed at dying, too.
The silk sheet clings to my legs. My knees are drawn up, weak.
I can't even cry the way I want to. My throat won’t let me.
The sobs rise and collapse, jagged and small.
I press the heel of my hand to my sternum as if I can force the pressure down.
My face is hot, wet, and swollen. I know what I must look like—skin pale and blotchy, hair damp and tangled across my neck, lips cracked and raw from crying.
The room watches me in silence. Even the lights feel like they're holding their breath.
Then I hear it.
The hiss of the magnetic lock releasing.
I freeze.
The door opens.
I don't lift my head at first, but I hear the step. Fast. Familiar. Controlled in that military way, like each heel hits the ground only because it must.
I look up.
And I see him.
For a second, my heart stops—then lurches. That’s the only way I can describe it. Like a bird slamming into glass.
He fills the doorway, chest rising fast beneath a wrinkled white shirt. His hair is tousled like he’s run his hands through it many times.
Strong enough to carry a world, but right now he looks like he’s barely holding up his own.
I stare at him like I’m seeing something impossible. I’m not sure if I’ve died and this is a kindness my mind’s given me on the way out.
He crosses the room in four strides and sits down on the edge of the bed before I can even flinch. His arms go around me, warm and crushing, pulling me straight to his chest. His scent hits me first—salt and clean cotton and something faintly bitter, like stress left long in the bloodstream.
“I was so scared,” he whispers into my hair. His hand strokes down the back of my head, gently, over and over. “Lira, I—Jesus. I thought I’d lost you.”
The sound of his voice almost breaks me.
I clench my teeth, swallow the sob in my throat, and push.
“Don’t.” My voice comes out ragged.
I shove him hard, both hands on his chest, and he lets go. I throw off the blanket and swing my legs off the bed, bracing on the frame even though the floor tilts beneath me.
He reaches for me again. “You’re weak, don’t—”
“Leave me the fuck alone!” I scream it so loud my throat scrapes raw.
His hands drop like I slapped him.
“Lira, please.”
I turn toward him, and something inside me cracks all the way open.
“You left me,” I say, and it’s not a whisper. It’s a wound. “You were all I had. You knew what she meant to me, and you still left. You left me to rot and die, and you didn’t come back. Not when I needed you. Not when the world fell apart. You just disappeared. And now you show up?”
My voice breaks so violently it splinters the air.
“How dare you!”
He doesn’t speak.
He just pulls me into his arms again.
I fight him. I curse at him in Italian, spit and fury, nails dragging across the cotton at his back. “Vaffanculo, figlio di puttana! Bastardo! Dove sei stato? Perché mi hai lasciata?!”
But he doesn’t let go.
No matter how hard I push, I can’t break his grip. He holds me tighter. Steadier. As if I’ll vanish if he doesn’t.
So, I stop fighting.
And I collapse into him, sobbing until the tears drown the words.
My fingers curl into his shirt.
My head falls against his shoulder.
And I whisper, barely audible through the wreckage of my voice:
“Why did you leave me?”
He’s still holding me when my body stops shaking. My face is damp, and the heat between us is stifling. My fists are still curled into his shirt, like I’m afraid that if I let go, he’ll disappear again.
He doesn’t speak right away. He just breathes, shallow and uneven, one hand cradling the back of my head while the other trembles faintly against my spine.
Then—slowly—he pulls back.
His hands lift to my face. They’re warm and calloused, rough from years of holding things meant to kill. He wipes at my cheeks, gently brushing away the mess I’ve made of myself, and I hate how familiar it feels. I hate that it still makes my heart twist.
“I’m so sorry, Lira,” he says. His voice is quiet but thick, scraped raw. “I—God—I know nothing I say will ever change what I did.”
He stops.
He lowers his gaze and inhales through his nose. When he speaks again, his voice falters.
“It was my fault.”
His hand slips from my cheek and falls into his lap.
“Your brother... Marco,” he says slowly, like the name alone might break him. “He wanted to leave. After Chiara died. He told me he was going to quit the navy. Said he’d pick up something local. Anything, just to stay close to you.”
I watch his throat work through the words. He doesn’t look at me. He looks past me, like the truth is heavy to meet my eyes with.
“I stopped him,” he says. “I told him if he stayed one more year, just one, he’d rank up and get better pay. More stability. More protection for you.”
He exhales hard and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. His shoulders curl in slightly, like he’s folding under the weight of it.
“He agreed. He stayed because I asked him to. Because I told him it was the smart thing to do. And then he—” His voice fractures. “He got shot. In the head. He died... because I asked him to stay.”
A single tear slips down his cheek, tracing the edge of his nose before it drops onto his shirt. He doesn’t wipe it away.
“I’m the reason he never came home,” he whispers.
My lungs ache like I’ve been punched. My skin goes cold, then hot, and my vision blurs again—but it’s not from crying. Not yet.
His hands are shaking in his lap now, curled into fists. He still won’t look at me.
“I’ve hated myself every day since,” he says. “And when I saw what happened to you... what it did to you... I couldn’t face it. I didn’t know how to live in a world where I let both of you down.”
More tears spill down his face, silent and steady.
“I am so sorry, Lira. Please.” His voice breaks again, and he finally looks up. His eyes are bloodshot, wide open and stripped of any defense. “Please forgive me. I was trying to protect you. I was trying to do the right thing, and I destroyed everything.”
I can’t breathe.
My whole body feels numb. Like the pain has pushed me out of myself.
But my hands move on their own.
I lift them slowly, one on each side of his face, and I take his jaw in both palms. My thumbs trace the edges of his tears. His skin is warm, his stubble rough against my fingers.
He stares at me, chest trembling.
“Is this...” I start, but my throat closes around the words. I try again. “Is this the burden you’ve carried? Is this what made you run away from me?”
He nods.
The movement is small, almost imperceptible, but I feel it through my palms. His shoulders shake beneath my hands and when he exhales, the sound comes out jagged and wet.
The guilt doesn't leave him when he says it. It folds deeper into the lines around his mouth, into the quiver in his chin, into the tears that won’t stop falling.
And suddenly I laugh.
It escapes me without warning, thin and broken and cracked right down the middle. Not because it’s funny. Nothing about this is funny. But because pain has nowhere left to go. It’s sobbing and laughter tangled together in the same breath, and I can’t separate them.
“You didn’t kill him, Mico,” I say.
His eyes snap to mine—red, shining, wrecked.
“I did,” he says, voice hoarse. “I did, Lira.”
“No,” I say again, and my voice firm, even through the hitch in my chest. “You didn’t. You suggested what any good friend would. You tried to help him. You told him what made sense. And then things went bad. That’s not the same as murder.”
He stares at me like he doesn’t know how to hold the words. Like they don’t fit in the world he’s built around himself.
“He would hate this,” I whisper. “Marco would hate that you’ve carried this alone. He would yell at you. You know that, right?”
A few more tears spill down Mico’s face, and he presses his lips together like he’s trying to keep himself from breaking apart again. His voice comes low and choked.
“I am so sorry.”
I wrap my arms around him before he can say anything else.