Chapter 3 – Almeria
The weight of the past feels heavier when it arrives wearing a tailored suit and memories I never asked to relive.
Gaspare’s reappearance has cracked something in me I thought had long been buried. For eight years, I’ve kept myself together with the delicate precision of a pressed flower. Neatly folded, carefully hidden, beautiful only from a distance. But now… I’m starting to feel the edges fray.
He found us. Somehow, through all my efforts to remain invisible, he cut through the layers I built around my life.
And now, he’s everywhere.
In the spaces between my breaths. In the tension I carry through my shoulders. In the flickers of memory that resurface when I least expect them.
I don’t want to acknowledge the effect he still has on me.
But I feel it. Every time our eyes meet. Every time his voice brushes against my ears like a sound I used to know. The pull of him is wrong. Dangerous. A tether to a life I clawed myself free from.
I should hate him.
I want to hate him.
But when he showed me the photograph—a surveillance shot of Luca and me, grainy but unmistakable—and told me we were being watched… something inside me cracked.
It wasn’t his words. It wasn’t even the fear. It was the look in his eyes.
It was the concern.
Real. Raw. Not the performance of a mob boss trying to intimidate or assert power. It was personal.
And that was what scared me most of all.
I sit by the dining room window that evening, tea gone cold in my hands, while Luca finishes his dinner at the table. He’s talking and chattering about his day as he always does, legs swinging, one hand squeezing a napkin over and over again, the other holding the fork he’s using to play with the food in his plate.
I don’t realize he’s noticed my lack of attention until he calls me loudly, causing me to jerk in fear.
“Baby,” I scold gently, seeing he’s not in any harm.
"Mama, are you sad?"
I blink, my displeasure at him fading. “No, sweetheart. Just tired.”
He looks at me like he doesn’t believe it. Then he smiles and goes on talking about some girl who let him put flowers in her hair at school.
I stare out the window into the darkening street.
There’s no one out there.
But I can still feel him.
Gaspare.
His presence is like smoke. You don’t see it at first. But you smell it. Taste it. And when it wraps around you, you can’t breathe.
After Luca is asleep, I sit on the edge of my bed and let the silence press in around me.
I haven’t thought about that night in a long time.
Not because I forgot. Because I chose not to remember.
But now, the memory surfaces whether I want it to or not.
It begins with the diary.
Gaspare had found it. Read it. And twisted every word into something ugly.
He confronted me in the library, voice low and scathing, eyes burning with suspicion.
"Trying to seduce me for your brother’s benefit?"
I remember standing there, stunned, my mouth dry, heart hammering in my chest.
I tried to explain. To defend myself.
But he wasn’t listening.
He never did.
He dragged me from the building like I was poison. Threw me into that alley like I was nothing. Left me in the dark with those cruel, final words:
"Let this be your last game, Almeria. I see you now. And I’ll never be fooled again."
Then he walked away.
I remember the sound of his footsteps receding.
I remember the cold settling in my bones.
And then…
Another man. A stranger. A shadow.
I don’t remember his face. I couldn’t even see his face. The only thing I can recall clearly of him is his voice. And the smell of sweat and tobacco. The rough scrape of brick against my back. The searing pain.
I screamed until my throat bled.
No one came.
Not even the one who dragged me there in the first place.
When I came to hours later, I was alone.
Everything hurt.
Inside. Outside. Somewhere deeper than either.
I crawled out of that alley, covered in blood and shame and silence.
And I ran.
I changed my name. I changed my life.
I never looked back.
Until now.
I stand at the bathroom sink, clutching the edges like they’re the only solid things left.
Has he ever understood what he did that night?
Not the assault. He didn’t touch me.
But he left me there.
He made me vulnerable.
He humiliated me. Shattered what little trust I had. Left me exposed, broken, and ripe for harm.
That’s what I can’t forgive.
That’s what I carry in my bones.
The betrayal.
And the suspicion that maybe, just maybe, he planned it.
There were times—early on, when the bruises were still fresh, when Luca was still kicking inside me and I cried myself to sleep—when I truly believed he’d set it up.
That he wanted to punish me.
That he’d handed me to the wolves.
Even now, the doubt creeps in. Twists in my gut.
But then I remember his face the other day. The shock. The regret.
Maybe he didn’t know.
Maybe he was just a boy then. Angry. Foolish. Reckless.
And maybe I was just collateral damage.
That doesn’t excuse him.
But it changes things.
I crawl into bed beside Luca, careful not to wake him. He shifts in his sleep, his arm draping across my waist.
I press my lips to his forehead.
I don’t know what comes next.
Gaspare says he can protect us.
I don’t want his protection.
But I might not have a choice.
Because the past is here. And this time, it’s not just a memory.
It’s a man in a suit, with guilt in his eyes.
And if he thinks I’ll forgive him just because he’s sorry now—
He has no idea what I’ve survived.