Chapter 36 Beatrice
BEATRICE
Icome to slowly, my limbs numb, my tongue thick in my mouth, my mind… fractured.
At first, it’s just silence. Not the peaceful kind. No. This silence is heavy. Cold and hollow. It presses against my skin like wet cloth, suffocating me.
Then I feel it.
The bars.
I blink into the dim room, my heart beginning to stutter in my chest. The windows are sealed with cold iron. A metal door stands at the far end. I press my back further into the concrete wall, the metal cold against my heated skin.
Panic stirs like a firecracker inside me. I try to stand, but my muscles ache as though I’ve been asleep for days.
That’s when I realize—no machine beeps, no nurses anywhere. I’m not at the hospital.
Where am I? Where is Matteo? Daniele? Where is Valerio?
The door creaks open with an agonizing groan. I turn my head to the side, every nerve screaming like it’s on fire. A shadow steps through, and when the light catches his face, my stomach twists violently.
Giacomo.
He’s smiling like this is the punchline to a joke only he thinks is funny.
“You’re awake,” he says softly, the sound slick as oil. “Good. We have a lot to discuss.”
I don’t answer.
I plant my feet firmly on the floor, even though they’re shaking, and use the wall to help me stand. I can’t allow myself to be on the floor in his presence while he stands.
“You must have a million and one questions for me, cara. Let’s start there.”
I don’t answer him. I simply hold his gaze.
“Now the cat’s got your tongue?” He tuts. “You were very mouthy that day in the park. Come now, amore. It’s me we’re talking about. Speak. Let me hear you.”
I spit on the floor between us. “You are the scum of the earth.”
He’s unfazed by my words. He even goes as far as to laugh. Not just a low chuckle; this is a boisterous roar that makes him throw his head back.
“You flatter me, Beatrice. But since you won’t ask, I’ll just tell you—you’re in my home now,” he continues, strolling in like a king inspecting his favorite possession. “Your new one. And you’ll stay here, under my rule, just as it was meant to be all these years.”
I don’t move. I don’t blink.
Then he leans forward slightly, his voice dropping to a venomous whisper.
“You’ll behave if you want your son to stay alive, of course. Wouldn’t want anything bad happening to him while you’re here, unaware of anything outside these four walls.”
The words hit me like a blade to the spine. My breath halts. My jaw clenches.
But I lift my chin, trying to muster whatever little courage I have left. I stare him in the eye as the words leave my lips. “Matteo will come for me.”
His grin widens, slow and deliberate. Without breaking eye contact, he lifts a folder and lets it fall at my feet.
Photos slide across the floor.
I track them without moving.
It takes a second for my mind to catch up with what my eyes are seeing.
A funeral.
A white casket adorned with yellow roses. Mourners gathered around it, dressed in black—but that’s not what catches my eye.
In one of the photos, I see my husband holding Daniele. Both of them wear dark glasses, standing front and center. I see the tear stains on my son’s face, and I know instantly what this is.
I fall to my knees, my heart pounding.
It can’t be. It can’t be real.
Giacomo watches me silently, then crouches in front of me. The toxic scent of spice and leather scars the inside of my nose.
“A man will not come for something he believes to be dead. They buried you,” he says. “To them, you’re gone. You no longer exist.”
I can’t breathe.
“If you want to keep our son safe,” he says, “you’ll do exactly as I say. But if you so much as step out of line once, I will deliver his head to you on a silver platter.”
He reaches for my face, but I pull away. He laughs.
“Oh, Beatrice. I told you—I always get what I want at the end of the day.” He stares down at me, his nose tilted toward the floor, as if I’m beneath him. “You and your little fun—but now you’ve been returned to exactly where you belong.”
I don’t answer. My eyes stay locked on the pictures laid out on the floor in front of me.
He turns on his heels, promising to be back soon, then shuts the door behind him, caging me inside these four metal walls with no way out.
More photos slip free as the file crumples beside me. One of them catches my eye.
Valerio.
He’s standing alone at the edge of my grave. Shoulders hunched, no sunglasses, so I can see the bloodshot eyes. Tears streak down his face, his jaw set hard in place.
He looks like a man broken in half.
And that’s when the cold sets in—a chill that has nothing to do with the room. It isn’t fear. It’s something far more hopeless than that.
Despair.
Because maybe this time… no one’s truly coming for me.
I don’t move for a long time. I stay rooted in place, staring at every picture, committing each one to memory, each one adding to my pain.
The photos lie scattered around me like shattered glass. Each one a blow to the chest. Each one whispering the same lie.
You’re gone. You’re gone. You’re gone.
My fingertips tremble as I reach for the photo of Matteo. He’s holding Daniele. One hand clutches the boy’s shoulder. But the grief bleeds through the paper.
He thinks I’m dead.
He buried me.
I clench the image until it crumples between my fingers.
Panic starts to bloom in my lungs. It’s a slow, suffocating thing. Not loud or messy. Just… rising, like water filling a room, inch by inch, until you realize too late that you can’t breathe.
I press my palms to the floor, grounding myself.
“I’m still alive. That has to count for something.” My voice sounds wrong in this room, no more than a shattered whisper in the thick quiet. “It has to mean something—to me.”
I stand slowly, my knees weak, and take in the room.
There’s a bed in one corner. A sink. One single mirror.
It’s a cell.
True to his word, this man has caged me. It would be so easy to let the despair consume me. To simply accept this new reality I’ve been thrust into.
But then he wins. And I promised myself I would never let that man win again. Not ever. I will find my way home to them. This is not the end. This is simply a setback.
My heart fractures at the thought of my son. His face slams into my mind—his smile, his warmth, the last hug before everything fell apart. And if Giacomo has even been near him, if he’s laid a hand on him, if he’s touched a single hair on his head—
The thought alone is enough to turn my blood to ice.
No. I can’t go there.
Rage flickers like a match. I cling to it, using it as fuel.
I walk to the far wall and press my forehead to the cold surface. My skin hums with leftover sedation, or whatever he used to get me here. My limbs still ache, but beneath it all, a low, humming fire burns, pinching my skin, glowing at my core.
Giacomo wants me docile. Defeated. At his mercy.
But that’s the mistake men like him always make. They confuse silence for surrender and tears for hopelessness.
I remember who I was before all of this. Before the cage. Before the blood. Before the choices that stole everything from me. I remember the woman who once stood on a rooftop and wanted to jump… but didn’t.
She survived.
So will I.
This will not be my ending. The pen is still in my hand, and I’m still writing.
THE END