2. Nova
— ? —
Nova
Six Weeks After She Left
Here’s something they don’t tell you about rock bottom: it doesn’t arrive all at once. It’s not a single fall, a dramatic crash, a moment you can point to and say there, that’s where everything ended.
It’s a staircase. And you take it one step at a time, each one a little lower than the last, until you look up and realize you can’t even see the light anymore.
The first step was the prenup.
I signed it three years ago in Vivienne’s drawing room, surrounded by lawyers who smiled at me like I was a child who’d wandered into a board meeting.
Dante held my hand and told me it was just a formality, that his mother insisted, that it didn’t mean anything because we were going to be together forever.
Forever lasted two years and three months.
The prenup left me with nothing. Not the apartment.
That was a Castellani property, transferred into Dante’s name before I’d even finished unpacking my paintbrushes.
Not the car, not the credit cards, not the bank accounts that had somehow absorbed my gallery earnings into their vast, untraceable depths.
I walked out of that marriage with one suitcase and the clothes on my back and approximately three hundred euros in a savings account I’d forgotten I had.
The divorce itself was the fastest thing the Castellani lawyers ever filed. Papers served within the week, uncontested, expedited through a judge who owed somebody a favor. They erased me from the family in less time than it took Vivienne to plan one of her dinner parties.
The second step was the lease.
“I’m sorry, Signora Castellani.” The property manager couldn’t meet my eyes. “Your application has been… declined.”
“There must be a mistake. My credit is-”
“It’s not your credit.” She shuffled papers on her desk, clearly wishing I would disappear. “We’ve received… information. About your character. Your stability.”
Your stability.
Vivienne’s word. Vivienne’s exact word, echoing back to me from a stranger’s mouth.
“Who called you?”
“I’m not at liberty to-”
“Who called you?”
She flinched at my tone, and I saw something flicker across her face - pity, maybe, or the particular discomfort of a person who knows they’re participating in something cruel but can’t afford to stop.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I really am. But I can’t help you.”
The third step was the jobs.
The gallery where I used to work before Dante swept me into his glittering world of charity galas and society dinners - they were hiring. I saw the posting online, and I thought: Yes. This is where I start over. This is where I rebuild.
I made it all the way to the final interview. The director shook my hand and told me I was exactly what they were looking for, that my eye for emerging artists was unparalleled, that they’d be in touch by Friday.
On Thursday, I got an email. We regret to inform you that the position has been filled.
I called the receptionist - a kind woman named Giulia who’d always snuck me espresso during the long exhibition nights - and begged her to tell me what happened.
“I’m so sorry, Nova.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “Signora Castellani called. The other Signora Castellani. She said, she said you’d been struggling. That you’d had a breakdown. That hiring you would be a liability.”
I sat on a bench outside the gallery and watched the pigeons fight over breadcrumbs and thought: She’s not trying to hurt me. She’s trying to erase me.
The blacklist spread like a disease. Every gallery, every museum, every auction house in the city - Vivienne’s phone calls preceded me like a plague.
I stopped introducing myself as Nova Castellani.
I stopped introducing myself at all. It didn’t matter.
The art world is small, and Vivienne’s reach is long, and within three weeks I couldn’t get hired to hang frames in a hotel lobby.
The fourth step was Chloe.
***
My sister lives in a townhouse in the nice part of the city, where the window boxes are always blooming and the neighbors wave hello and no one ever screams at each other through thin walls.
I used to visit her here before Dante, back when we were still sisters who shared secrets and borrowed each other’s clothes and promised we’d always be there for each other.
Always is another word that means less than I thought it did.
I stand on her doorstep with my suitcase - the same suitcase I packed six weeks ago, now battered and stained from too many nights in too many places - and I knock.
The door opens, but only a crack.
“Nova.” Chloe’s voice is strange. Tight. She doesn’t open the door any wider. “What are you doing here?”
“I need help.” The words scrape my throat like broken glass. “I know we haven’t talked in a while, but I’m - Chloe, I’m in trouble. Real trouble.”
“I heard.”
Something cold slithers down my spine. “What did you hear?”
“That you walked out on Dante Castellani.” She says his name like it’s sacred, like the syllables themselves deserve reverence. “Do you have any idea what that family could do to me? To my career?”
“Chloe. I’m your sister.”
“You should go back.” The door hasn’t moved. She’s not going to let me in. “Apologize to Vivienne. She told me you’ve been… struggling. Making accusations.”
The cold thing in my spine turns to ice.
“When did you talk to Vivienne?”
Chloe’s face does something complicated - a flicker, a twitch, something that looks almost like guilt before she smooths it away. Too late. I already saw it.
“She called me,” Chloe says, but her eyes slide away from mine. “After you left. She was worried about you.”
“Vivienne was worried about me.”
“She said you’d been having episodes. That you’d made some… some accusations that weren’t based in reality.”
She’s using Vivienne’s exact words. Not paraphrasing - quoting. How would Chloe know them?
“What else did she tell you?”
“Nova-”
“What else?”
Chloe’s hand tightens on the door. “I think you should leave.”
“I have nowhere else to go.”
“That’s not my problem.” Her voice has gone hard in a way I’ve never heard before, cold in a way that doesn’t match the sister I grew up with. “You made your choices. Now you have to live with them.”
“My choices? Chloe, she was hurting me. She was-”
“I don’t want to hear it.” The door starts to close. “I can’t help you. I’m sorry.”
“Chloe, please-”
The door shuts in my face.
I stand there for a long time, staring at the painted wood, listening to my sister’s footsteps retreat into the warmth and safety of her life.
I think about all the times she borrowed my clothes and never returned them.
All the times she called me crying about some boy and I stayed up until three in the morning talking her through it.
All the promises we made to each other, all the I’ll always be here for yous and we’re sisters, nothing can change thats.
She knew things she shouldn’t know.
The thought surfaces slowly, like a body rising from deep water.
She used Vivienne’s exact words. The same phrasing, the same framing - struggling, accusations, episodes. And her face when I asked when they talked-
Something is wrong here. Something beyond my sister’s cowardice, beyond her fear of the Castellani name.
But I can’t think about that now. I can’t think about anything except the next step down the staircase, the next piece of my life falling away beneath my feet.
I pick up my suitcase.
I walk away.
***
The shelter is full.
“I’m sorry, signora.” The woman behind the desk has kind eyes and tired hands. “We’ve been at capacity for three days. There’s another shelter across the city-”
“I tried there this morning.”
“Then maybe-”
“I’ve tried everywhere.” My voice cracks, and I hate it, I hate it, because I swore I wouldn’t break, I swore Vivienne wouldn’t break me, but the cold is seeping into my bones and I haven’t eaten in two days and I don’t know how much longer I can keep walking.
“Please. Just for one night. I can sleep in the hallway, I can-”
“I’m sorry.” She says it like she means it, like she wishes she could do more. “I really am.”
I nod. I don’t trust myself to speak.
Outside, the November wind cuts through my coat like it isn’t there. It’s an old coat, something I bought years ago before Dante dressed me in cashmere and silk and all the other fabrics that rich people use to distinguish themselves from everyone else. It’s not warm enough for sleeping rough.
But sleeping rough is what I have left.
I find a doorway in an alley off a quiet street - not too exposed, not too hidden - somewhere I might be overlooked but not cornered.
I’ve learned these calculations over the past two weeks, the grim mathematics of survival.
Where to sleep. Where to hide. How to make myself small enough that the world forgets I exist.
This is what she wanted, I think, lowering myself to the cold pavement. This is exactly what she wanted. To watch me sink. To know that she won.
I close my eyes and I try not to think about the dinner party, the crystal chandelier, Vivienne’s nails breaking my skin while the guests sipped champagne around us.
I try not to think about Dante’s voice on the phone: You’re right, Mamma. I can’t trust her anymore.
I try not to think about my sister’s door closing in my face.
I try not to think at all.
***
I don’t know how long I sleep. Hours, maybe. Or minutes. Time moves differently when you’re cold enough, hungry enough, exhausted enough that your body stops bothering with the normal rules of consciousness.
What I know is this: I wake to the sound of heels on pavement.
Click. Click. Click.
Expensive heels. The kind that cost more than a month’s rent. The kind that announce their owner’s presence like a warning bell.
I know those heels.
I know that perfume - Chanel No. 5, the same scent that lingered in the pantry on Christmas Eve after she slapped me and walked away humming “Silent Night.”