Chapter 18 Samira
Samira
My whole body became a listening device.
The house had a heartbeat. The floorboards had tells. Air changed when a door opened. Silence changed when someone stepped into it.
His footsteps were the first constant.
Marcello walked like a man who had never had the luxury of being careless. There was no drag and no shuffle. It was controlled weight. Even when he tried to be quiet, he wasn’t soft. He was deliberate.
I lay still and counted.
One… two… three… pause.
That pause was how I knew he was thinking.
He stood too still when he thought, like movement might make the wrong decision happen faster.
Tone had changed the sheets this morning, and now the room smelled fresh and crisp.
She always did everything gently, like she thought my skin might bruise from anything too loud, too harsh.
Tone had left after sunset—reluctant to leave, but firm about it.
People who survived other people’s pain learned where their own limits were.
Then the night became mine again.
And his.
I heard a small sound—fabric. A chair being pulled back. He was sitting down.
My world was audio now. It was the only map I trusted. Every object existed because it made noise when I reached for it. Every distance was measured by the time it took sound to bounce back.
Marcello was the center of that map. Not because I wanted him to be, but because he was always here.
The chair creaked once under his weight, then settled. I could hear the short drag of his breath. Controlled. Even. Like he was holding himself at the edge of a cage.
I kept my face turned toward the pillow, but I listened to every detail of him the way I used to watch doorways, waiting for the next horror to start.
When I finally turned in the bed and faced the room, I wet my lips. My throat still felt unfamiliar, like my own body was borrowed.
“Water?” he asked.
His voice was low.
I nodded, then moved to sit up.
There was movement before I felt his proximity close to me. His hand hovered near mine for a second before he guided it—only the lightest touch on my wrist, a warning more than an instruction.
The glass was cool. The rim pressed against my mouth. I drank cautiously, afraid of spilling, afraid of looking pathetic even though I already felt that way.
He didn’t comment or offer comfort. He just waited patiently for me to finish drinking.
That was his strange kindness—he didn’t try to make it better. He just made it survivable.
When I was done, he took the glass and set it down. Precise. Like he was counting noises the way I was.
My fingers curled into the sheet. I could still feel the tremor, faint and stubborn. It came and went like something trying to surface after a long time underwater.
I lifted my hand and tapped my wrist twice. He was quick to understand what I wanted.
“It’s late,” he said. A pause. “After midnight.”
The silence settled again—dense, but not uncomfortable.
He didn’t try to fill it with words. He filled it simply by being there.
It should have frightened me. Men who stayed close usually wanted something from me—that was what experience had taught me.
But he didn’t reach for me unless it was necessary. He didn’t crowd my space. He just sat.
If we were going to share the silence, I decided it might help to give it shape. I was curious about him—this stranger who had pulled me out of the dark and brought me into his home.
I lifted my hand and gestured for the iPad.
“I’ll just grab it off charge.”
I heard movement around the room, before he returned and pressed the device into my hand.
You don’t sleep.
“I sleep,” he replied. “Not much.”
I waited for him to add something, but he didn’t.
So I did.
What do you think about… when you don’t sleep?
The words slipped out before I could soften them. The room went still, and I understood why. It was a personal question. No one wanted to share what was in their head most of the time. But he surprised me by answering.
“My brother died.”
The sentence lingered between us, stripped bare and unforgiving.
I stayed still. Even the air felt altered, as if the room itself had paused to listen.
I didn’t know what it meant to lose a sibling.
I’d never really had one. My stepbrother didn’t count—not in any way that mattered.
And my father… my father was the closest I’d ever come to death, but I’d been too young to understand grief then.
Too young to name it, to feel its weight settle in my bones.
Now, I realized there wasn’t anyone in my life I was close enough to truly mourn. Not the way people talked about loss—with aching absence and memories that refused to soften. That kind of connection had never been mine to lose.
He went on slowly, like each word cost him something he couldn’t afford to give away.
“His name was Alessio.”
The name broke against his throat.
“He was…”
He stopped there. The rest of the sentence collapsed in the silence.
The room seemed to shrink around us.
I’m sorry, I wrote. Is that why you can’t sleep?
“His death unmade me,” he whispered. “They tell you grief gets lighter with time. That you learn how to carry it.” He paused. “That’s a lie. You don’t carry it. It carries you.”
His breath hitched—once. Sharp. He crushed it down immediately, like weakness was a thing he refused to let live.
“When I don’t sleep,” he mumbled. “I just wait for the night to end.”
It sounded like a lonely place to exist. The thought sent a sharp ache through me, sudden and unguarded. Carrying that kind of grief must have been a constant weight on him—something that pressed down even when he stood still.
I folded my hands around the tablet, grounding myself in its familiar weight, the smooth edge beneath my fingers. I waited until the tremor in my hands eased, until I could trust them again. Then I began to write—fast, uneven strokes, urgency bleeding into every line as I formed my question.
What happened to him?
The words were small. Careful. I didn’t know why I asked, but I was curious.
He was silent long enough that I thought he wouldn’t answer.
Then, “He died because someone wanted to make a point.” His voice tightened. “And because I wasn’t there.”
His words carried grief and self-loathing, but guilt was the weight that pulled them under.
Guilt was the one language I understood. I swallowed, my throat tight. I moved my lips, but no words came out. I wanted to say I was sorry. I wanted him to know I felt his pain.
But he was quick to add, “I don’t want your sympathy.”
I flinched, instinctive.
Then he added, lower, “But I’ll take your honesty.”
Honesty I could do. It was safer than comfort.
I shifted on the bed. The sheets rasped under me. My body ached in a tired, dull way that never fully left.
Was he older? I asked.
“No. He was the youngest. Atlas is the eldest, then me, and Alessio was the baby.”
He scoffed, as though remembering a long-gone memory. “The baby. He came to us when he was six. Alessio was our half-brother. It still hurt like a bitch to lose him.”
The words softened on the edges, like memory had sanded them down.
It sounds like you were close.
Another stillness. I heard the faintest shift of cloth, like he was adjusting his hands. His voice dropped lower.
“We had a sister who died when we were very young…barely teenagers. After that, Alessio stepped into our family like he’d always been there. Like he belonged. And he did.”
The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was full of the things he wasn’t saying.
I felt a strange pressure behind my eyes—a phantom reflex, as if tears could still be a simple, visible thing.
I turned my head toward his voice.
You’re trying to be a better man for him.
A beat.
“Yes.”
The word was hushed, landing like a confession.
My breathing steadied. Slow. Deliberate. My body was still braced, still wary, but something had shifted. Something microscopic and dangerous.
You miss him a lot.
Marcello exhaled.
“Every day.”
I nodded again, a useless gesture, then forced my words into the world anyway.
You still have Atlas.
“I do,” he said, rough. “But Alessio was the same thing for the both of us.”
An anchor?
“I didn’t expect you to ask me questions,” he admitted, deftly sidestepping the one I had just asked.
It was such a simple thing to say. It shouldn’t have mattered. But it did. Because questions were power, and he was handing some of that power back to me without hesitation.
My breathing eased before I realized it had, though it was only a little.
Even without a voice, I was being heard. He was listening. Not waiting for his turn. Not filling the silence. Actively listening.
Something soft brushed the corner of my mouth. Not quite a smile—just the memory of one. I couldn’t remember the last time I had a reason to feel calm, or safe, or anything close to free.
The feeling was fragile. Dangerous. A trust I had never meant to offer.
But for the first time since everything had been taken from me, I let myself rest in the sound of his voice and believe it might be enough to carry me through what was yet to come.