Chapter 28 Samira
Samira
I didn’t know what I wanted anymore.
That was the truth I kept circling without touching.
On one hand, I wanted my voice and was happy to have it back—fully, without effort, without pain scraping it raw. I wanted my sight to return so I could see the world again, so I could stop moving through it like a ghost, counting steps and listening for danger in every sound.
On the other hand… I wanted this.
The way Marcello existed around me like a wall that didn’t close in.
Those two wants didn’t belong together, and I knew it. Wanting my body back meant wanting my life back. And wanting my life back meant leaving this place.
Leaving him.
The thought tightened something in my chest. A slow, creeping pressure that didn’t fade when I tried to ignore it. And the longer I sat with it, the clearer it became—though not just in my mind.
Something shifted.
The darkness began to thin around the edges of my vision. At first, I dismissed it. My body had betrayed me before. Pain came and went now, strange sensations flaring up only to fade again. This felt like more of the same—pressure behind my eyes, a dull ache that pulsed once and receded.
I squeezed my eyes shut and breathed through it. In. Out. Slow. Controlled. I’d learned how to endure discomfort without reacting. It was how I’d survived when reacting only made things worse.
I waited for it to pass.
It didn’t.
When I opened my eyes again, something had changed.
There was a smear of light.
Not brightness. Not clarity. Just… something. A pale wash where there had only been darkness before. It hovered uncertainly, like it didn’t know if it was welcome yet.
My breath caught. Sharp. Loud in my ears.
I froze, afraid to blink. Afraid the moment would vanish if I acknowledged it too quickly. My heart began to pound—not with relief, but with sudden, terrifying awareness.
The darkness hadn’t lifted.
But it had cracked.
And that—more than anything—terrified me.
I blinked slowly.
The light stayed.
Then—just barely—a shape. Blurred. Indistinct. A suggestion more than a form.
My heart started to race.
This was it. This was what I’d been waiting for.
And instead of relief, panic flooded me.
I closed my eyes again.
I didn’t tell anyone. Not Tone. Not Marcello.
I sat there breathing deeply, like the truth was something fragile I might break if I spoke it out loud. I wasn’t ready for what came next. The questions. The plans. The way everyone would start making decisions for me once I was “better.”
Better was a dangerous word.
I wondered—cruelly—if I was only here because Marcello needed to fix something. Because guilt was a powerful motivator. Because maybe I was just a way for him to balance some invisible ledger. And once I was whole again—once I could see and speak and walk out the door under my own power—what then?
Would he let me go as easily as he had taken responsibility for me?
The thought cut deeper than it should have.
I’d learned not to trust safety. Every time I had, it had turned on me. Even the places that were supposed to protect me hadn’t.
I remembered the family home. The walls that were supposed to be solid.
Respectable. Safe. I remembered learning early that danger didn’t always come from strangers.
Sometimes it slept down the hall. Sometimes it wore familiarity like armor.
Sometimes you screamed into rooms that pretended not to hear you.
My childhood home was supposed to be the safest place on earth.
It hadn’t been.
So now, sitting in this silent house, I didn’t trust it either. I didn’t trust how safe I felt. I didn’t trust the way my body softened when Marcello entered the room. How my breathing steadied at the sound of his voice.
I felt safer here than I ever had anywhere else.
And that terrified me.
Because safety that depends on someone else can be taken away. Because comfort can be temporary. Because I didn’t know who I was when I wasn’t surviving.
Marcello moved somewhere nearby. I heard the subtle shift of his weight, the soft close of a door. He didn’t know what had just happened inside my head. He didn’t know I’d seen light. That I was standing at the edge of leaving without taking a single step.
I pressed my palms into the mattress and kept my eyes closed.
Not yet.
I wasn’t ready to give this up.
The safety.
The calm.
Maybe that made me selfish. Maybe it made me weak.
Or maybe—just this once—I was allowed to want something gentle before the world asked me to be strong again.
I didn’t know what would happen when my sight fully returned. Or when my voice stopped trembling.
But for now, I stayed still.
I kept my secret.
And I let myself exist in the only place that had ever felt like shelter—knowing it might not last, but needing it anyway.
As my sight crept back, something else stirred.
Memory.
It didn’t arrive gently. It came in flashes—violent and uninvited.
Blood hitting the ground.
The sound was wrong. Wet. Final.
My stomach twisted hard enough that I pressed a hand to it, nausea rising fast and sharp. My pulse thundered in my ears.
A voice—shouting. Male. Angry. Urgent.
Not words yet. Just tone. Force.
I didn’t understand what I was seeing. Not fully. The pieces didn’t line up yet. My mind refused to give me the whole picture, like it was rationing the truth.
I breathed. Slow. Controlled. The way Marcello had taught me.
Another flicker—and there were hands. Movement. The sense of falling sideways, of the world tilting. Then nothing.
I opened my eyes again.
The room swam back into view, slightly clearer this time. Edges sharpened. Contrast improved. I could tell where the window was now. I could tell light from shadow without guessing.
Marcello was still there.
He hadn’t noticed.
Or maybe he had, and he was pretending not to.
I didn’t know which possibility unsettled me more.
I watched him the only way I could—secretly—memorizing the shape of him as my vision stitched itself back together. He turned slightly, and the blur shifted, resolved just enough for me to register the width of his shoulders, the angle of his head.
Safety shouldn’t have looked like anyone.
And yet.
Another memory clawed its way up.
A body on the ground.
Lying too still.
I swallowed hard, my throat tightening as if it remembered what my mind wouldn’t let me name yet.
Something bad had happened in that alley. I knew that now. And not just to me—around me.
Because of me?
For me?
The questions piled up, heavy and unanswered.
I didn’t want the truth yet. I wasn’t ready to see it clearly—just like I wasn’t ready to see him clearly. Both felt like doors that couldn’t be closed once opened.
So I kept it to myself.
I let my eyes adjust. I let memory drip-feed itself back to me in fragments I could survive.
And I held my silence.
Because some recoveries happened in darkness.
And some truths were easier to face when no one else knew you were getting closer to them.