Chapter 34 Marcello
Marcello
Samira was gone.
And the house felt wrong without her.
The silence wasn’t empty—it was accusatory. It leaned in close, crowded the rooms, settled into the corners she had once occupied like a ghost that didn’t realize it was dead yet. Every surface felt marked by her absence. Every sound felt like it was asking me why.
Tow days after her sight returned, her memory came crashing back, sharp and violent, tearing through whatever fragile peace we had built. She remembered everything about that night. Every decision. Every line crossed.
And no matter how right my actions had felt in my own mind—no matter that she was alive because of me, no matter that I had dragged her out of a place she wouldn’t have survived—there was one thing she could not forgive.
That I had drugged her.
The contradiction still baffled me. That she could accept me as a killer but not as the man who stole her choice.
I turned it over again and again, trying to make it fit the logic I had lived by my whole life.
Violence was something I understood. Blood had rules.
Death had finality. But the violation of agency—that was a wound that didn’t bleed where you could see it.
And maybe that was why I didn’t get to understand it.
This wasn’t about my intent. Or my reasoning. It was about what I had taken from her.
And I had taken too much.
So I let her go.
That was the part that hurt the most.
Not because it was the noble thing to do. Not because it made me a better man. I let her go because there was nothing left I could say that wouldn’t sound like another excuse. Another justification. Another attempt to make myself the hero in a story where I had also been the villain.
I watched her walk away knowing that loving her meant letting her go.
Every room held the shape of her absence. Every breath felt like it was missing something essential. I stood in the wreckage of my own certainty, learning too late that saving someone’s life did not give me the right to decide how they deal with it.
She was gone.
And the void she left behind knew exactly whose fault that was.
So I sat at the kitchen counter with a bottle of vodka and a glass I didn’t bother filling.
I drank straight from the bottle, replaying it over and over—the way her hands had shaken, the way she had backed away from me like I was a monster.
You drugged me; her words were the final nail in a coffin she had been building her whole life.
She had been right.
I hadn’t just taken her agency in the alley.
I had taken it again when I convinced myself I knew better.
The bottle was half empty when the front door opened.
I didn’t look up. I already knew who it was. Ignore Tone long enough and she didn’t wait for permission—she showed up. Not at the door. She came straight into my space like she owned it. Distance had never applied to her when it came to family.
“You look disgusting.”
Tone’s voice cut through the room, flat and unforgiving.
I lifted my head.
She stood just inside the doorway, having crossed the threshold without asking, the way she always did when she had decided something needed to be confronted. Her arms were crossed tight against her chest, shoulders squared, eyes hard with something sharp and unyielding.
There was no softness there. No concern for me. And that told me everything. Her loyalty was with Samira.
“Don’t,” I muttered. “Not tonight.”
“Oh, tonight is exactly when,” she snapped. “Because while you’ve been sitting here playing the world’s most pathetic martyr, Samira walked out of this house with nothing but her dignity—and even that you nearly destroyed.”
I closed my eyes. She didn’t stop.
“I trusted you,” Tone spat. “I helped you. I stood between her and the truth because I thought you were going to do the right thing by her.”
The words landed like blows.
“And now,” Tone continued, her voice cracking despite her control, “she won’t answer my calls. She won’t text me back. I’ve lost her, too.”
My throat burned. “She had every right to leave.”
“Yes.” Tone was cold. “She did. And you had every chance to make things right.”
I reached for the bottle.
She slapped it out of my hand.
It spun across the counter and tipped, vodka sloshing out in thick, sour-smelling splashes that hit the floor.
“Look at you! If this is your idea of remorse, it’s pathetic.”
“What do you want from me?” I snapped. “She’s gone. She doesn’t want to see me. I don’t even know where she is.”
Tone let out a humourless laugh.
“For someone so capable, you’re being remarkably useless.”
“I’m not hunting her down.”
“Good,” she countered. “You don’t get to stalk her after what you did. But a good grovel wouldn’t kill you.”
She reached into her bag and pulled something out.
A watch.
My stomach dropped.
“I knew you’d screw this up,” her voice was flat. “Remember the matching watches I got for me and Samira to monitor her vitals?”
She watched my face.
“They’re synced. So there’s a tracker in it.”
My blood went cold.
“You tracked her?”
“I protected her,” Tone snapped. “Big difference. And you don’t get to judge me, you hypocrite!”
She pointed a finger of warning at me. The room tilted.
“What do you want from me, Tone?”
“I want you to make this right, Marcello.”
“She doesn’t want me anywhere near her.”
“No. She didn’t want to be lied to. Or controlled. Or drugged.”
Each word cut deeper than the last.
“She’s scared,” Tone continued. “Confused. Hurt. And alone. So you can either sit here drowning in vodka—”
She stepped closer.
“—or you can prove that the man she thinks you are isn’t the only one that exists.”
I stared at the watch in her hand.
“And if she doesn’t want to see me?”
Tone’s voice softened just enough to be kind.
“Then you leave. Immediately. No arguing. No justifying. Just leave her alone and hope that she comes around."
Her eyes locked on mine.
“You don’t get to take anything else from her, March.”
And for the first time since Samira had walked out the door, I understood just how much I had already lost.
After Tone left, I sat at the table with the watch in my hand, turning it over and over like it might whisper something back if I listened hard enough.
Samira had chosen to leave.
That was the truth I kept circling, no matter how I tried to escape it. She hadn’t asked for time. She hadn’t hesitated. She had stood there with her spine straight and her eyes clear and told me she was done. That she needed distance. Space. Control.
Tracking her felt like another violation.
Another decision made for her when she had been painfully clear she didn’t want any more of those.
But doing nothing felt like abandonment.
And I had already abandoned too many people in my life.
I closed my eyes and saw her as she had walked out—head high, voice steady, pride locked into every line of her posture. She hadn’t even let me drive her. Hadn’t let me soften the moment with something as small as sharing a car ride.
Like the separation had to be complete, and she didn’t want me threaded through her life in any way—past, present, or future.
The watch turned again in my palm.
Cold. Heavy.
For the first time, I understood that whatever I did next would define me more than anything I’d already done.
Tone’s face came back to me—tired, resigned, too honest. I knew you’d find a way to screw this up. There had been no cruelty in it. Just certainty. The kind that came from knowing someone too well to hope they’d suddenly be different.
She hadn’t been wrong.
I didn’t keep things. I dismantled them. I took what was living and ground it down until only the damage made sense. It wasn’t a habit I’d picked up—it was how I was built. Not who I wanted to be, but who I was by design.
I had always accepted that.
Until now.
Now that trait felt heavy inside my chest. Persistent and sickening. A slow, spreading disgust with myself.
I didn’t want to be this man anymore.
I wanted to be better. I wanted to do better.
Wanting it without knowing how felt like another punishment.
Alessio came to me then, the way he always did when I stood on the edge of something monumental.
You don’t get absolution without the courage to earn it.
I lifted the watch. Set it back down. Lifted it again.
Samira had chosen to leave. That was the line. Tone had drawn it. Samira had carved it into me. Crossing it meant taking something from her again.
Another theft. Another decision made for her.
I braced my palms against the table, fingers splayed, grounding myself in something solid while everything inside me threatened to splinter.
Alessio’s voice didn’t whisper as it coiled tight in the back of my skull, sharp and insistent.
If you don’t act now… can you live with what comes next?
My jaw locked. I shut my eyes for half a beat—just enough to steady the fracture—then opened them again.
That’s when the watch on the table glitched to life.
A stutter. A sharp, uneven beep. Not loud, but wrong enough to cut through my thoughts.
I frowned, grabbing it. The screen lit up, cold and clinical. It was an alert.
Elevated heart rate detected on synced device.
I stared at the screen, trying to piece together the words, irritation biting at the edges of my focus.
Synced device.
What the hell?
Realisation hit all at once, and I pulled my phone and called Tone.
She answered on the first ring.
“Tell me what this means.”
I already knew I wasn’t going to like the answer.
There was a pause of about half a second, her breath hitched.
“Where did you get that?” she asked, voice tight.
“Tone.”
“Samira’s watch.” Her words were coming faster now. “It’s linked to her vitals. If it’s flagging like that—” She cut herself off, but I heard it anyway. The panic. The shift.
“She’s not okay.”
Something cold slid into place inside my chest.
“It could be a cardiac event. Could be anything,” she went on, already moving into clinical mode, but it didn’t hide the edge in her voice. “She needs help. Now.”
I ended the call before she could get another word in. I was already moving as the world narrowed to one outcome and one destination.
I had to get to Samira. Everything else could burn.
I hit the car, engine roaring to life beneath my hands, and tore out onto the road, speed climbing before I even registered the numbers.
Every second stretched thin, time passing too slow. Not fast enough.
If I’m late…
I crushed the thought before it could form.