Chapter 36 Marcello
Marcello
The boarding house sat wedged between a narrow lane and a stand of cypress trees so dense they choked the light, even in the middle of the afternoon.
The trees weren’t decorative. They were oppressive—leaning over the roofline like sentries, their shadows spilling across the facade in long, dirty strokes.
Shadows clung to the building, stretching up its walls like they’d already claimed it.
The place looked exhausted. Old. Forgotten.
The kind of structure the world had stopped noticing.
A building people disappeared into because no one thought to look there.
The paint was flaked and bruised by weather.
The windows were cracked in places, curtains hanging limp behind the glass like tired hands.
My throat tightened the moment I saw it.
I couldn’t get past the thought of Samira living there—waking up under that roof, choosing that place. Not because she had nowhere else to go. Because she did. She could have stayed in my house. In warmth. In space. In safety. In the soft kind of comfort she pretended she didn’t need.
Instead, she’d walked away on principle.
She had traded my world—protected, guarded, controlled—for this.
Because of me.
The idea sat in my chest like a stone.
I nosed the car forward, slowing as I took it in, already bracing myself for the sight of her windows, her door—some small confirmation that I was in the right place. Some reassurance that she was upstairs, tucked away, alive and stubborn and furious, exactly as she’d been when she’d left me.
Instead, flashing blue cut through the gloom.
Police cars.
Two of them, parked crooked at the kerb like they’d been abandoned in a hurry. One door hung open. Another had a boot popped, equipment half-visible inside. The blue lights bounced off the boarding house windows and painted the cypress trunks in brief, violent pulses.
My foot eased off the accelerator. Something was wrong.
I slowed further. Let the car crawl. Before I’d even come to a complete stop, I saw the people on the footpath.
A uniformed officer near the steps. Another with a notebook, shoulders squared, posture too practiced.
A man in his forties, agitated, hands cutting through the air as he spoke—flat palm hovering above his own head, then dropping lower.
As though trying to show height. Trying to make someone understand the scale of whatever he’d seen.
Beside him stood a woman in her fifties—matronly, cardigan buttoned wrong in her haste, sensible shoes planted like she might tip over if she moved. Her face was red and blotchy. Eyes glassy. She kept shaking her head over and over, as if she could physically dislodge the memory.
My heart dropped so hard it felt physical.
No.
No, no—
I brought the car to a stop with deliberate care. I parked it and killed the engine.
For a beat, I sat with my hands on the wheel, knuckles pale. The world around me felt muffled, distant, like I’d slipped underwater. I forced myself to breathe once. Twice.
I knew better than to rush. I opened the door and stepped out.
Gravel crunched under my shoes, too loud in the gap between sentences. No one looked at me at first. I was just another figure at the edge of the scene.
I didn’t speak.
I listened.
“…came out of nowhere,” the man was saying, voice tight with anger. “Big guy. Strong. Just grabbed her—like she weighed nothing.”
Grabbed.
My jaw locked.
“I heard her screaming,” a woman added. “But by the time I got to the window, the van was already pulling out.”
A van.
Something cold slid down my spine and settled there.
The cardigan woman pressed her fingers to her mouth, eyes shining, voice wobbling. “She was so subdued. Kept to herself. Polite. I should’ve— We couldn’t do anything to help her—”
“It’s not your fault,” the officer answered automatically, like he’d delivered the line a thousand times and still didn’t believe it.
I took a step closer.
My presence finally registered. The officer glanced at me briefly, the look sliding over me with the sort of bored suspicion reserved for civilians who got too close. But I wasn’t here to be managed. I was here to understand. To move. To act.
“How tall did you say?” the officer asked the man.
The man lifted his hand again, hovering it above his head. “Taller than me. Broad. Foreign accent, I think. He didn’t say much. Just—he just moved.”
My vision narrowed.
Foreign accent.
Van.
Grabbed.
Every instinct in my body started screaming, clawing against my ribs. The air felt thin. My blood felt cold. Thoughts stacked rapidly, clean and sharp, forming a shape.
I stepped forward.
“Who are you talking about?” My voice stayed level. I didn’t allow the violence inside me to leak into my tone. Men made mistakes when they revealed too much too early.
The cardigan woman turned toward me, as though seeing me for the first time.
Her eyes flicked over my coat, my posture, the way I stood like I had somewhere more important to be than this sidewalk. Her gaze returned to my face and something shifted in her expression.
“The young woman.” Her voice was solemn. “The one staying upstairs. Samira.”
For half a second, my lungs stopped working.
Samira.
The world tilted—just enough that something inside me fractured clean through.
“When?” I asked.
“Less than an hour ago,” she explained.
Less than an hour.
I nodded once, as if I was hearing a statistic and not the start of a nightmare.
Less than an hour I could work with.
Stupid. Why hadn’t I checked the tracker again on the way up? I would have seen the movement. I would have turned around. I would have—
No.
Regret could come later. Regret was a luxury I couldn’t afford it right now.
I stepped back and pulled my phone from my pocket, thumb already moving before my mind finished the command.
Tone answered on the second ring.
“Marcello?” Her voice was light. Distracted. So normal it hurt.
“Samira’s gone,” I told her.
Silence.
Then—“What?” Her breath stuttered. “What do you mean, she’s gone?”
“The police are here,” I explained. “Someone dragged her into a van.”
Another silence. Sharper this time.
“Oh God,” she whispered. “Oh my God, Marcello!”
“Tone.” I kept my voice firm. Anchoring. The way I’d learned to speak to men on the edge of panic, the way I’d learned to speak to myself when the world started cracking. “I need you to listen to me.”
“It—it was him,” she confessed suddenly, hysteria finally breaking through the careful control she’d been clinging to.
The word hit me wrong. Sharp. Off-balance.
“Him… who?” I asked, even as something ugly began to take shape in my chest.
“Her husband!” Tone exclaimed. “It has to be. He must have found her.” Her voice climbed as she spoke, pitch cracking, logic giving way to fear. “He always does. No matter where she goes—he always finds her.”
My head splintered.
Husband.
The word landed like a blow I hadn’t braced for. Not because it surprised me—nothing about Samira’s past should have, not after everything—but because of what it implied. Permanence. Ownership. A claim that hadn’t died just because she’d walked away.
For a moment, anger flared hot and irrational.
At myself—for assuming I knew the full shape of her wounds.
At Tone—for knowing this and not saying it sooner.
But mostly at Samira.
Because suddenly it was clear she’d been carrying secrets of her own, folded deep and sharp-edged. Secrets she’d kept even while standing in my house, even while letting me touch her, even while choosing to leave.
I exhaled slowly, forcing the reaction down before it could harden into something reckless.
A husband didn’t just complicate things.
A husband explained everything.
“She came to Italy to get away from him. Oh God, Marcello.”
Her voice broke into a raw sound—half sob, half wail—fear and grief tangled so tightly there was no separating them.
I closed my eyes.
For a heartbeat, I saw Samira’s face the day she left—pride carved into her posture, voice steady even as it shook. She’d walked away from my protection because she’d needed control. Because she’d believed distance would keep her safe.
And now…
“I have her tracker,” I reminded her.
The words felt thin compared to the weight they carried, but they were solid. Real. Something I could work with.
Tone’s breathing stuttered on the other end of the line, sharp and uneven, like she’d forgotten how to draw air properly. “Track her,” she sobbed. “Please. He’s going to kill her, Marcello.”
The phone creaked faintly as my grip tightened around it. Panic pressed at the edges of my skull, but I forced it down, compressed it into something colder, sharper. Fear was useless unless you could aim it.
“I’m sending you my location. Contact Atlas, let him know what’s happening. I’m going to find her,” I promised.
There was no reassurance in my words, no attempt to soothe. They were final. Meant for me as much as for her.
A vow.
I ended the call before Tone could break apart completely. I couldn’t afford to carry her terror too—not now. Not when every second mattered. Sympathy could wait. Survival couldn’t.
I opened the tracking app.
The screen took a fraction of a second too long to load, the pause stretching thin and cruel. Then the map resolved into place.
The dot was moving.
Fast.
A clean line cut across the screen, steady and unwavering. She was on the move. Whoever had Samira wasn’t circling.
They knew exactly where they were going.
And so did I.
My hand curled around the watch in my pocket, tightening until my knuckles burned white, until the sharp edge of pressure dragged me fully back into my body. I welcomed the pain. It anchored me. Kept my thoughts from splintering into useless directions.
She was alive.
That much was certain.
She was still out there somewhere—breathing hard, terrified, fighting in whatever small, stubborn ways she could manage. I knew her well enough now to know she wouldn’t go willingly. Not anymore. Not after everything she’d survived.
The knowledge didn’t calm me.
It didn’t soften the panic or offer relief.
It sharpened me.
Cold. Focused. Relentless.
I let my gaze slide back to the boarding house one last time. The cracked windows stared back at me like dull, unseeing eyes. The frame sagged under the weight of years of neglect, shadows clinging to its walls as if even they were reluctant to leave.
This was the place Samira had chosen when she decided walking away from me was the only way to survive. When she’d believed distance—space, anonymity—would keep her safe.
She had fled the arms of one monster and walked straight into the path of another.
That ended now.
I turned my back on the house and headed for my car. There was no hesitation left in me. No doubt to wrestle with. No room for regret to take root.
Only the clean, lethal clarity that came when something precious had been taken and there was nothing left to do but reclaim it.
I slid into the driver’s seat, the door closing with a solid, final sound. The engine roared to life beneath my hands.
The tracker led.
And I followed.