Chapter Twenty-Nine
Sabrina
I ran because staying inside that house for another second felt impossible.
No one was chasing me, and no danger followed me through the hallways. The Moretti house was quiet for once, wrapped in the early-morning stillness that existed before the world woke up and everything started demanding something from you again.
But my chest still felt tight.
The memories wouldn't leave me alone. The basement. The cold air that never changed. Ivan Volkov's voice, calm in a way that never meant safe. The metal mask. Diabola.
The memories came in fragments, sharp enough to make breathing feel like something I had to consciously remember.
So I left.
The house had been quiet when I climbed out of bed. No one was awake to turn the stillness into chaos. It was five in the morning, and most people were asleep. I should have been too.
Instead, I sat beside Dario's bed in the dark for almost twenty minutes, just watching him sleep.
He had somehow managed to end up sideways across the mattress again, one arm hanging over the edge while the blanket twisted around his legs. His shirt had been thrown off sometime during the night, and one of his toy dinosaurs was tucked against his chest.
Looking at him grounded me in ways I still didn't fully understand. Maybe because he was the only thing in my life that had ever felt unquestionably real.
I climbed out of the window and disappeared into the dark.
Sneaking through the property wasn't difficult if you understood how the security worked.
Most guards focused on threats trying to get onto the island, not a seventeen-year-old girl moving through the shadows before sunrise.
Still, I moved carefully out of habit more than necessity.
Old instincts didn't disappear just because your life changed.
The cold morning air bit against my skin as I crossed towards the quieter side of the island, away from the houses and training grounds. Above me, the sky remained dark blue, though pale streaks of sunlight had begun bleeding slowly across the horizon.
Eventually, I reached the cliffs on the far side of the island, where massive rocks overlooked the ocean below. Waves crashed softly against the shoreline while the cold wind tangled through my hair and clothes.
I sat on one of the rocks overlooking the island.
From up here, everything looked smaller: the houses scattered across the cliffs, the docks near the shoreline, the training grounds and the lights still glowing faintly from buildings where guards worked through the night.
For a long time, I sat with my knees pulled against my chest, staring at everything below me and thinking about before, about now, and about all the versions of myself that existed between those two things.
Sometimes it still felt strange looking back at my life before this island. Before the Morettis. Before I understood what belonging somewhere actually felt like.
Back then, survival was the only thing I knew how to do. Every day revolved around making sure Dario was okay – feeding him, protecting him and making sure he smiled no matter how ugly life became around us.
Without realising it, he became my entire world.
He became home before I even knew what home was supposed to feel like.
Then this island happened. This family. This life.
Despite everything – the danger, the violence and the constant tension hanging over all of us – somehow this place had started to feel like somewhere I belonged.
Even if trusting Rafael and Bianca had terrified me in the beginning, I trusted them now.
That thought settled heavily in my chest because trust had once felt impossible to me.
My fingers tightened around the sleeves of my hoodie as I thought about the first time I called them Mum and Dad.
It happened accidentally during dinner one night. The words slipped out naturally before I could stop them, and I remember freezing immediately afterwards.
Rafael had looked at me like the world had stopped moving while Bianca's eyes instantly filled with something dangerously close to tears.
Neither of them said anything about it afterwards. Neither of them pushed. But I noticed the smiles they tried to hide for the rest of the night – the kind people got when they'd been waiting for something they never thought they'd hear.
The memory left a quiet ache in my chest, but it was a good one.
The wind shifted suddenly around me, and every instinct inside me sharpened.
Someone was there.
I turned quickly, my body already preparing for a threat before my mind caught up.
Francesco Moretti was standing a few feet away.
Nonno.
We stared at each other for a moment longer than felt normal, like neither of us quite knew what the correct version of this situation was supposed to look like.
My brain supplied nothing useful except the very strong thought that I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to say to my grandfather when I’d never met him in my life.
“Hi, I was kidnapped for seventeen years but nice to meet you?” felt wrong.
Before I could decide on anything remotely intelligent, he simply stepped forward and sat beside me on the rock like this was something he'd done a hundred times before.
My entire body went rigid for half a second as my brain screamed various versions of what do I do with my hands?
He didn't look at me immediately. He simply faced the ocean, calm and unbothered, like I wasn't internally malfunctioning beside him.
“How is school going?”
I blinked.
That was not what I expected.
“I–” I paused. My life had been anything but normal education, so I defaulted to honesty. “I'm seventeen and I've been here like... five minutes.”
He hummed softly, like that was a reasonable answer.
“And your brothers? Are they treating you well?”
My eyebrows lifted slightly. “Which ones?”
That earned the smallest shift in his expression, something like amusement that didn't fully make it onto his face.
“All of them,” he said simply.
I hesitated. “They're... loud. And dramatic. And slightly annoying.”
That time, I thought I saw him actually approve of the answer.
“And Dario?”
Something about the way he said it shifted the air slightly.
“What about him?” I asked.
“What is he like,” he said, “when he is just... with you?”
I looked back out at the island for a moment before answering, my voice quieter than before.
“He makes everything loud,” I said. “Even when he's not speaking. Even when things are bad, he still manages to turn it into something... bearable.”
I paused before adding, almost without thinking, “It didn't really feel like life before him. It just felt like surviving until he showed up.”
Francesco remained quiet for a moment before asking, “And what is life like for you now that he is in it?”
I exhaled slowly, watching the ocean roll beneath the cliff.
“Louder,” I admitted. “Messier. A lot less controlled.”
A faint smile touched my lips.
“But... better.”
He nodded once, as if that was exactly the answer he expected.
We sat quietly for a while before I felt his gaze on me again. When I turned, he was already looking at me, his expression softer and less guarded.
A faint smile touched his face.
“Brava,” he murmured under his breath. “I am proud of you... of who you have become.”
The words hit differently than anything else he had said.
I frowned slightly, confused. We had just met. He didn't know me.
Before I could question him, he pushed himself up from the rock. His gaze lingered on me for a second longer before he spoke again, quieter but practical.
“You should go home,” he said. “Before everyone wakes up and starts panicking because you are missing.”