Chapter 26
Salvario
A few days are enough to change a life entirely. It took only eleven to burn mine to ash. And it took only eleven for her to breathe life back into those ashes.
Today, eleven days have passed since I sent her back home in that coffin, carrying the life she brought with her. I have become more dead than I was before her.
I look at the withered flowers. They haven’t had water in eleven days. The piano is covered in dust. I don’t have the will to clean it, don’t have the purpose to tend the plants.
This rose garden and this piano were here in memory of my mother. But now, I only see her here. I don’t see my mother from memory, playing the piano. I see a woman with hair like waves, eyes like honey, who feels like a fragile rose beneath my touch, who smiles for no reason at all.
I only see that woman sitting on this bench, playing music that first unsettles my heart, then soothes it. Music that whispers promises to my soul. Promises of life.
Before her, I made loneliness and silence my home. Then she filled it with her laughter and melodies. She filled my hollow soul with light. And now she’s gone. Gone is the laughter, gone the melodies. Gone is the light.
What remains is silence. A loneliness that’s killing me every day. I can’t even die—she’s manipulated my heart into beating with hope. That hope won’t let me go.
I rise from the bench and, with tired steps, walk out of the garden.
I walk toward Bruno’s room. Maybe I’ll find some peace there.
Warm light falls across the corridor from his room. I stop. I don’t walk closer. Instead, I slide down to the floor where the yellow light meets the darkness of the corridor.
After a few minutes pass, Antonio emerges from Bruno’s room and stops in front of me.
“Why are you sitting here?”
“I want to believe she’s still in there.”
No one used yellow lights before her.
I press my head against the wall.
She’s still here. Inside Bruno’s room. Sleeping in his bed. I only have to cross the wall separating us, and I’ll see her.
Antonio sits beside me.
“Go to her.”
I look at him. “She’ll hate me when I kill her uncle.”
He sighs. “Look at yourself, Salvario. You look no better than a dead man to me. You’re neither working on your revenge nor living your life.”
“When have I ever lived my life in twenty-five years, Antonio?” I mutter, turning my eyes to the light on the floor.
“There’s a difference now. You know how to live, and yet you choose the suffering. Forget the revenge for a while. What will you do, clinging to it, when you’re no longer in any state to do anything about it?”
“You know I can’t forget the revenge. It’s not possible,” I whisper tiredly.
Silence falls between us.
Antonio places a hand on my shoulder. “Find a way, son. She won’t wait forever.”
He rises after delivering those burning words.
It’s true. She won’t wait forever. There are countless men so much fucking better than me, why would she wait for someone like me?
But I want her to.
I want her to love me.
And only me.
I clench my fist. There’s only one thing standing between her and me. I can’t let it stay—can’t let it steal the life I could have with her.
I rise from the floor, resolve solidifying in my chest.
“I won’t kill Alexander. I’m letting go of revenge.”
The words fill my head with a peace I've never felt.
Antonio turns, a smile slowly forming on his face.
But the peace doesn’t last. Not even a minute.
Chaos explodes behind my open eyes. The boy seizes every sense and hurls me into the pit of memory.
Antonio
“I won’t kill Alexander. I’m letting go of revenge.”
He speaks in a voice I know too well. I’ve heard it promise destruction—and carrying it out—for over a decade.
I never thought I’d live to see the day I’d witness him truly living. Alba will finally find peace, seeing her son walk away from destruction. She was a kind-hearted woman; she never once hurt anyone. I knew her well enough to be sure: she wouldn’t want her son destroyed by revenge.
I turn to him, see the determination in his eyes. A relieved smile touches my lips, but it doesn’t last.
His gaze loses focus. He stumbles back. I rush to him, but he falls before I can catch him. His eyes are wide, unfocused. Words slur from his mouth—incoherent, broken.
“Only... bread...”
“No... ma... ma...”
“Stay...”
I shake him. “Salvario!”
He starts thrashing, his face contorted in pain. His cries echo down the corridor.
Bruno comes running out. I grab my phone and call Liam.
“Come to the mansion.”
I hang up, open the camera, and record him—thrashing, crying, as if someone were injecting unrelenting pain directly into his veins.
I send the recording to Liam, then I’m on my feet, heading to the kitchen. I fill a glass of water and race back. Bruno circles him, barking, howling.
I splash water on him. It does nothing. I hurl the whole glass, still, he doesn’t stop.
The glass slips from my hand and shatters on the floor. I drop to my knees, grab him, shake him. His body trembles. Words spill out in broken strings—carrying agony like he’s reliving it all over again.
“Please don’t do this.”
“I’m begging you… leave Mama alone.”
“Don’t do this.”
His eyes are wide, tears streaming.
I shake him again.
“Salvario!” I call his name in desperation.
Panic rises inside me. I’ve seen his panic attacks countless times, but never like this.
By the time footsteps reach the corridor, his jaw is locked, teeth chattering. His body shakes, but he doesn’t move. He’s stopped muttering. His eyes are still open—bloodshot and vacant.
Liam and Luca arrive.
Liam kneels, fills a syringe, and injects it into Salvario’s forearm.
“What’s happening to him?” My voice is frayed.
“Looks like psychogenic non-epileptic seizures,” he says, not looking away from Salvario.
I turn to Luca.
“Take him to his room.”
Luca nods and lifts him. I walk beside them and open the door. Luca lowers him onto the bed. Bruno leaps up beside him.
I step closer. His eyes are closed now. I pull out my handkerchief and wipe his face. My jaw tightens. I blink against the sting in my eyes.
How much suffering has fate written into his life?
Liam comes to my side. I step back. He starts an IV.
“He’ll wake in a few hours,” he says, then turns to me. “Tell me how it started.”
I look back at Salvario. “He said he’d give up the revenge.”
Liam is the only multi-specialty doctor Salvario trusts. He couldn’t cure him either, but he manages the episodes well.
He nods. “His subconscious won’t let him betray himself. The part that holds the pain won’t allow a choice that invalidates everything he survived.”
“Will it happen every time he goes against it?” My voice is low, tired.
“It could get worse. He can’t go against that dissociative part—that boy—after coexisting with him for so long.”
“Is there no way to get rid of him?”
Liam removes his glasses and sighs. He looks at Salvario’s still form on the bed, then back at me.
“Antonio, I’ve treated Salvario for twelve years. Consulted with seventeen specialists across five countries. Read every paper on childhood trauma, dissociative disorders, treatment-resistant PTSD. And I’ve reached a conclusion I hate.”
He pauses, pressing his fingers to his eyes.
“The boy is a survival mechanism that became a permanent resident. When Salvario was nine, his psyche split to keep him alive. One part endured the torture. Another part locked all of that away so Salvario could function. The boy stored the memories and every emotion tied to them. He made revenge his only reason to exist. For twenty-five years, the boy drove him, protected him from himself, kept him alive when any normal person would have died or killed themselves. The boy has been trapped for twenty-five years, watching Salvario live, waiting for the day they’d finally get justice.
And now Salvario is asking him to just disappear.
To let go of the only thing that’s kept him alive. ”
He shakes his head. “There’s no medication for that.
No therapy that can convince a traumatized child to willingly die.
We can’t reason with him, can’t negotiate.
We can’t even reach him most of the time.
He surfaces when Salvario tries to heal, and when he does, he drags Salvario back into the memories to remind him why revenge exists. ”
His voice drops lower. “I’ve seen patients with dissociative disorders recover.
I’ve seen integration happen. But those patients had parts that wanted to heal.
That child doesn’t want to heal. He wants justice.
And until that boy believes that letting go won’t betray what happened to them and his mother... Salvario will never be free.”
He turns to Salvario, bends, and checks his pulse. Then straightens, looks at me.
“I’ll be downstairs. Call if anything changes.”
I nod. He leaves.
I stay there, beside the bed.
“Salvario will never be free.”
The words tighten around my chest. I drag in a long, slow breath and look up.
“I couldn’t save your Salvario from himself, Alba.” The words are weighted with failure.