Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen - Giulietta
It began with the soft hum of a wall-mounted television in the corner of the hospital café, the kind of ambient noise that usually filtered in unnoticed beneath the clatter of cups and the dull rhythm of everyday footsteps.
It began with light, cold and flickering, and the scrolling bar of an internal media feed that most doctors didn’t read until someone they knew was in it.
That morning, Giulietta was mid-sip of bitter, too-hot coffee, her badge still clipped to her waistband, her hair still damp from the rushed shower she had taken in Ivy’s apartment just an hour before.
She was tired. Content, in the quiet way that meant her heart had started to feel like it had a rhythm again.
And then her name passed in front of her eyes.
“Evelyn Harrington’s Hidden Daughter? Giulietta Romano, Also Known As Giulietta Harrington, Revealed as Mystery Surgeon in Prestigious Medical Lineage.”
She didn’t flinch at first. Didn’t drop the cup. Didn’t even blink. She just stared at the screen, still holding the lip of the paper cup to her mouth, her hands suddenly too steady, too slow, as though her body hadn’t caught up with the electricity that had already started burning up her spine.
There it was. In digital typeface. Her name, both of them, strung together like a snare.
And beneath it, a photograph she had not posed for.
The image was grainy, taken from a side angle on the hospital steps.
She was looking away. Her mouth slightly parted, mid-word.
It wasn’t just the image, it was the implication.
“Medical training in Rome. Certified trauma surgeon. Unlisted in official Harrington bios. Records recently matched.”
She read it all—every word, every line, every insinuation—without breathing.
It wasn’t just exposure. It was evisceration.
Someone had gone looking. Someone had decided that the story of her competence, her precision, her career, was not compelling enough without the twist of legacy, without the scandal of blood.
They had taken her story and rewritten it through the lens of Evelyn Harrington’s name, turned her from surgeon to footnote, from woman to myth to gossip.
The café was buzzing now in a way that had nothing to do with caffeine.
She could feel it ripple around her, the sudden hush that always came before people started whispering louder.
They weren’t staring yet. But they would be.
She stood up too calmly. Her body moved like she had rehearsed it, like every inch of her had been trained to walk through fire without screaming.
She dropped the cup into the nearest bin without looking.
Her fingers were trembling now, not enough for most people to notice, but enough that it made unhooking her badge feel like peeling off her own skin.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket, once, then again, then three times in rapid succession. She didn’t check it. She already knew what it would say.
Olivia, most likely, checking in.
Lillian, probably apologizing, even though this wasn’t her fault.
Roz, maybe nothing. Maybe just silence. Or worse, sarcasm.
But that wasn’t what she feared.
No, the name that haunted her wasn’t blood. It was Ivy.
Because Ivy had known her before the name.
Ivy had touched her with reverence, had whispered love into the hollows of her ribcage, had called her Giulietta like it was enough, like she was enough, and Giulietta had believed her.
Had believed in the softness of that studio, in the safety of those ink-stained hands.
But Ivy also knew things no one else did.
Not the hospital. Not the press. Things that had appeared in that article.
The way she had introduced herself in her residency paperwork.
The specific year she arrived in Rome. Even a quote, paraphrased and sharpened, from a conversation they’d once had in bed.
She didn’t want to believe it. Couldn’t. But the shape of betrayal, even unconfirmed, wraps around the heart in the same way grief does; it presses, it steals air, it whispers things you don’t want to hear.
She pushed open the side stairwell door and walked downward, her hand tracing the cold metal of the banister.
Her heels clicked softly against the concrete steps, a sound so normal it felt absurd.
She was still a surgeon. Still a woman with a patient at noon and a conference call at four.
But everything had changed. There had always been two versions of her.
Giulietta Romano, the name she built. The reputation she earned.
And Giulietta Harrington, the blood she never asked for, the legacy that felt more like a curse than a crown.
And now they were merged. Exposed. Laid bare.
She hit the landing and exhaled sharply, like she had been holding her breath for years. Her hands curled into fists at her sides.
It wasn’t just a leak.
It was a reckoning.
And someone had pulled the trigger.
It didn’t take long for the storm inside her to turn into suspicion so thick and suffocating it coated her tongue, made her jaw ache, and made every word she didn’t say feel like it was made of iron. Giulietta didn’t return to the ward. She walked instead, corridors turning to background noise.
She made it to the staff locker room and sat on the wooden bench like she had a hundred times before—only now, the silence wasn’t peaceful. She stared at the same coat hook, the same crack in the plaster, and all she could think was that someone betrayed her.
It couldn’t have been a stranger. Not with the depth of detail that was in the article. Not with the tone, the narrative, the carelessness. It hadn’t been written as news; it had been crafted as confession. And only someone close could have done that. Only someone who knew what she hadn’t yet said.
Her chest tightened at the thought, but she couldn’t push it away.
It clung to her ribs like heat. Ivy had been the only one she had let in fully, the only one who had seen her flinch at her own name and not demanded explanation.
She had held Giulietta in the dark, pressed kisses to her back like they were promises, and Giulietta, fool that she was, had let herself believe she could have all that without being exposed.
She had told Ivy things she hadn’t told anyone else.
Little things. The way her mother’s voice could peel flesh from bone.
The way she used to trace her father’s handwriting in old anatomy texts like it might make her feel like his.
The way Rome felt like rebirth and exile in the same breath.
Ivy had never pried, only listened, but that was what made it worse.
That someone could listen that closely, hold that much, and still let it spill.
And still, doubt stung more than the idea of betrayal.
Because Giulietta didn’t know.
She hadn’t asked yet. She hadn’t confronted Ivy. She hadn’t picked up her phone. The messages were there, unread, glowing silently in her notifications, but she hadn’t touched them. Not because she feared what Ivy would say.
But because she feared how easily she might believe her.
And what if Ivy hadn’t done it? What if she was sitting in her studio right now, hands stained with ink, waiting for Giulietta to walk through the door like always, not knowing the article even existed? What if she was innocent, and Giulietta’s silence became its own form of betrayal?
The thought sliced her deeper.
She buried her face in her hands.
Trust was a fragile thing when you were made of secrets. And Giulietta had built her entire life on the fragile belief that so long as she stayed quiet and hidden, no one could take anything from her again.
But she had given Ivy everything.
And now, all she had left were questions and the unbearable ache of not knowing whether she was wrong to ask them.
She waited longer than she meant to because the rage in her body simmered low, like coals waiting for oxygen, devouring her from the inside out until she was all sharp breath and clenched fists, pacing her apartment with the kind of restless energy that couldn’t be soothed, only directed.
Her phone buzzed once. Then again. Ivy. And still she didn’t look because if she saw the softness of Ivy’s name lit up on her screen, she might falter.
And tonight, she couldn’t afford softness.
Not when everything she’d spent years trying to keep buried had been dragged into the light.
She grabbed her coat. Didn’t bother with her hair. Didn’t bother with make-up. Her cheeks were blotched from tears, and her eyes were swollen, and her whole body thrummed with the tension of someone about to rupture. Let them see it. Let her see it.
She didn’t text. Didn’t call ahead.
She just walked.
The studio lights were on. Giulietta paused for only a second at the door, enough to gather herself, enough to not shatter on impact, then she pushed it open without knocking.
The bell above the door chimed softly.
And then Ivy appeared.
She came from the back, wiping her hands on a towel, wearing that old black vest with the ink stains near the hem, her hair loose, her expression open and tired and far too calm for what Giulietta was holding in her chest.
“Giul—”
“Did you do this?” Giulietta’s voice was low and flat, but it cracked on the last word like something had slipped through her grip.
Ivy froze.
Her eyes widened, but only for a moment. She didn’t step forward. Didn’t reach for her. She just stood there, as if she already knew what was coming, as if she had been rehearsing it in her head just in case. And that, more than anything, set Giulietta’s nerves on fire.
“Tell me you didn’t,” Giulietta said, softer now, more desperate than accusing. “Please. Tell me you didn’t tell anyone who I am.”
“I didn’t.” Ivy’s voice was steady, but it landed like glass shattering against the floor.
Giulietta blinked. Her jaw tightened.
“Then how did they know? Rome. Evelyn. The dates. My medical records, Ivy. That wasn’t a guess. That wasn’t some fucking journalist connecting dots. Someone gave that to them.”
“I didn’t.” Ivy stepped forward then, slowly, like she was trying not to spook a wounded animal. “I swear to you, I would never.”
Giulietta stared at her.
And for a moment, she wanted to believe her. God, she wanted to believe her so badly it hurt to breathe. But trust wasn’t a switch. And love didn’t erase doubt. It only made it more devastating when it appeared.
“I told you things,” Giulietta said. “I let you in. I gave you pieces of myself I’ve never given anyone.”
“And I kept them safe,” Ivy cut in. “I still am.”
Silence.
They stood in it, both of them shaking, both of them exhausted, both of them wishing the other would just say something, anything, that could make this easier to survive.
Giulietta turned before she could cry in front of her. Before she could reach out and let her fingers betray her mouth. She didn’t slam the door. She just walked out, breath shallow, spine straight, the echo of Ivy’s denial replaying in her mind on loop.
She didn’t know if she believed her.
She didn’t know if she could.
But she knew this: something had broken. And she didn’t know how to fix it.