Chapter 19
The Dust of Belonging
It is roughly around six-thirty in the morning when Tessa finally blinks her heavy eyelids open, though honestly, it doesn’t feel as if her restless mind has experienced proper sleep at all.
Her entire physical body feels intensely weighed down with exhaustion after spending the whole previous day trapped inside the suffocating perimeter of Lucius’s private office, forced to dial hardened underworld criminals for consecutive hours while desperately pretending to sound calm, gentle,
and sweet enough to systematically dismantle their guard.
By the time she has finally managed to return to her modest home the night before, her aching muscles have barely allowed her to change into loose clothes before she collapses onto the mattress, skipping dinner entirely due to her fatigue.
Still, even though the dense fog of her physical exhaustion, one singular variable continues pulling at her focus over and over again before she eventually drifts into a restless sleep—the silver necklace resting against her collarbones.
Lucius’s necklace. She still cannot logically explain to herself why she hasn’t taken the heavy chain off her skin yet.
Several times throughout the quiet evening her fingers reach up to touch the silver links absentmindedly, telling her rational mind that she should remove it immediately, primarily because wearing an intimate gift given by a dangerous man like him feels threatening in ways she cannot articulate.
But somehow, every single time her fingertips brush against the cold metal clasp at the back of her neck, her hands stop their motion.
It is almost as if a primitive part of her soul already recognizes that she doesn’t truly want to let it go.
She slowly forces her heavy legs out of bed and walks toward the washroom, rubbing her tired eyes before splashing freezing cold water across her face to shock her system awake.
The exact moment she looks up to face her reflection in the glass of the mirror; she immediately notices the hollow exhaustion tracking across her features.
Faint, dark shadows have settled deeply beneath her eyes, and her pale expression carries the kind of bone-deep tiredness that a few hours of sleep alone can never truly fix.
Yet even then, as she stares at her reflection, her attention drifts right back down toward the silver necklace resting quietly against her skin, and for a fleeting second her mind flashes back to the low vibration of Lucius’s calm voice, the terrifying depth of his unreadable eyes, and the strange,
protective possessiveness hidden just beneath his perfect control.
Before she can force her thoughts to stop circling his silhouette again, a violent, deafening crashing sound suddenly shocks the entire foundation of the house.
The structural impact is so massive and unexpected that her heart practically jumps straight into her throat, her ears ringing.
For a long, terrifying second, Tessa freezes completely in the centre of the bathroom, her brain utterly unable to process what has just happened.
Then, another deafening, grinding sound echoes from the street outside, vibrating even louder this time, followed by the unmistakable, heavy tremor of concrete cracking under force.
Her chest tightens painfully, a cold wave of panic flaring through her veins.
Without wasting another millisecond of delay, she rushes out of the room and toward the front balcony, and the exact moment her eyes look down at the street below, it feels as if every single ounce of warmth leaves her physical body at once.
Several construction workers dressed in heavy boots and vests are standing directly in front of her gates, carelessly and violently throwing her household furniture outside onto the asphalt as if none of it holds a single cent of value.
Old wooden chairs, polished tables, boxes of personal belongings, bags, and winter clothes—everything is being dumped onto the dirty roadside like a pile of garbage.
Some of her custom-designed dresses are already covered in heavy white dust and debris, trapped between broken pieces of splintered wood and chunks of cracked concrete.
For a few hollow moments, Tessa simply stands on the edge of the balcony completely frozen, unable to draw oxygen into her lungs properly while her analytical mind struggles to comprehend the visual reality in front of her.
“What is happening…?” The desperate question barely manages to leave her dry lips, stolen by the wind.
Her small hands immediately start shaking violently as pure panic spreads through her thoughts.
She grabs her cell phone from her pocket and quickly dials Nisha aunty’s private number, hoping desperately against logic that there has been some kind of misunderstanding or a mistake with the address.
One full call goes through to voicemail.
Then another urgent attempt. Then another name on her contact log.
Every single call is forcefully disconnected from the other end without an answer.
She keeps trying the number anyway, over and over again with trembling fingers, until her hot panic slowly begins to freeze into something significantly colder, heavier, and far more terrifying.
Right then, another massive crashing sound echoes across the pavement, and this time she watches in absolute horror as a major section of the front building structure collapses into rubble beneath the mechanical impact of a heavy demolition crane.
Her breath catches painfully in her throat, her chest heaving.
No. This cannot be happening to her life.
She rushes back into her bedroom, her mind spinning, and pulls on the very first simple one-piece dress her hands can snatch from the hanger before opening her closet and stuffing random items of clothing into a canvas bag with trembling, frantic movements.
She isn’t even thinking logically anymore; her conscious mind feels completely overwhelmed, fracturing under the weight of a reality that is falling apart faster than her body can react to save it.
Within minutes she runs downstairs and steps outside the front threshold into the cold morning mist, where the sharp, suffocating smell of fresh dust and broken concrete immediately hits her sensory receptors.
The construction workers don’t even bother to look up at her figure as she approaches.
They continue operating their heavy machinery and doing their jobs as if this historical place means absolutely nothing to the world.
As if her most sacred childhood memories aren’t permanently attached to every single brick wall they are systematically destroying for a corporate pay check.
Tessa stands there on the cracked pavement helplessly as another major section of the house collapses in front of her eyes, a massive cloud of white dust rising into the sky, and suddenly all her mind can think about is her mother.
This house carries the last remaining pieces of her mother’s existence everywhere she looks.
The tiny, cramped kitchen where she uses to make warm tea late at night when Tessa cannot sleep.
The iron balcony where Tessa has spent countless quiet evenings sitting alone in the dark after the cancer eventually takes her away.
The small, modest living room where her mother's soft laughter uses to echo before everything in her life starts falling apart.
And now, all of it is disappearing into a pile of rocks right in front of her eyes.
A single, hot tear slides slowly down her dusty cheek, but she doesn’t move her hand to wipe it away.
Because at that exact, crushing moment in time, it honestly feels as if something vital inside her own chest is collapsing right together with the bricks of the building.
Then suddenly, the distant, thundering roar of high-performance motorcycle engines cuts violently through the mechanical noise of the demolition site.
One bike shatters the quiet of the morning mist.
Then another heavy machine. Then a third, sweeping down the concrete lane.
Almost every construction worker and bystander nearby turns their heads toward the source of the sound instinctively as three black, customized motorcycles pull up sharply on the pavement directly in front of her frame.
The leading bike immediately catches Tessa’s captive attention—a massive Ducati Diavel, dark, imposing, and looking almost entirely unreal against the dusty, debris-choked morning street.
Her wide eyes automatically lift toward the rider sitting astride the machine, but before her brain can focus properly through the cloud of dust, the rider on the second bike removes his helmet and speaks casually.
“Sorry for keeping you waiting, we are slightly late,” Victor says, a trace of his usual dry tone cutting through the noise.
At first, Tessa’s shocked mind barely recognizes his voice through the surrounding chaos of the crashing bricks.
But by then, her intense attention has already shifted somewhere else completely, drawn by an inescapable gravity.
She looks toward the man sitting silently and motionless on the first bike.
A few agonizing seconds later, he slowly reaches up and lifts the dark visor of his helmet, and the exact millisecond those familiar, freezing cold eyes settle on her tear-streaked face, something deep inside her chest shocks violently.
Lucius.
She doesn’t logically know why, but the second her eyes lock onto his solid silhouette standing there in the middle of the destruction, the suffocating, crushing feeling of absolute loneliness inside her soul eases just a little fraction.
Before her rational thoughts can even dictate what is safe or appropriate for an assistant to do, her feet are already moving rapidly across the broken concrete toward his perimeter.
And then, completely surrendering to her instincts, she steps past his defences and wraps her arms tightly around his torso.
The hot tears she has been fighting so hard to hold back for the past hour finally break past her control completely.
She clutches the heavy fabric of his leather jacket with frantic, trembling fingers, burying her face against his chest and crying out her grief.