CHAPTER FORTY Silence Talks
CHAPTER FORTY
Silence Talks
There was a chair waiting for me.
Of course there was. A silent throne with its back perfectly straight and its upholstery too pristine for someone like me to sit on. I hesitated briefly, but that second cost me the power. I felt it drain out of me.
“Sit,” Zagreus commanded.
So I did.
My legs carried me forward with the grace of a condemned woman. I lowered myself onto the seat, back too stiff, knees too close together. My fingers found one another in my lap and began their ritual of nervous fidgeting.
Silence settled, the air shifted.
The older woman cleared her throat. “I’m Isadora,” she said. Her voice was sharp but not unkind. “And this is my daughter, Leona.”
Leona gave a small, polite nod. It looked like she didn’t really care to be here.
She was wearing a vintage dress, but with a modern touch, a deep neck, and flowing fabric, which made her breasts bounce out.
Her long legs crossed, and the mini skirt she wore barely did anything to hide the pink underlining of her panties.
I averted my gaze from her display of body, realising I was wearing something similar.
Isadora, though, looked sophisticated and conservative. A beautiful shade of pink complemented her pale skin, and her eyes were a rich shade of brown.
Her eyes stayed fixated on mine. And I didn’t know what to say except mumbling, “I’m Celestine.”
She nodded.
Someone sighed, and I realised it was my husband, who pushed the chair back and rose. My breath hitched. I still recalled that I kissed him back. I could still feel his hands upon me, his lips upon me. And the impact he had left upon my soul.
I averted my eyes, looking anywhere but at him. Because I knew, the more I’d look, the more I’d hate myself.
But ignoring him didn’t do me any good. I could feel him.
The floor beneath me seemed to brace itself as his steps cut through the air, measured and slow, as if a predator was circling its prey, it didn’t intend to eat just yet. I didn’t dare move, but my spine tightened with each sound of his polished shoes against marble.
The couch dipped beside me, and his hand was on me.
A broad palm cupped my waist, heat searing through the fabric of the red silk dress. His arm coiled around me in a quiet calm, anchoring me amidst this storm. He sat beside me, not on another chair, no, on the same one. Pressed close. Overbearing and possessive.
My breath caught, and my body froze.
The chair was made for one, but now it held two, and not equally. I was swallowed into his side, anchored by his body and heat. His fingers settled just beneath my ribs, thumb stroking the fabric slowly.
And strangely, I didn’t feel claustrophobic anymore.
It was almost as if his touch calmed me.
“You should listen, Dolcezza,” he murmured in my ear. “You’re about to learn some truth.”
I flinched at the intimacy.
Isadora didn’t blink, as if this wasn’t new to her. She waited, hands folded neatly in her lap. Dignified. Like a woman who knew how to survive humiliation without flinching.
Zagreus tilted his head slightly and said, “This woman… Isadora. She is your mother’s sister.”
I blinked.
“My mother doesn’t have a sister.”
The moment I said it, I knew it wasn’t just a refusal. It was certain. A certainty I didn’t know I had until it left my mouth.
Zagreus’s grip on my waist tightened.
Isadora smiled, if you could call it that. It was a sad, bitter tilt of her lips that made her look older than she did a moment ago.
“Your mother would have preferred you believe that,” she said softly.
“You’re lying,” I whispered.
“No,” she said. “I’m telling you a story you were never allowed to hear.”
“She never mentioned you. I didn’t remember you,” I shot back, shaking my head. “Not once. Not in any photo. Not in any letter. Nothing. You were never there.”
“Because I was erased,” she whispered, eyes gleaming. “Because I was the black sheep of the family. The disappointment. I married a man I wasn’t supposed to, and your grandfather disowned me. We were close, once, your mother and I, before everything turned to ash.”
I wanted to scream. To accuse her of delusion. But something held me back. Something in her tone. In the gravity of it.
“Then why don’t I remember you?” I asked. “If you were family once, if you were real, why don’t I remember anything?”
“Maybe there are more things you don’t remember, Celestine.”
My world paused.
My lungs forgot how to breathe.
Because something in me knew she wasn’t lying.
I didn’t remember my childhood clearly.
Just flashes. Scraps. My mother’s perfume, jasmine and dust, a piano in the sunroom. A birthday with no candles, and Adrian.
Always Adrian.
He was the beginning of everything I remembered clearly. Four years of him and me. My memory began where he began, and before that? White noise.
Faded walls.
A child’s drawing crumpled in a drawer.
I stared at Isadora.
She stared back.
“You’re lying…” I whispered in disbelief.
“I wish I were.”
“I don’t believe you!”
“You don’t have to,” she said. “But the truth doesn’t need your belief to exist.”
Zagreus said nothing, even when my eyes burned and I held back my tears.
“Why now?” I whispered. “Why are you here now?”
Isadora’s gaze softened. Her daughter was almost embarrassed.
“Because you’re in danger,” Isadora said.
And suddenly the room got colder.
The flames in the hearth seemed to dim.
Zagreus tensed beside me. I felt his hold tightening.
I turned to him, and then back to her. “From whom?”
“From the people who buried the first half of your life,” she continued. “And from the man sitting next to you.”
Zagreus let out a low breath, something between amusement and menace. “Careful, Isadora.”
‘I’ve been careful my whole life,” she said. “And look where it got me.”
My vision swam. I wanted to run and hide, but I did neither. I sat there, crushed into the side of the man who murdered the boy I loved, staring into the eyes of a woman who claimed to be blood. And for the very first time, I realised I didn’t know where I came from.
Or who I really was.
Or what Zagreus Vitale had done to get me here.
But I knew one thing.
Something had been stolen from me.
And whatever it was, it had a heartbeat.