CHAPTER 42
Roxanne
The journey to Mumbai was a blur of flashes and noise. The city felt louder than it should have. Maybe because my mind refused to quiet.
Too many things running at once. None of them settling. Thoughts colliding, breaking apart before they could form into anything I could hold onto. I felt like a kaleidoscope of emotions, everything shifting too fast to make sense of.
Marcello had arranged everything, of course. He always did. Care woven into action rather than words. Even now—especially now—he made sure I was taken care of without asking anything in return. Without asking anything at all. And somehow, that made it worse.
Everything after the paramedics arrived blurred into a shapeless, deafening roar.
I remember the sound first. Sirens cutting through the air, voices overlapping, hands trying to pull me away, and the way I fought with a desperation that didn’t even make sense to me.
My fingers were locked around Santino, gripping him like if I let go—even for a second—he would disappear.
They kept telling me to move. To let them work. To step back. I didn’t. Not until they forced me into the ambulance beside him, not until the doors shut and sealed us inside with the sound of his breathing—too shallow, too uneven—and machines doing what his body couldn’t.
I don’t remember the drive. Only fragments.
The way my hands wouldn’t stop shaking no matter how tightly I held onto him.
The way someone kept asking me questions I couldn’t understand, couldn’t process, couldn’t answer.
My entire focus was on him. Only him. Blood and bile coated the back of my throat.
And then when we arrived, everything moved at once. Doors opening, light flooding in. Voices sharper. Faster. And when they pulled him away from me, then I finally let go.
I stood there long after they disappeared through the emergency doors, my hands still lifted slightly in front of me like I hadn’t realised he was no longer within reach. As though I was waiting to catch something that had already fallen. And then I just stayed. I don’t know how long.
Time didn’t move the way it was supposed to. It stretched. Warped. Folded in on itself until everything felt suspended in a moment that wouldn’t end. He was gone from my hands. Just… out of reach. And somehow that felt worse.
Death wasn’t always clean. It didn’t arrive with certainty. Sometimes it just hovered—between staying and leaving—while you stood there, waiting to find out which one it would choose.
People spoke about karma like it brought balance.
Like the world kept score. Like pain was repaid in equal measure.But standing there, staring at those doors—I didn’t feel balance.
I didn’t feel justice. It felt like a wound that refused to close, bleeding beneath everything else.
And whatever came next, wouldn’t fix it.
Someone spoke to me. A man. Irish. Older.
Sean.
He offered me water. Asked me something I didn’t catch. Stayed close enough that I knew he was there, but far enough that he didn’t try to touch me. I think I nodded at something. I wasn’t sure.
I was just trying to hold everything in. Because if I let it out—if I let even a fraction of what was building inside me surface—I knew it wouldn’t stop. So I contained it.
I sat there, staring at the doors they had taken him through, focusing on that one fixed point like it was the only thing keeping me upright.
Until—
“Amore.”
His voice cut through the haze. And everything inside me collapsed. One second I was sitting there, empty and suspended, and the next—the reality of him—solid, real. And my hands gripping his shirt like I needed proof that reality still existed the way it was supposed to.
After that, everything was muddy again, and the next thing I knew we were in the washroom and suddenly everything came crashing back.
The warehouse.
The blood.
His voice.
And the truth I hadn’t let myself look at. And what I had done. What it meant.
My grip tightened, fingers curling into the fabric of Marcello’s shirt as a bitter sickness twisted violently inside me.
“I hurt you,” I choked out, the words forcing their way through before I could stop them. “I hurt you, and you’ll hate me when you know… I hurt you…”
I didn’t explain it. I couldn’t. Because if I did, I would have to say it out loud. And I wasn’t ready for that. The words kept coming anyway, fractured, uneven, breaking apart between breaths that didn’t feel like enough to hold them.
“I hurt you…”
My knees gave before I realised what was happening. I think he caught me. I think he said something. I don’t remember.
Because all I could hear—was Santino’s voice.
“Rox… I—”
My breath hitched sharply. I knew what he had been trying to say. And I had stopped him.
A broken sound escaped me, half sob, half something worse, as my grip on Marcello tightened—not because I was reaching for him, but because I didn’t know where else to put the weight of it all.
I didn’t know how long I stayed like that. Long enough for the edges of everything to dull. Eventually, exhaustion began to win where my mind refused to.
And the next thing I knew, I was standing in front of my mother in Mumbai. She welcomed me the way she always did—warm, familiar, unchanged.
“Marcello told me you’d be coming,” she said, stepping aside. “I thought the kids were too?”
“No,” I replied, my voice flat, stripped of anything that sounded like me anymore. “They’re in Palma. With Alessia.”
Her brows drew together slightly.
“Rox… is everything okay?”
I nodded. “I’m just tired.”
I didn’t bother with an explanation, didn’t make eye contact, just spoke the words with emptiness, as though they belonged to someone else. She didn’t push, but her eyes stayed on me a second longer than they should have before she stepped aside fully and let me pass.
I walked to my room. Closed the door. And didn’t come out.
Time stopped meaning anything after that. I slept when exhaustion finally won, woke whenever the pressure in my chest became too much. Sometimes I cried. Sometimes I just stared at the ceiling until my eyes blurred. Eventually, I stopped knowing whether it was morning or night.
Only that everything inside me felt—wrong. Like a wound had been ripped open and left that way and would never close again.
On the third or fourth day, my mother came into my room without knocking. She didn’t ask anything at first. Just sat beside me. I felt her warm hand rest over mine carefully.
“Roxanne,” she said gently. “You need to get out of here.”
She gently sat me up.
“Come. I’ve made chai. Extra ginger. Just the way you like it.”
The strong, sharp smell hit me before the taste did. Too much ginger. The way Santino made it. My fingers tightened around the cup, tears threatening to fall out, throat closing on itself.
The terrace looked the same. Frangipani in full bloom, its fragrance thick in the air. It always bloomed when I came home. I never questioned it. As if the house knew and welcomed me back in a language I didn’t understand.
My mother didn’t ask me anything. That was what made it harder. Instead, she spoke the way she always did—softly, steadily. About small, ordinary things that didn’t matter yet somehow did. As if the world hadn’t shifted beneath me. As if I could step back into it.
“I need to tell you something.” My voice felt foreign.
“Do you remember…” my voice came out rough, unused, “when Uncle Darius used to come home… after Dad passed?”
I felt her shift in her seat. A small inhale.
“Yes,” she said slowly. “I remember. Never liked him.”
“He used to come into my room,” I said.
The words felt like glass in my throat.
“He said I was too rebellious. That girls like me needed to be… taught.”
My voice faltered. But I didn’t stop. Because if I stopped now—I never would be able to say it again.
“He would touch me.”
My mother stopped breathing. I watched the colour leave her face. Tears welled in her eyes, but she sat still. Like a statue stuck in time.
“And some days, when he said I needed discipline, he would make me touch him.”
I turned my face away, looking to the sky instead. Towards the building in the distance. The birds flying above. Anywhere but toward her. The memory felt so distant yet so close. Her hand wrapped around mine.
“Oh Rox—”
I clutched my cup tighter.
“I didn’t understand at first,” I whispered. “And then I did.”
Shame clawed at my insides. My vision blurred, a silent tear rolled off my eyes. I still didn’t turn toward her. Because if I saw my mother’s tears, I would break too.
“But by then…”
My voice broke.
“I didn’t know how to make it stop anymore.”
Her hand tightened over mine, grounding me, silently telling me she was still here.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, breath hitching.
“I wanted to tell you,” I said, my voice breaking now. “So many times. I almost did.”
I let out a hollow laugh that didn’t sound like mine.
“But you told me to fight my own battles.”
It wasn’t said with anger. Just truth. A child’s understanding of something too big for her.
“I thought…” I swallowed hard, “this was mine. He made me think this was what I deserved. That this is what happened to girls like me.”
A sob tore out of my mother. And suddenly I realised she wasn’t crying because I’d told her. She was crying because I’d carried it alone.
She walked around and sat beside me on the bench, gently stroking my hand.
“Oh, Rox. I… I didn’t know,” she sobbed. “I should’ve known…”
Her voice cracked, and the sound of it broke me. The tears wouldn’t stop. Years of silence poured out of me, and I couldn’t hold any of it back.
“He said if I told anyone…” my voice dropped, barely there, “he would hurt you.”
My voice cracked.
“And I believed him. So I kept quiet.
Because losing me felt easier than losing you.”
That did it. She broke. A sharp inhale, her hand flying to her mouth as the reality of it hit her all at once.
“Oh God…”
“I’m sorry,” she said, pulling me into her suddenly, her arms wrapping around me tight, desperate.
“I’m so sorry—I should’ve seen—I should’ve—”
Her words dissolved into sobs. And whatever wall I’d built cracked.
“I killed him,” I whispered into her shoulder.
The words sat between us. Heavy. Irreversible. There was no taking them back. My fingers clenched into her clothes.
“I stabbed him.” My voice broke completely. “There was so much blood and I—”
She didn’t pull away. Didn’t recoil. Her arms only tightened around me. Holding me like she was trying to gather every broken piece at once.
“What happened?” she asked, through tears.
And this time, I told her. Not everything. Not all of it. But enough. The way he cornered me, the blackmail, the warehouse, how he threatened Kyra, how I snapped.
The knife. The blood.
Everything—except him. Except Santino. Except the way he looked at me like I was the only thing left in the world.
When I finished—there was nothing left in me. Just emptiness. And the sound of both of us breathing through our tears.
After a long time, she pulled back just enough to look at me. Her hands cupped my face carefully, like I was still that child.
“Good riddance,” she said quietly.
That surprised me more than anything else. She didn’t ask if I regretted it. She never asked if I should have done it differently.She just held me tighter.
“Does Marcello know?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I just… needed distance.”
She nodded. Didn’t question it. Didn’t push further.
But when she held me again—something inside me cracked all over again.
Because for the first time in seventeen years, I wasn’t holding it alone.