2. A New Reality #2
He doesn’t stop. “It had to be convincing. If anyone thought you were still alive, they would have kept looking. The only way to ensure your safety is to have you die.” His eyes darken. “I had my own daughter die.”
A sharp breath leaves me.
I want to scream at him. I want to shove him, demanding how he could do something like that.
But a part of me already knows the answer.
I press a hand to my stomach, grounding myself against the sickness curling in my gut. “He changed my name.”
Antonio nods. “From Beretti to Ber.” His voice lowers. “It had to be permanent.”
I inhale sharply, the air cutting through my chest like glass.
A kidnapping. A stolen life. A name that was never really mine.
And now—this.
I shake my head, my voice barely above a whisper. “What do you want from me?”
Antonio doesn’t answer right away. When he does, his voice is calm but firm.
“I just want you to know the truth.”
I don’t know where I’m walking.
The rain falls heavier now, soaking through my dress, chilling me to the bone. My mind is a storm of thoughts, but none of them form anything I can hold on to.
A lie. My life—a lie.
I wrap my arms around myself, but it does nothing to stop the trembling. My father—my real father—just stood in front of me and tore my reality apart with a few simple words.
Antonio Beretti.
Even thinking the name makes my stomach twist.
I stop near the edge of the cemetery, gripping the cold iron gate as my breath comes in uneven gasps. The rain blurs the city skyline in the distance, but it doesn’t matter.
I have nowhere to go.
I hear footsteps behind me, steady and deliberate. I don’t turn around. I don’t have to.
Antonio’s voice is calm, measured. "You don’t have to accept it today. But you need to understand what it means."
I squeeze my eyes shut. "I don’t want to understand."
"You don’t have a choice."
The quiet authority in his voice sends a shiver down my spine. Not from fear—from something else. Something deeper.
He steps closer, but not enough to touch me. He’s giving me space.
"I changed everything to protect you," he says. "Your name. Your past. Your future." A pause. "I kept my distance. But that ends today."
I turn slowly, my hands gripping the gate so tightly my knuckles turn white. "Why now?" My voice is hoarse, exhausted.
Antonio holds my gaze, unwavering. "Because the people who took you once… might come for you again."
A chill settles in my bones, deeper than the rain, colder than the truth.
My fingers loosen against the iron, my breath unsteady.
The weight of Antonio’s words presses against my chest like an cage.
The people who took you once… might come for you again.
I want to reject it, to shove the thought as far away as possible. But I can’t. Because the way he said it—the way his voice lowered, the way his expression darkened—he’s not warning me. He’s preparing me.
I force out a shaky breath. “Why would they come for me now? If I was safe before, why am I suddenly not?”
Antonio doesn’t hesitate. “Because the man who protected you is dead.”
The words slice through me like a knife. My father—**the only father I’ve ever known—**is gone, and now I’m… what? Exposed? A target?
A sharp bitterness burns in my throat. “So now you decide to care?” My voice is sharp, venomous. “Now that he’s gone, you suddenly want to step in? To fix things?”
Antonio exhales slowly, controlled, as if he expected this reaction. “I never stopped caring.”
I laugh, but it’s hollow, laced with exhaustion and something dangerously close to rage. “You had a lifetime to show me otherwise.”
A muscle ticks in his jaw, but he doesn’t argue. He doesn’t try to justify it. He just watches me with that same unreadable intensity, the kind that makes my skin crawl because I don’t know what he’s thinking.
But I know what I’m thinking.
I refuse to let him come in now and decide that I’m his responsibility.
I straighten, lifting my chin. “I don’t need your protection.”
Antonio doesn’t flinch. “That’s not your decision to make.”
The certainty in his voice makes my stomach twist. “I don’t belong to you,” I snap. “You don’t get to walk back into my life and act like you have a say in what happens to me.”
He steps closer—not aggressively, not threateningly. Just enough to remind me that Antonio Beretti isn’t a man used to being defied.
“I won’t force you to accept me,” he says evenly. “But I won’t let you walk blind into danger either.”
I hold my ground, refusing to let him see how much his words shake me.
“You don’t get to decide that,” I whisper.
Antonio tilts his head slightly, studying me. “I already have.”
And in that moment, I realize something chilling.
It doesn’t matter if I want nothing to do with him.
He’s already made up his mind.
I turn away from Antonio, my pulse hammering, my breath uneven. I have to get away from this. From him. From all of it.
He doesn’t stop me this time.
But he doesn’t leave either.
“Running won’t change the truth,” he says, his voice calm, steady.
I squeeze my eyes shut. I don’t want to hear this. “I’m not running,” I snap, spinning to face him again. “I’m walking away from something that has nothing to do with me.”
His expression doesn’t shift. “It has everything to do with you.”
A bitter laugh escapes me. “You don’t get to decide that.”
Antonio watches me for a long moment. Then, without a word, he reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out something small. He extends his hand toward me, palm open.
I glance down.
A pendant.
The rain glistens against the silver chain, making the delicate locket shimmer in the dim light. The sight of it sends a shiver through me, something too sharp, too deep to be coincidence.
I don’t take it. “What is that?”
“You already know,” Antonio says quietly.
I shake my head, stepping back. No. I don’t.
But my body betrays me. Because even as I deny it, something about the locket feels… familiar. Like I’ve seen it before. Held it before.
My hands curl into fists. “You think giving me some old piece of jewelry proves something?”
Antonio’s gaze never wavers. “It was your mother’s.”
The world tilts beneath me.
I glance back at the pendant, my throat tightening. The rain distorts the engraving on the front, but I can make out the faint pattern—a delicate filigree design that stirs something in my chest.
Slowly, against every instinct screaming at me to walk away, I reach out and take it.
The second my fingers brush against the metal, a flood of something too strong to be imagination rushes through me.
I can’t explain it. A memory that isn’t fully there. A whisper of something lost.
Antonio doesn’t speak. He doesn’t have to.
Because deep down, in a place I don’t want to acknowledge, I know this locket belongs to me.
I tighten my grip around it, my nails pressing into my palm. “This doesn’t change anything.”
Antonio exhales, slow and measured. “Maybe not.” A pause. Then—"But you can’t close a door that was never locked."
A chill spreads down my spine.
I hate that his words get to me. I hate that I don’t have a response.
So I do the only thing I can.
I walk away.
But this time, I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to leave this behind.