Chapter 15 #4
Whatever restraint he had carried downstairs was gone now, replaced by something sharp and volatile, held together only by discipline.
The album was clenched in his hand like a weapon he was trying not to use.
His gaze flicked once—just once—toward the open pages of Zara’s photographs.
And then back to me.
That was enough.
“Of all the rooms in this house,” he said, voice calm but edged with steel, “this is the only one you are forbidden to enter.”
The air in the room tightened.
“I will overlook this once,” he continued, jaw tightening, “because you did not understand how strictly off-limits this room is.”
A dangerous pause.
“Now get out.”
The command was absolute.
But I didn’t move.
Something inside me—hurt, frustration, confusion, all tangled together—kept me rooted in place.
My gaze flicked past him briefly, back to the room, to the dresses, the photographs, the preserved fragments of a woman who still lived here more than I did.
And then back to him.
Something in me snapped.
“I would have preferred it if you’d just hired me as a nanny,” I said bitterly. “I’m tired, Rafael. Tired of this damn marriage—of one pain after another.”
My voice rose despite myself.
“Will you really live the rest of your life like this? Because this isn’t living. This is suffering.”
I swallowed, the words spilling out before I could stop them.
“And whatever guilt you think you’re carrying... she’s dead. You need to move on.”
My voice came out steadier than I expected.
But there was a tremor underneath it.
His eyes narrowed slightly, raw hurt flooding the dark depths until they glistened.
“I need to move on?” His voice came out gravel-rough, each word dragged from somewhere deep and wounded.
“I married you for Tess, yes. And because your father killed mine. Revenge was the only language I knew. But over time...” He swallowed hard, throat working. “The reason for keeping you as my wife changed. You got under my skin. You made me want things I had no right to want anymore.”
He took a step closer, towering over me.
Yet the pain in his expression cracked the armor, revealing the broken man beneath.
“But you’re too goddamn sensitive. You don’t deserve the love you keep demanding from me. A woman who can’t even begin to understand my pain—who won’t even try to share its weight—has no claim to my heart.”
“You nag. You accuse. You throw Zara in my face every time the grief rises, calling me crazy for speaking to her grave like she’s still the only one who ever truly saw me. You never sit in the dark with me. You never let my ghosts breathe. You just want the version of me that fits your fairy tale.”
His chest rose and fell heavily.
“Do you think for one fucking second I like the way I am?” The words tore out of him, raw and jagged.
“This weight I carry every day—the nightmares that won’t let me sleep? You think I enjoy being this hollow shell? Especially when there’s no one I can trust enough to lay it all bare with. No one who can hold the darkness without breaking or running.”
He laughed, bitter and broken, the sound echoing like a gunshot in the quiet room.
“You want to be my wife so badly. And God help me, I long for you sometimes—ache for you in ways that make me hate myself more. But the way you act, the way you react... it’s everything I despise in a woman.”
“Like a frightened child demanding constant reassurance instead of standing beside a man who’s drowning in blood and memory. I can’t love you like this. Hell, I don’t even know if I’m capable of it anymore.”
The album stayed gripped in his hand, knuckles pale and straining.
“If you want a divorce, bring the papers. I’ll sign them right now. Stop threatening to leave and just do it. Then you can go back to being exactly what you always wanted to be—the nanny. Safe. Separate. Unburdened by a monster like me.”
For a heartbeat, the violence simmering behind his eyes threatened to erupt—he could have thrown it, shattered the lamp, put his fist through the wall.
The mafia boss in him knew how to destroy.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he simply stared at me. A long, heavy, devastating stare that stretched far beyond comfort.
It held everything unsaid: the love he couldn’t give, the pain he couldn’t share, the reverence for a dead woman that still ruled him more than any living one ever could.
Then, without another word, he turned.
His broad back rigid, his hand trembling under the weight of memories he refused to let go of, he walked back into Zara’s space.
He moved toward her belongings with a slow, deliberate care that didn’t belong to a man moments away from fury. It belonged to someone entering sacred ground.
Someone returning to ritual.
He gathered the scattered photographs from where I had been holding them, aligning the edges with precise attention, smoothing them as though even the slightest wrinkle might dishonor what they represented.
The albums were closed carefully.
Closed like sealing something fragile and irreplaceable.
Then he moved to the silk scarf I had touched.
He picked it up gently, smoothing the fabric between his fingers before refolding it with meticulous precision.
Every crease was corrected. Every edge aligned perfectly.
The cashmere throw followed.
Folded slowly and reverently.
Then the pregnancy journal.
His hand lingered for a moment longer on that one.
Just a fraction of hesitation.
Then he closed it carefully and returned it to its exact place, as if the position mattered more than anything else in the room.
Every action was tender.
Almost sacred.
Like rituals performed inside a cathedral for a goddess no longer living.
I stood there watching him, unable to look away.
The man who had just spoken of war and betrayal downstairs...
was now handling remnants of love like they were the only truth he still trusted.
And something inside me twisted painfully.
Being here suddenly felt like a monumental waste of time.
The house no longer felt like a place I was trapped in blindly—literally or otherwise.
Now that my sight had been restored and the fog of trauma no longer pressed against my mind like iron chains, everything looked different.
I wasn’t the same woman who had once accepted silence as survival.
I could think again.
I could plan.
He said he would sign my divorce papers if I brought them.
It meant his hold on me wasn’t as absolute as I thought—that I could leave if I truly wanted to.
“Fine. I’ll file for the divorce,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt, though my chest tightened painfully as the words left my mouth. “And I will leave. Just keep your word—and don’t hesitate when it’s time to sign.”
The silence that followed was thick enough to suffocate.
I didn’t wait for a response. I turned sharply, my heels striking the polished floor with deliberate certainty, and started walking toward the door.
Freedom, even in declaration, already tasted like oxygen.
I had barely reached the threshold when his hand closed around my wrist.
I hadn’t even heard him cross the room.
One moment he was behind me, the next his grip was there: not painful but undeniably authoritative.
Warm skin against mine, grounding and unsettling all at once.
“You saw the albums,” Rafael said quietly.
His voice was lower than usual, stripped of its usual command. It brushed close enough to my ear that I felt it more than heard it.
“You saw fragments of our past.” He said quietly. “But you don’t understand what it means to spend your entire life caring for someone like that. You don’t just forget them because death decides to take them away.”
For a second, I didn’t pull away.
I let the words settle.
“No one is asking you to forget her,” I replied at last.
I shifted slightly, turning just enough to face him over my shoulder.
My sight caught him clearly now—those dark eyes, usually so controlled, were less guarded than I had ever seen them.
My voice softened, though I didn’t let go of my resolve. “But you have to move on, Rafael. You need to accept that she is gone.”
His grip loosened slightly, but he didn’t release me.
“Since you reunited with Tess,” I continued, more firmly now, “you’ve barely been present for her emotionally. You come home, say a quick hello, play with her for five or six minutes, then you disappear again—either into work or into that grave.”
His jaw tightened at that, but I pressed on anyway.
“That little girl is going to grow up feeling like she’s chasing a ghost for your attention. And one day, she will resent you for it. And you?” I swallowed. “You will resent yourself even more.”
A bitter breath escaped me.
“You deserve to be happy, Rafael. You told me that once. You told me to step out of my shell, out of my darkness. I think I deserve the same from you.”
My eyes held his now, unwavering. “Learn to love again. Not as a replacement for her—but as someone still alive.”
For a moment, he didn’t move.
Not a word. Not even a breath I could detect.
Then I twisted my hand free from his grip.
This time, he let me.
I stepped past him and out of the ‘forbidden room,’ the doorframe suddenly feeling like a boundary between two versions of the same broken history.
I didn’t look back. I refused to.
I exhaled shakily only once I reached my room and closed the door behind me.
My back pressed against it as I slid down slightly, my fingers tightening around the edge of my sleeve.
I didn’t know if I had reached him.
I didn’t know if I had made things worse.
But I hoped—quietly, stubbornly—that something had shifted.
Even the smallest crack could let light in.
And maybe, just maybe, he would find a way back to himself—for Tess, for the memory he clung to... and perhaps, for his own exhausted soul.