CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
The nursery had always smelled like lavender and dust. Alessia hadn’t planned to linger there again — not after the locket, not after the dreams — but something about the silence in that room pulled her in. It didn’t feel like sanctuary exactly, but it was the only place Matteo didn’t follow her with his eyes. Not overtly.
Not yet.
The moonlight filtered through warped blinds, casting striped shadows over the once-loved toys and faded books. She’d left the rocking horse untouched, though sometimes she swore it shifted positions when she wasn’t looking. The walls still held a strange charge, like the echo of a lullaby she had never heard. It was here she decided to start writing. Not digitally, she didn’t trust her phone anymore. Not after the note vanished. Not after the logs “glitched.” Not after waking up to find Matteo’s careful script where her memories used to live. So she used paper. An old sketchpad she’d found in a cracked drawer, half-filled with childish scribbles. She tore those pages out and began again.
She wrote only in the early hours, when the villa slept. With the door bolted, a pillow wedged under it. She wrote by candlelight, somehow the flickering glow felt safer than the lamp.
“I think I’ve gone mad,” she wrote on the first page.
“Everything feels like a performance and I don’t know what part I’m playing anymore.”
Each entry bled with uncertainty. Sometimes anger. Sometimes something softer — longing, guilt, hope. Her handwriting grew slanted, rushed, increasingly unstable. She didn’t care. It was the only truth she had left.
But the nursery wasn’t untouched. Matteo had come once, unannounced, just after dusk. Said nothing, only watched her from the threshold with unreadable eyes.
Now she realized… that was the warning.
Because the next time she opened the book, three days later, she noticed something strange.
Page six.
She didn’t remember writing it. The ink was darker. Cleaner. The slant was nearly perfect, like someone trying too hard to imitate her mess.
And the words were wrong.
“I don’t trust anyone except him.”
Her heart seized.
She reread it three times, fingers trembling as she traced the strokes. It was nearly flawless — just enough hesitation in the loops to mimic her own style, just enough spacing to pass as hers.
Except… it wasn’t. She would never have written that.
Would she?
Her breath fogged in the cold air of the nursery. Something shifted in her chest, a sensation like vertigo, like a step taken on what was supposed to be solid ground only to find it hollow.
She flipped through the pages again. Nothing else altered. Nothing else forged.
Just that one page. Planted like a seed.
And growing.
Elsewhere in the villa, Matteo stood in the hallway mirror, adjusting his cufflinks with precision. The reflection looked calm, controlled — the kind of man who offered safety without ever promising salvation. He knew she’d found the page by now. He could almost feel the cold unraveling in her.
A long pause passed before he allowed a smile — faint, calculated.
The trick wasn’t making her love him, it was making her believe she had chosen to.
Alessia didn’t go back to the nursery that night. She carried the sketchpad to her room, wrapped it in an old shawl like it might bruise if touched too roughly, and shoved it into the bottom drawer of her wardrobe beneath neatly folded clothes she never wore. The pages burned in her mind — especially that one. The lie dressed up in her own handwriting. She hadn’t written it. But the longer she stared at the notebook in the dark, the less certain she became.
What if she had?
Her memory felt frayed at the edges lately, like too many dreams and broken truths were crowding out the details. Names, times, what someone said and how they’d said it, all blurred in a haze of sleepless nights and Matteo’s careful voice whispering what was real.
And wasn’t that the most terrifying part?
She couldn’t even trust herself anymore.
The next morning, she wandered the villa in a daze. No breakfast. No calls. She didn’t even brush her hair. She stared at paintings too long, walked past her own reflection like it belonged to someone else. At some point, she went outside barefoot and stood in the rain. Just stood there. For minutes. Maybe longer.
The water didn’t cleanse anything. She was still dizzy with doubt, her chest caving in with every breath.
By afternoon, she found herself in the south corridor, without knowing why. Her feet moved on their own, like something inside her had given up pretending she had a say in the matter. She heard him before she saw him, the low hum of his voice through the open study door, murmuring to someone on the phone.
She didn’t hear what he said. Didn’t want to. But when he noticed her in the doorway, Matteo's expression shifted like glass refracting light — concern painted across his face with perfect symmetry. His voice dropped as he stepped forward.
“Alessia?”
She didn’t answer. Her arms were wrapped around her stomach like she was trying to hold something in. Or stop something from spilling out. Her eyes — red-rimmed, dazed — locked onto his with a kind of helpless panic that cut straight through him.
“I… I don’t know what’s happening,” she whispered. Her voice cracked on the last word.
Matteo didn’t hesitate. He stepped into her space, wordless, and drew her into his chest. At first, she resisted — only slightly — like some small, primal part of her still fought for distance. But the resistance evaporated within seconds. Her fists balled weakly against his shirt before she gave in completely, clutching him like something was coming apart inside her. And maybe it was. Tears hit hard. Silent at first, then shuddering. She didn’t sob. It wasn’t messy. It was worse — quiet and hollow, like grief without a body.
Matteo stroked her hair slowly. Not tender, not distant, just steady. Measured. She couldn’t see his face, only feel the soft hush of his breath near her temple.
“You’ve been through so much,” he said. Voice low. Intimate. Every word laced with carefully weighted emotion.
She gripped the back of his shirt tighter.
“Everything’s been on your shoulders for so long, piccola,” he whispered. “But you don’t have to carry it alone anymore.”
Alessia pressed her face harder against his chest, as if trying to disappear into him completely. She didn't notice how still he’d gone. How his eyes remained open, watching the hallway beyond them, calculating.
“You’re not crazy,” he continued. “You’re exhausted. You’ve been lied to, betrayed, left to figure it all out while they watched you drown.”
She didn’t reply, just buried herself deeper into him.
Matteo lowered his head so his lips brushed her hair, letting the silence stretch. Letting her soften. Trust. Fall.
“Let me carry it now.”
It was a knife disguised as comfort.
And Alessia? She nodded. Just once.
That was all he needed.