Chapter 116 The Girl They Buried
Valentina
The jet cut through the clouds like a blade, quiet and sterile, the air heavy with questions neither of us wanted to ask.
Matteo had barely spoken since takeoff.
His jacket lay folded across his lap, and every few minutes he adjusted the cuffs of his shirt like he needed to do something with his hands. He’d already scrolled through emails, made two calls, and stared out the window for a solid twenty minutes.
But it wasn’t until the descent began that he finally broke the silence.
“Japan?” he asked, brow furrowed as he looked over at me. “I thought you grew up in Europe. Italy, right?”
“That was part of the story,” I said quietly, fingers tightening on the armrest. “One of the covers they gave me. I did live there—for a little while. Enough to have a forged background, a school record, photos, passports.”
“But it wasn’t home.”
I shook my head. “No. My parents hid me in a small town just outside Okayama. Tucked me away with my mother’s most trusted friends. They figured Japan would be the last place anyone would think to look for me.”
He absorbed that in silence, but I could feel the shift in him. A new weight to his stare.
“And these guardians,” he said. “You think they knew the truth?”
“I think they know more than they ever told me.”
The plane dipped again, seatbelt lights flickering on. Matteo reached for his belt, clicked it into place. “Why now?”
“Because it doesn’t add up.”
He arched a brow. “What doesn’t?”
“All of it.” I exhaled, closing my eyes. “The training, the isolation, the languages, the tactical drills, the live-fire simulations. None of it makes sense if I was just meant to be sold.”
Matteo didn’t speak, but I knew I had his full attention now.
“They taught me how to survive every kind of captivity. How to escape cuffs, ropes, zip ties, duct tape—you name it. I could pick a lock blindfolded by the time I was fourteen. I was fluent in six languages by sixteen. A black belt in seven different martial arts. Expert-level marksmanship, wilderness survival, even urban surveillance evasion.”
I opened my eyes and stared straight ahead.
“If they were preparing me to be a prisoner… then they failed. Because there isn’t a single cage I couldn’t break out of.”
Silence pulsed between us.
When Matteo finally spoke, his voice was low. Careful.
“So either they were preparing you for something else… or they were preparing you to escape someone like me.”
I turned toward him, met his gaze dead-on.
“Maybe both.”
The jet touched down with a jolt, tires screeching against the private airstrip. Matteo’s hand clenched once on the armrest, then relaxed.
Neither of us moved as the engines whirred down and the world outside grew still.
“You think your father knew you’d run,” he said.
“I think he knew I could. Whether or not he wanted me to…” I trailed off. “That’s what I’m here to find out.”
The car Matteo arranged was already waiting on the tarmac—a black sedan that looked wildly out of place against the misty morning hills of Okayama Prefecture. We didn’t speak on the ride. Not because we were angry. Just… suspended. Like the truth would come crashing down too fast if we breathed wrong.
We wound through quiet roads lined with bamboo fences and small shrines, past corner shops I hadn’t seen in years. My fingers trembled when I reached up to knock on the wooden gate. A familiar windchime above it jingled—a soft, crystalline sound that instantly transported me to childhood.
Seconds later, the door creaked open.
Masaki’s face was exactly as I remembered. Grayer, maybe. Thinner. But those eyes—sharp as ever—went wide the moment they landed on me.
“Tina…?” he whispered. “Is it really—?”
Before I could answer, a second figure appeared behind him. Miko. Her apron dusted with flour, her hands still holding a dish towel. She gasped and dropped it to the floor.
“We didn’t know—you didn’t call—you—”
“I know,” I said softly. “I’m sorry. I had to come.”
Their gazes shifted over my shoulder—and froze.
Matteo stepped forward, calm but commanding in black slacks and a gray coat, his presence swallowing the threshold. Masaki’s mouth thinned. Miko paled visibly.
“This is Matteo,” I said. “He’s my—husband.”
Their eyes screamed with unspoken words.
Miko’s voice cracked first. “Valentina… I think we should speak alone.”
“No,” I said firmly. “He knows everything. Who I am. Who my father was. What I planned to do. There’s nothing to hide.”
A tense pause.
Then Masaki stepped aside, motioning us in with a reluctant nod. “Come in. But understand, not everything we say will be easy to hear.”
We removed our shoes and followed them through the small entryway into the main room. Tatami mats. Paper sliding doors. The faint scent of green tea and old wood. It hadn’t changed at all.
We sat. Matteo beside me. Masaki and Miko across, hands folded tight in their laps.
I didn’t wait.
“Did you know?” My voice was calm. Too calm. “About the plan to sell me?”
Masaki’s jaw worked for a long moment before he answered. “Yes.”
The air left my lungs in a slow hiss.
“We knew,” Miko added gently. “From the very beginning. But we didn’t agree with it. That’s why we trained you.”
“Trained me to what?” I whispered. “Escape?”
“To survive,” Masaki corrected. “To ensure that no matter what happened—no matter who came for you—you’d never be powerless.”
I stared at them, rage and gratitude warring inside me.
“But why not tell me?”
“Because if you knew,” Miko said, her eyes shining, “you’d never have been able to play the part. You’d have run. Or fought. Or exposed everything. And that would’ve gotten you killed.”
“And my father?” My voice dropped. “Did he know what you were doing behind his back?”
Masaki shook his head. “No. Your father believed we were honoring his plan. He thought obedience was loyalty.”
Matteo shifted beside me. “So he arranged for his daughter to be sold off like a pawn.”
“No,” Masaki said, looking at him now. “He arranged for her to disappear—to become a ghost in the system. The sale was the cover. But the buyer… that was real.”
“And you didn’t stop him?” I demanded.
“We couldn’t,” Miko said. “But we could make damn sure you were never easy to keep.”
I looked down at my hands. At the scars on my knuckles, the memories carved into every inch of me. “Then what was all of it for? The languages, the combat, the strategy… what was I really meant to become?”
Masaki met my gaze.
And said the one thing I wasn’t ready for.
“That… I think only your father can answer.”