Chapter 132 Chapter 132
My voice came out smaller than I intended. “I don’t know how to need someone without fearing the cost," I said.
“Then learn with me,” he said.
I didn’t answer because learning required trust, and trust required risk, and right now I felt like a body that failed at the most basic human function. Morning eventually arrived without either of us sleeping.
Dad was already in the garden when I went downstairs; the scent of soil and wet leaves grounded me more than the house ever could. Our home was beautiful, expansive, and perfect in ways that sometimes felt unreal; the garden wasn’t perfect. Plants grew unevenly, leaves died, and new ones replaced them. Nothing hid what it was.
He looked up when he heard me. “You’re up early,” he said gently.
I nodded and stepped onto the stone path. For a moment I almost told him, almost. Instead, I crouched beside him and touched the edge of a leaf.
“You ever plant something twice and it doesn’t grow either time?" I asked quietly.
He didn’t look surprised by the question; he never reacted immediately. He always listened first; always—that was one of his traits.
“Sometimes the soil isn’t ready,” he said. “Sometimes the season’s wrong. Sometimes the plant isn’t meant for that place.”
My throat tightened. “What if the soil is just bad?"
He finally looked at me then. “Soil can be repaired,” he said softly. “But it isn’t the soil’s fault if the storm keeps coming.”
I stared at the ground because if I met his eyes I would cry, and if I cried he would know, and if he knew Zaiel would know, and I wasn’t ready for everyone’s grief surrounding me again. “I’m just tired,” I murmured.
He nodded like he heard the real meaning anyway.
“You don’t have to be strong here,” he said, and I almost laughed. Strong wasn’t the problem; feeling was.
Zaiel worked from his office, but I felt his awareness everywhere in the house. Not watching me, not monitoring. Just present in that way, he existed in every space fully, even when silent. I tried reading, I tried answering messages, and I tried existing normally, but everything felt staged.
By afternoon the pressure in my chest turned into restlessness; I moved through rooms without purpose until I reached the hallway outside his office; the door was slightly open; he was speaking to someone on the phone.
“Discretion means silence, Carlo,” he said calmly. “Not assumptions.” I froze and paused.
“No changes unless I approve them," he said, then another pause.
“Yes.”
His tone was controlled, but I recognized the edge beneath it. Protective and calculating, the part of him that handled threats, and I realized something then. He was trying to protect me from the world, while I was trying to protect him from me, and somewhere in that gap we were standing alone.
I pushed the door gently, and he looked up immediately. His expression softened the moment he saw me, the sharpness disappearing like it had never existed. He ended the call without another word.
“Come here,” he said quietly.
I walked in but stopped halfway; for the first time since it happened, I didn’t feel fragile; I felt distant.
“I don’t want this to define us,” I said.
“It won’t,” he replied.
“I’m scared it already does.”
He studied me carefully. “Talk to me.”
I took a breath. “What if I stop trying?" I asked.
His eyes narrowed slightly. “Trying what?"
“To be someone who can give you a family.” I said understanding dawned slowly across his face, not anger, not disappointment, but something steadier.
“You already are my family,” he said.
“That’s not the same.”
“It is to me.”
I shook my head. “You say that now, but years from now…”
“I chose you, not a future child,” he interrupted gently. “If a child comes, we love them. If not, nothing changes.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“I can," he said.
My voice lowered. “I don’t know if I want to go through that again.”
He didn’t react immediately. He approached me slowly, giving me time to step back if I needed; I didn’t. “Then we don’t,” he said.
I searched his face for hesitation and found none.
“No expectations,” he continued. “No timelines. No pressure.”
Emotion rose unexpectedly sharp. “You mean that?" I asked.
“Yes.”
The certainty in his voice terrified me more than hope would have, because now the choice was mine, and choices meant responsibility. I leaned forward, resting my forehead against his chest. For the first time since the loss, the emptiness inside me didn’t feel like absence; it felt like a space waiting to be understood, and I wasn’t sure yet whether that space would hold fear or freedom.
But I knew something had shifted, and shifts change everything slowly, quietly, until one day nothing is the same anymore. The strange part about disasters is they never announce themselves; if they did, I would have stayed home.
Morning felt normal in a way I hadn’t experienced in weeks. The heaviness in my chest was still there but softer, like grief had stepped back just enough for breathing to stop hurting. Zaiel had left early for a meeting and kissed my temple before going, lingering a second longer than usual like he wanted to memorize something.
I didn’t read into it; I told myself today would be ordinary.
Dad was in the garden again, arguing with a stubborn vine that refused to grow where he wanted. I helped him for a while, hands in soil, grounding me in a way polished floors never could.
“You’re calmer today,” he said casually.
“I’m trying,” I answered.
He smiled slightly, like trying was enough. Around noon I decided I wanted air that didn’t belong to the estate. I hadn’t gone anywhere alone in weeks, always accompanied, always watched, even gently. I knew it was protection, not control, but sometimes safety felt like a reminder that the world expected something to happen.
“I’m going to the bookstore,” I told him.
“Take someone,” he said automatically.
“They’ll be with me,” I reassured.
Carlo had assigned rotating security for outside trips. Today it was Jax driving and another guard in the passenger seat. Familiar. Routine. Safe, or so I thought.
The city felt almost unfamiliar after staying inside so long. Normal people moved normally, unaware of invisible structures around them. I walked through shelves slowly, fingers brushing spines without reading titles. The quiet helped.
I didn’t notice the woman watching me at first. She was just another presence near the café inside the shop, seated with a cup she barely drank. Dark glasses despite being indoors, posture relaxed but unmoving. If I had seen her face better, I might have recognized her. But I had only seen Avani a few times in controlled family environments, and this woman, she looked like a stranger, and that was enough.