The divorce documents.
“Gabriel isn’t well. I need to head back to the hospital. Please… can you sign this travel clearance?”
Vincenzo didn’t even bother reading what I handed him. He just took the pen, signed it with a quick stroke like it meant nothing, then pushed the papers back toward me.
“Go on,” he said flatly. “Deal with your own child.”
I left before dawn broke. The mansion behind me stayed silent, heavy and lifeless, like it had never held anything warm to begin with.
**
The drive to my father’s estate took hours—five of them that felt longer than they should’ve. The gates came into view like something out of a memory I didn’t fully belong to anymore: tall black iron, sharpened tips, guards standing stiff and motionless like they weren’t people at all.
Everything there was controlled. Polished. Still.
I wasn’t.
I had become thinner. Worn down in places no one noticed. Changed in a way mirrors couldn’t properly reflect.
When I stepped out of the car, no one came to greet me. No voices. No welcome. Just the long corridor of silence stretching inward, like the house itself was watching and deciding whether to let me exist again.
And then I saw him.
My father.