The line still warmed my palm when his voice came through. Calm. Worn. The kind of exhaustion that had endured a thousand lonely nights waiting for someone who never came.
“Come home, Bianca,” he said.
“I’ve been waiting for you… twenty years,” he added.
Twenty years. Twenty long years of patient silence. And me—too afraid, too proud, or perhaps simply too broken—to lift the phone in all that time.
My legs threatened to give way, but I steadied myself, letting my weight settle on the edge of the bed. Tears slipped freely, unrestrained.
“I’m coming home,” I murmured, my words barely a breath.
He didn’t say anything more. Just the steady rhythm of his breathing—a lifeline, enough. I hung up before I could even whisper a goodbye.
And then Marcello appeared. A shadow sliding through the ajar door. His eyes cold, sharp, like he could sniff out the truth etched into me—and despised it.
“You saw the tickets,” he said casually, his smirk flat, as if sharing a punchline. “Six spots, Bianca. Me, Vivienne, Antonio, Chiara, the twins. That’s it.”
A lump rose in my throat.
“You intentionally left me out.”
His tone dropped into a smooth, lethal calm. Ice melting into stone.