I watch her in silence, my pulse steady but heavy in my ears.
It’s only when she turns to leave that I move. My hand lifts before I think better of it. I sign her name, my fingers shaping it slowly.
She looks at me at once, her expression calm, waiting.
My hands move again, the signs careful, precise, deliberate. A request I don’t want overseen, one that sits like a stone in my chest.
Her gaze shifts faintly as she reads the shapes of my fingers, but there’s no hesitation. She gives one small nod, as simple as if I had asked her to bring more tea. There are no questions. No change in her voice when she says, “Of course.”
And then she slips out as quietly as she came, the door closing with a muted click that seems louder in the stillness she leaves behind.
The room feels smaller without her. The air feels thick.
I stay seated on the edge of the bed, my hands still in my lap. My eyes fix on the door though I can’t hear her return yet. Every second stretches until I lose count of them.
When she comes back, her knock is lighter than before. She doesn’t wait for me to call out. The door opens, and she steps inside carrying a small paper bag. Her expression hasn’t changed. If she feels the weight of what she’s brought, she doesn’t show it. She sets it on the table and meets my eyes briefly.
There’s no judgement there. Just that steady, neutral look she wears so well. Then she leaves again without a sound.
The bag sits untouched for a long time. I don’t move. My chest feels tight, my breath shallow in a way that makes the edges of the room feel blurred.
Eventually, I rise.
The washroom feels too bright. The white tile reflects the light in a way that sharpens the air. Everything feels cleaner than I am, colder.
I take the small box from the bag with care, my fingers careful as though roughness could change the truth. The object feels heavier than it should, like the weight has shifted from my chest to my palm. They feel clammy. I feel the frantic thud in my chest.
It doesn’t take long before I stare at the box. The lines appear quickly, sharp against the pale background, leaving no room for doubt.
Positive.
The word seems to settle in my chest like a stone, heavy, unmovable.
I set the test on the counter, my hands braced against the cool marble. My reflection in the mirror meets my eyes, pale and still, the edges of it blurring when my breath catches somewhere between my lungs and my throat.
The silence presses in, sharper than the light. I don’t move. I don’t know how long I stand there.
The truth is in front of me, as clear and inescapable as the lines on the test. And it feels like something inside me has cracked straight through.
17
GIOVANNI
Liliana has stopped looking at me like I am a man she must survive. That quiet watchfulness is still there, the kind born from years of being careful, but it has shifted. When I reach for her hand now, she does not pause before placing hers in mine. When she meets my gaze across the table, there is no immediate retreat.
It satisfies me more than I will admit, that slow erosion of her wariness. Every degree of trust she gives feels deliberate, something she has weighed before offering. It makes me want to protect it, even as I know I could shatter it if I am careless.
But there is something else I cannot ignore.
She is paler some days. Slower to rise from bed. Her movements at times seem tired, her eyes heavier. She brushes it off with that same quiet composure she has for everything she does not want me to see.
I notice. I don’t press. Not yet. She'll tell me when the time is right, when she trusts me enough to let me know.
It stays with me as I move through the day, lodged in the back of my mind even as I sit through meetings, even as I deal with the steady habit of work that never ends.
Even now, as I leave the quiet of my room and head for my study, the thought doesn’t leave me.
Tomasso is waiting when I step inside. He doesn’t need to speak for me to know. I can read it in the set of his shoulders, in the stillness of his stance.
