TOO LATE, MY LOVE

The Weight of Nothing

The doorbell rings at nine in the morning.

Aitana, still in her robe, pads barefoot across the cold marble floor. She expects a delivery, maybe a courier with the repaired silver chain. She pulls the door open without checking the peephole.

The air leaves her lungs.

Chloe Parker stands in the hallway.

Twenty years have added silver to her mother’s hair and soft lines around her eyes, but the face is the same—elegant, composed, wearing an expression of quiet regret. She looks at Aitana with the same helpless tenderness she wore on that doorstep decades ago. A small suitcase stands at her feet, as if she has just arrived from somewhere far away.

“Aitana,” Chloe says, her voice trembling. “I know I have no right to be here. But I had to see you.”

Aitana cannot speak. The word Mom rises in her throat but gets stuck there, tangled with twenty years of abandonment and longing. She stands frozen, her hand still on the door handle.

Behind her, another set of footsteps approaches. Pedri. He must have come home at dawn and been in his study. He walks into the foyer, his expression unreadable, his presence a wall of cold air. He stops just behind Aitana and regards Chloe with calm, indifferent eyes.

Chloe looks at him, puzzled. “Mr. Miller,” she says slowly, “we stayed overseas for many years. I wasn’t aware… What does my daughter have to do with you?”

Pedri’s expression does not change. His voice is flat, almost bored. “Even if there was something between us, it’s already in the past. I’m settling my divorce soon.”

The words hit Aitana like a physical blow. Something between us. He reduces three years of marriage—of shared pain, buried passion, and crushing loneliness—to a fleeting something. He announces the end of their union to her estranged mother with the same ease he might cancel a subscription. And he does not even look at her when he says it.

Chloe’s gaze flickers between them, confusion deepening. “Divorce? You two are married?”

“Not for much longer,” Pedri replies. He straightens his cuff and turns away, already dismissing them both.

Aitana’s fury ignites. It rises like a wave, hot and blinding. “Pedri.” Her voice is low but sharp as broken glass. “Look at me.”

He stops. He turns his head slowly, reluctantly. His eyes meet hers, and for a single, suspended breath, she sees it—the flicker of heat beneath the ice. The same heat that, during a thunderstorm two weeks ago, had exploded in the kitchen. He had pinned her against the counter, his mouth crashing onto hers, all teeth and desperation, before he tore himself away and left her trembling. He does not look at her like a man who feels nothing. He looks at her like a man who feels too much and is terrified of it.

“We’ll discuss this later,” he says, his jaw tight.

He walks out.

Aitana does not think. She pushes past her mother and runs. She slams the stairwell door open and flies down the stairs, her bare feet slapping against the cold concrete, her robe tangling around her legs. She bursts out of the building’s side entrance just as Pedri’s black car pulls away from the curb.

The wind bites her face, freezing the tears she did not know she was crying. She pumps her legs, lungs burning, heart hammering. She chases the car down the street, past startled pedestrians and honking taxis. She chases him—the man who hollowed her out and still somehow holds the shape of her heart in his cold hands.

Her body betrays her. After only a block, her knees buckle. She crashes to the pavement, skinning her palms raw and knocking the wind from her chest. Pain shoots through her, sharp and bright.

The car’s brake lights flare red. It stops.

The door opens.

A pair of shiny, tailored leather shoes step onto the asphalt. Slowly, Aitana lifts her gaze from the shoes, up the dark trousers, until she meets Pedri’s cold and unnerving stare. He stands over her, an immovable tower of ice, his expression carved from stone.

“Pedri…” she whispers, her voice cracking.

He extends his hand toward her. Those slender, elegant fingers reach down, and for a dizzying moment, Aitana drifts into the past. She sees the young man she fell madly in love with years ago—the boy who held her face and promised her forever, whose smile felt like coming home. Hope flickers, small and foolish, in her chest. She reaches up, her trembling fingers stretching toward his.

Just as their skin is about to meet, Pedri pulls back.

He withdraws his hand as if burned. The hope in her eyes gutters and dies. She falls forward again, her palms slapping the cold ground. A sob wrenches from her throat—raw and broken.

Pedri straightens. For a fraction of a second, something flickers in his face—a crack in the ice, a muscle jumping in his jaw. But he turns away. The car door slams. The engine revs, and the black car vanishes around the corner, leaving Aitana sprawled on the freezing sidewalk.

Chloe runs up behind her, kneeling, trying to lift her. “Aitana, sweetheart, get up. Please.”

But Aitana barely hears her. Her eyes stay fixed on the empty street where the car disappeared. The cold seeps into her bones, but the ice in Pedri’s eyes is colder.

Somewhere deep in her chest, beneath the humiliation and the grief, a small, defiant ember still glows. She will not stay on this pavement forever. She will rise. And when she does, she will make him feel every ounce of pain he has poured into her.

She pushes herself up on bleeding palms. Chloe’s arm wraps around her shoulders, and together, slowly, they walk back toward the penthouse. Aitana says nothing. She is already planning.

Tonight, she will sign the divorce papers. But first, she will make sure Pedri watches.