(Luca)
Aria didn’t ask for protection.
That was how I knew Alice had already lost.
People who broke reached outward. They grasped. They demanded walls, guards, distance.
Aria did none of that.
She moved through the house the next morning with the same quiet precision she always had—no hesitation, no retreat. But something in her posture had changed.
Not softened.
Hardened.
She had integrated the truth instead of letting it hollow her out.
That made her dangerous.
Vincenzo noticed it too. “She’s steadier,” he said quietly as we watched Aria cross the courtyard from the upper balcony. “Not calmer. Steadier.”
“Yes,” I replied. “She’s aligned.”
“With herself,” he added.
“That’s the most difficult alignment to break,” I said.
Alice, however, believed the opposite.
She believed gr
