Alessia:
The food arrived quietly.
No ceremony being a hotel. No guards hovering nearby. Just warm plates placed on the table and a polite knock before the door closed again.
Normal.
I hadn’t realized how much I needed normal until that moment.
We ate in silence at first. Not the awkward kind, just the kind where your body is too tired to pretend it isn’t. The soup warmed my chest on the way down, easing the tight knot that had lived there for days.
Alexander watched me over the rim of his glass.
Not staring.
Observing.
“So,” he said eventually, voice calm, “tell me about you. Before all of this.”
I paused, spoon hovering midair. “What about me?”
“What you were doing before you came here?” He said. “Before you ran. You know, you were aware that you were pregnant. I know that yo
