CHAPTER FIVE_THINGS THAT STAY
1026 Words
CHAPTER FIVE — THINGS THAT STAY
ALESSANDRO
I did not think about her when I was working.
At least that was what I kept telling myself.
The office stayed quiet except for the sound of papers shifting beneath my hand and Marco occasionally speaking from across the room, but even then, my attention kept drifting somewhere else entirely.
Upstairs.
Toward her.
I signed another document without properly reading it.
Marco noticed immediately.
“You missed a page.”
I looked down.
He was right.
That irritated me more than it should have.
I fixed it silently.
Marco leaned back slightly in his chair, watching me in the same careful way he always did when he thought I was becoming unpredictable.
“She’s distracting you.”
“She’s not.”
“That was too fast.”
I ignored him.
Outside the office windows, rain tapped softly against the glass again. Not heavy. Just enough to darken the evening sky and pull old memories toward the surface before I could stop them.
Rain always did that.
I loosened my tie slightly before standing from the desk.
Marco stayed quiet for a moment before speaking again.
“You still haven’t answered my question.”
I already knew which one.
Why did you bring her here?
The problem was that every answer sounded incomplete once spoken aloud.
“She saw me vulnerable,” I said finally.
Marco’s expression barely changed.
“You’ve handled worse problems.”
I knew that too.
People had seen worse.
People had betrayed worse.
And none of them stayed in my head the way Sera did.
I walked toward the window slowly, my jaw tightening slightly as I stared out at the dark gardens below.
“She should not have been there that night,” I murmured more to myself than him.
“But she was.”
My eyes closed briefly.
Rain.
Blood.
Her hands shaking while trying to help me.
Most people looked terrified around me once they understood who I was.
Sera looked terrified too.
But she stayed anyway.
That part kept returning to me.
Again and again.
“She could have left,” I said quietly.
Marco was silent.
“She should have.”
“But she didn’t,” he replied.
No.
She didn’t.
And maybe that was the problem.
For a moment, my mind drifted somewhere I rarely allowed it to go.
Back years ago.
Before power became routine.
Before violence became expected.
I was maybe ten the first time my father left me bleeding after training.
Not badly.
Just enough.
Enough to teach something.
I still remembered standing in the large hallway afterward trying not to cry because crying only made things worse in that house.
No one came to help me.
Not the guards.
Not the staff.
No one.
Then Isabella appeared at the top of the staircase.
Small then.
Too young to understand the world she had been born into.
She looked at the blood on my face and started crying harder than I was.
I remembered wiping her tears first even while my own hands hurt.
“It doesn’t hurt,” I lied to her.
That was the first time I learned something dangerous.
People stayed calmer when you pretended pain meant nothing.
After that, weakness became something I buried so deeply that eventually even I stopped looking for it.
Until the rain that night.
Until Sera looked at me bleeding on the street and stayed.
Not because she feared me.
Not because she wanted something.
She just… stayed.
I opened my eyes slowly.
Marco was still watching me carefully.
“You look haunted,” he said lightly.
“I’m working.”
“No,” he replied. “You’re remembering.”
That made my expression harden instantly.
Marco lifted his hands slightly. “Relax.”
I turned away from the window.
“I brought her here because it’s safer.”
That answer sounded steadier.
More reasonable.
But even I could hear the weakness in it now.
Marco definitely heard it too.
“She’s not the dangerous one here,” he said quietly.
The room fell silent after that.
Because we both knew he was right.
Later that evening, I found her in the library.
The lights were dimmer there, softer than the rest of the estate. Rain tapped gently against the tall windows while she sat curled slightly into the corner of one of the couches with a book resting in her lap.
She looked comfortable for the first time since arriving here.
That realization held my attention longer than it should have.
She noticed me after a second and immediately sat straighter.
Like my presence changed the air around her.
I did not know why I noticed that so much.
“You read slowly,” I said.
Her eyebrows lifted slightly.
“That’s a strange thing to say to someone instead of hello.”
I walked further into the room.
“You pause every few pages.”
“That’s because I actually process what I’m reading.”
A faint warmth touched her voice.
Defensive.
But softer than before.
Interesting.
I sat across from her.
She looked nervous immediately.
Not frightened.
Just aware.
I was beginning to understand the difference.
“You keep watching me,” she said quietly after a moment.
I held her gaze calmly.
“Yes.”
The honesty surprised her.
I saw it instantly.
“Why?” she asked.
I should have lied.
Instead, I answered with the closest thing to truth I could manage.
“I like knowing where you are.”
Silence.
Soft.
Heavy.
Rain filled the spaces between it.
Her fingers tightened slightly around the edge of the book.
“That sounds possessive.”
Maybe it was.
I studied her quietly.
“I’m trying to keep you safe.”
That answer should have sounded simple.
But something in her expression changed slightly, like she heard the uncertainty underneath it.
“You keep saying that,” she murmured.
Because I needed it to be true.
That was the problem.
If protecting her was the reason, then this made sense.
If it wasn’t…
I did not want to examine the alternative too closely.
- Writer
