The escape
272 Words
That night, they ran.
They left Sicily behind—its blood-soaked past, its wars and ghosts—and headed north, to the border. Matteo had arranged new identities. Elira wore her mother’s name now. He was no longer a De Luca.
They slept in backroad motels, made love in borrowed beds under fake names, and dreamed of quiet lives.
But peace is fragile.
And fate is cruel.
The Final Betrayal
They made it to Lake Como before it caught up with them.
A sniper. A message.
Matteo collapsed in her arms outside the small villa they had rented, blood blooming red across his ribs.
“No,” Elira gasped, pressing her hands to the wound. “No, please, please stay with me—”
He touched her cheek, his fingers trembling. “I told you... I’d protect you.”
“You don’t have to die for me,” she cried.
He smiled faintly. “I already did... the moment I fell for you.”
His hand slipped from her face.
She screamed.
One Year Later
In a quiet coastal town in Portugal, a woman named Elira Vale runs a small bookstore by the sea.
She smiles for the tourists. She sells novels about love and war. But every night, she locks the doors and pulls out an old, leather-bound journal.
A ledger, long emptied of names.
And she writes his story in it.
How he was more than his blood.
How he loved her like no one else ever dared.
How he died to give her a life.
And how she still wears his ring, strung on a chain against her heart.
- Writer
