DOMENICO
Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.
Maybe I really shouldn’t have asked her that, because the moment the words slipped off my tongue, the line went silent.
For a split second, I thought Reina had hung up.
But she hadn’t.
She was still there.
Still listening.
Still hearing the sound of my heartbeat pounding like a war drum inside my chest.
It was so loud, so wild, I swore she could hear it through the phone, every frantic thud betraying how completely she owned me.
But she wouldn’t say a word.
Not a damn sound.
And that silence… that silence terrified me.
It would’ve made sense if she yelled, if she cursed, if she threw all the mean names in the world at me, I’d take that over this suffocating quiet. Anything was better than this awful stillness that made my heart bleed a
