WHAT BELONGS TO HIM

CHAPTER TWO: THE RUNNING

Vittoria knew the moment she saw the text that everything had changed. It was not because of the words themselves: I know about Tommaso. I know about Florence. You have until tomorrow morning. Instead, it was because of what those words truly meant. Sebastian did not make idle threats. He made promises.

She stood in the kitchen of the Florence apartment with her phone in her trembling hand. The glowing screen reflected her face back at her. She looked pale and much older than thirty-two. Outside, the city was slowly sliding into the evening. Traffic sounds drifted up from the street below, and sThe lawyer’s office carried the scent of rich leather and polished wood. Sebastian sat up straight in his seat, keeping his back away from the cushions. He looked relaxed and comfortable in his chair. He wore a dark grey suit and a nice watch. His hands rested quietly in his lap.

"You're the father," the lawyer said.

Sebastian couldn’t move. The words didn't even feel real. For seven years, he knew this day would come. He just never thought it would take this long to get here.

"How old?" he asked.

"Six. He was born in Naples. The mother managed to run away.”

"I know who the mother is.”

The lawyer cleared his throat, suddenly looking nervous. "She hasn't asked for any money," the lawyer said. "And she hasn't told anyone. The boy has her last name, Giulia.”

Sebastian's jaw tightened. It wasn't because of the child's name, especially since he didn't even know it yet. It was the fact that she used her own family name. Vittoria had done that on purpose. Everything Vittoria did was calculated. Even the decisions she made six years ago were still hitting him today.

The lawyer kept talking, speaking faster now. "Your sister-in-law got the message and called our office right away. She felt you needed to know immediately.”

"Luciana," he muttered.

Hearing her name changed everything.

"Why tell me now?" Sebastian asked.

"The mother's situation has changed. She needs..."

"She needs nothing from me."

"She isn't asking for anything from you, Signor Sebastian de Lucio. But there could be trouble ahead for the child. Medical or legal problems. Your sister-in-law felt…”

"What does Vittoria know about this call?"

The lawyer hesitated, and that hesitation told Sebastian everything he needed to know.

"We don't know for sure. Your sister-in-law has been trying to call her for three days, but Vittoria hasn't picked up.”

Sebastian stood up. He moved smoothly and without any drama, but the lawyer flinched anyway. "I want a full file. Birth records, medical history, school enrollment, everything."

"Of course. Though I should mention, the mother specifically asked that you do not try to contact her or the child."

"Noted," Sebastian said, and walked out.

He did not go to the palazzo. Instead, he drove to the warehouse district on the northern edge of the city. His real business happened there, in offices that looked like storage closets. There was no name on the door. There never was.

His right-hand man Paolo was already there with the files spread across the metal table."

Your sister-in-law is becoming a problem," Paolo said, sliding a folder toward Sebastian.

Sebastian opened it. The birth certificate inside was for a boy named Tommaso Giulia, born on March 14, 2019. The space for the father's name was left blank, but the mother was listed as Vittoria Giulia Salvatico.

He had married her for a brief six months back in 2017. Then, she left him in 2018 without a single word of explanation. Her lawyer had handled the divorce papers, and Sebastian simply signed them without reading a single word. He used to believe that some things were better left unexamined.

He had spent years telling himself that he never thought about her.

The photograph showed a small, dark-haired boy with an expression that was neither happy nor sad. He just looked highly observant. The boy had Sebastian's nose, but the rest of his face was all Vittoria. He had the exact same set of her mouth. He even looked at the world as though he were carefully logging every detail."

She works as an art conservator," Paolo continued. "She lives quietly with no protection detail and no security. There has been no contact with your family at all. Your sister-in-law discovered the child entirely by accident because she has a contact at the school. She saw a report card with the name Giulia on it.”

Sebastian turned the page to find school photographs and medical records. It was everything a father should have known from the very beginning.

“Luciana has been trying to reach Vittoria for three days," Paolo said. "But Vittoria has not answered."

"Where is Vittoria now?" Sebastian asked.

Paolo shifted his weight. That single, small movement told Sebastian everything he needed to know before the answer even came out.

"Florence," Paolo said. "She took the child out of school two days ago. She is not returning to Naples."

Something in Paolo's tone suggested this was the most important detail. He clearly thought that Vittoria running away was the thing Sebastian should focus on.

But Sebastian was already looking at something else entirely. He was staring at the boy's school records, reading the teacher's notes in the file. They said the boy was an excellent student who was quiet, observant, and adapted well to new environments.

New environments. The word was plural."

How many schools?" Sebastian asked.

Paolo hesitated. "Four in six years. She moves frequently."

Four schools. Four different cities. Vittoria had been running this whole time. The only real question was why she had stayed still long enough for Luciana to find them now."

Book a flight," Sebastian said. "I want our people at every airport and every train station. Find me her exact location within the hour."

"Vittoria is not a threat," Paolo started to say.

"No," Sebastian said quietly. "She is not a threat. She is worse than a threat. She took something that belongs to me, and she is on the run."

He closed the file with a firm snap."

Find her before she disappears again."

Vittoria Giulia was not running quite yet. But she was definitely preparing to.

The apartment in Florence was already half-packed. Everything was orderly, with no wasted movement. She had learned long ago that panic was a luxury she could not afford, and she had learned that hard lesson from Sebastian himself.

Tommaso sat on the sofa with his small blue suitcase at his feet, which was decorated with airplane stickers he had chosen himself. He was an unusually quiet child for a six-year-old. He did not ask many questions, choosing instead to simply observe and adapt to everything around him.

"Are we going on a plane?" he asked."

Yes."

"Like you showed me in the book?"

"Yes.

"He considered this for a moment. Then he picked up his suitcase and held it tightly with both hands. "Where are we going?"

Vittoria had been asking herself that exact question ever since Luciana's first phone call. It was the moment she realized the wall she had built between her new life and Sebastian's world had finally cracked.

"Away," she said. "Somewhere new."

"Will we come back?"

"I don't know."

She had never lied to him before. She would not start now, even if the truth was less comforting. The reality was that she had completely run out of time. Sebastian would find them, because Sebastian always claimed what belonged to him.

There was also a deeper truth that she could never say aloud. She had made a massive mistake six years ago by believing she could actually keep anything hidden from him.

Tommaso slipped his hand into hers. His palm was warm, small, and completely trusting. This little boy was the exact reason she had been protecting this secret all these years."

Mamma," he said. "Are you scared?”

She looked down at her son. He had learned to read her face the same way she read old paintings, analyzing it layer by layer to understand exactly what lay beneath the surface."

Yes," she said."

Of what?" he asked."Of your father finding us."

Tommaso did not ask who his father was. Instead, he simply asked, "Will he be mean?"

Vittoria thought about Sebastian. She remembered the way he could sit perfectly still and make powerful lawyers feel like criminals. She remembered the way he had held her after she told him she was leaving. There had been no begging from him and no anger. There was just that terrible, patient certainty.

Behind them, her phone buzzed on the counter.

It was a text from an unknown number: I know about Tommaso. I know about Florence. You have until tomorrow morning.

Vittoria's hand tightened around her son's small fingers.

This message wasn't from Luciana, and it wasn't from the lawyer. It was Sebastian.

He had already found them.

Someone was cooking garlic and tomatoes in an apartment nearby. Normal life simply continued for people who were not her.

Tommaso was in his bedroom drawing. She could hear the soft scratch of his colored pencils against paper, which was that familiar, steady sound he made when he was concentrating. He always drew the exact same things: houses with windows, trees with detailed leaves, and people standing completely alone. Vittoria paid his therapist in cash to avoid any paper trails. The doctor said his drawings were age-appropriate and showed great spatial reasoning. What the therapist did not say out loud, but what Vittoria understood completely, was that the drawings showed a child learning to make sense of an unstable world. He was drawing things in fixed positions. He drew things that did not move and things that stayed exactly where you put them.

Vittoria had moved nineteen times in Tommaso's six years of life. That meant nineteen apartments, nineteen schools, and nineteen failed attempts to build something stable enough to last. And now, she had to do it all over again.

She pulled the large suitcase out from the bedroom closet. This was the one she always kept packed with official documents, cash, and a fresh change of clothes. She had not opened it in three years, not since they first moved to Florence. Back then, Vittoria had actually allowed herself to believe that the running was finally over. She had been so stupid. She had been so dangerously stupid.

The suitcase carried the scent of old leather and heavy fear. Inside, the documents were still safe. There was a passport under the name Victoria Giuliana Wells, along with a driver's license under that exact same name. She also found credit cards and bank account information. These were papers for three different versions of herself, with each one representing a different woman in a different city. She had created these fake identities before Tommaso was even born, back when she was still trying to understand the dangerous man she had married.

She began pulling clothes from the drawers without even thinking about which ones. She grabbed practical things, warm things, and items that would not wrinkle or show stains. She chose things that could be abandoned without a single regret. She had learned long ago not to attach herself to physical possessions. Possessions required explanations, and possessions left traces.

She packed for two because Tommaso could not dress himself reliably when they were moving fast. She packed his favorite books, making sure to choose the ones with no identifying marks or bookplates containing their names. She packed the medication for his occasional nightmares. Finally, she packed the photograph she kept hidden. It was the only picture of his father she had never destroyed, taken back before she truly knew what kind of man he was.

No. She would not pack that. She threw the photograph back into the drawer where it had lived for six years, hiding it under a layer of scarves that carried the scent of lavender. Keeping that picture was stupid. It was a liability and a dangerous piece of evidence showing her attachment. Attachment was exactly how people found you.

Her phone buzzed again. This time it was not a text, but a phone call from an unknown number. She did not answer it because unknown numbers always meant complications. They meant people asking questions and people with hidden agendas. The phone rang four times and then stopped. Thirty seconds later, it began to ring again from that exact same number. She just let it ring, watching the screen light up and darken, light up and darken.

Vittoria had been running from men her entire life. First, she ran from her father, who drank heavily and completely forgot she existed. Then, she ran from older men who wanted things from a pretty young woman who had no family or protection. Finally, she ran from the man she thought could save her. He was the man she married, and he turned out to be something far more dangerous than anyone else had ever been.

She had learned to recognize the warning signs early on. She knew the way a man's eyes moved when he was calculating his next move. She knew the patience in his voice when he was planning something, and the terrifying stillness that meant violence was being considered. She had learned these lessons through sheer necessity and constant repetition, the exact same way other women learned how to cook or sew.

Vittoria went into Tommaso's room. He was drawing a house with smoke coming from the chimney. Even his smoke was drawn precisely, in careful and steady curves. The house had multiple windows, with each one carefully outlined. She wondered what he was really drawing. Safety. He was always drawing safety, the kind of safety he had never actually experienced in his real life.

He looked up at her with his dark eyes. They were Sebastian's eyes, a terrifying fact she had spent six years trying not to notice. He shared the exact same eye shape, the same color, and even the way he looked at things as though he were cataloging them. This was Sebastian's son, and there was absolutely no changing that now.

"We are going on an adventure," she said.

Tommaso set down his pencil. He did not ask where they were going, and he did not ask why. He simply closed his coloring book and went straight to his room to get his jacket. It was the same jacket she had bought him just two months ago in a shop near the Duomo, but she knew she would have to leave it behind now. Anything with a receipt, anything traceable, and anything that created a clear pattern had to be abandoned.

She was already making a frantic list inside her head. Florence had a busy train station, plenty of buses, and rental car companies. She had money stashed in four different bank accounts under three different names, and she had all the necessary identification documents waiting in the suitcase. She had done all this research years ago, before Tommaso was even born, back when she was still married to Sebastian and beginning to understand the monster he truly was.

The first time she understood what he truly was occurred when she found the photographs. They were not photos of another woman. That would have been simple, explainable, and even forgivable. Instead, the photographs showed a man, badly bloodied, hanging by his wrists in a dark basement. Sebastian had explained to her, completely calmly, that the man had stolen from his business. He told her that theft had serious consequences and that she should not concern herself with such things.

She had asked him for a divorce that very same day. Sebastian had simply smiled and reminded her that they had made sacred promises to one another. He told her that he never released people from their promises. He told her that she would just have to try a lot harder if she ever wanted to convince him.

The train would be the fastest option. It was a three-hour ride to Rome, and once she was in Rome, she could easily catch a flight. She still had friends in the capital city. They were not friends in the traditional sense, but rather women she had met in shelters and support groups. They were women who intimately understood what it meant to be on the run. One of those women still owed her money. Another would gladly put her up for a few days without asking a single question.

But before any of that could happen, she had to get out of Florence without being seen. She desperately needed to figure out exactly how much Sebastian already knew. Had he followed her here recently? Had he actually been watching her this whole time? Had he orchestrated her discovery the way he orchestrated everything else in his life?

Her phone buzzed. It was another text message, but from a completely different number this time.

“The boy's school called Luciana. She called me. I have been waiting for you to make a mistake, amore. You finally did. Pack light. Bring Tommaso. We leave at dawn.”

Vittoria's hands went completely numb. This was not a text directly from Sebastian. Instead, the message was signed by Paolo, who was Sebastian's right-hand man. That meant Sebastian himself was not actually in Florence yet, but it also meant he was definitely on his way. He had been patient enough to wait six long years, and she had just given him the exact reason he needed to finally move.

She looked at Tommaso standing in the doorway with his jacket on and his small blue suitcase in his hand, ready to disappear with her the way he always was. He was ready to abandon another school, another apartment, and another life. He had learned long ago not to ask questions because her answers never changed anything. They ran. That was their pattern, and that was simply what his mother did.

"Mamma," he said. "Are we leaving now?"

"Yes."

"Will Papa find us?"

It was the exact question she had been asking herself for six long years. It was also a question Tommaso had never asked before. His words meant that somewhere in his small, observant mind, he had already figured out the truth. They were running from someone. They were running from someone powerful enough to chase them across countries, someone important enough to actually have a name.

"No," she lied. "He will not find us."

She took his hand and walked toward the door. His palm was warm, small, and completely trusting. This boy was the exact thing she had been protecting all these years. It had never been about protecting herself. It was always about this small boy who had Sebastian's dark eyes, her mother's quiet patience, and a capacity for adaptation that broke her heart every single time she saw it.

She opened the apartment door and stepped into the hallway. Behind her, the apartment lights went off one by one because of the automatic timer switch she had forgotten to cancel when she first moved in. The apartment darkened completely, and the door closed behind them.

And below, on the street, a car pulled up with its headlights off. Paolo sat in the driver's seat, waiting. He did not get out of the car, and he did not try to stop her. He simply watched her appear on the street with the boy and the suitcase. He watched her begin to run toward the train station. He did not move a single muscle to stop her.

He would report back to Sebastian very soon. He would tell him that she was running straight toward the train station, completely terrified. He would tell his boss that she was exactly where Sebastian had always known she would be.

Because Sebastian did not trap people. Instead, he guided them. He let them believe they were choosing their own escape route, allowing them to run toward what they thought was safety.