The descent from the Aspromonte peaks was a journey through a changing world. As the black SUV wound its way down the narrow mountain passes, the morning sun finally fully crested the horizon, painting the Tyrrhenian Sea in shades of molten gold. For Giulia, the landscape she had looked at every day of her life was no longer a cage; it was a blueprint.
Matteo drove with a new kind of stillness. The manic, possessive energy that had defined him—the man who only loved her when she was within his sight—had settled into something deeper, something grounded in the reality of the woman sitting beside him.
Alessandro sat in the back, silent, his gaze fixed on the passing pines. The revelation of their mother’s survival had stripped away the layers of the cold, tactical machine he had become. He
