The night was suffocating—thick with a heavy silence that pressed in on Alessia from all sides. The city’s distant hum was a faint, mocking pulse beneath the crushing weight of what she knew. She had always believed the darkness was out there—lurking beyond the streetlights, in the shadows of strangers’ eyes. But now, she realized the shadows had been inside all along. Inside her home. Inside the people she trusted.
She paced the small, grimy apartment she now called her refuge, the peeling paint on the walls whispering stories of decay and neglect. Outside, the rain began to fall—a slow, relentless tapping against the cracked windowpane, as if the sky itself mourned the unraveling of her world.
Her fingers trembled as she reached for her phone, eyes flicking over the screen where the la
