Chapter 4 Back to Port Azure

My mother lost control.

She was always composed. Always restrained.

That day, she screamed like she'd been set on fire.

'Why can't you people leave me the hell alone? I don't want this. Look at me, Aurelian! I'm nothing now. I'm old. I'm ugly. Your father can have any girl he wants. He doesn't need to drag me back. Tell him that. Tell him to find someone else and fuck off.'

She pressed her fists to her forehead and sobbed into her sleeves.

Aurelian smiled.

He couldn't have been older than thirty then.

Tall. Broad shoulders under a grey coat. Clean-shaven. Cufflinks. Shoes that made no sound on the tiles.

His eyes unsettled me.

'Signora Seraphina, what are you saying?' His voice stayed light. 'He loves you. You think any of this would matter to him? Your age, your face? You think he sent me here because of that?'

She spat the words back at him.

'He doesn't love anyone. He's a monster. You all are. I'm not going back. I won't. You can't make me. Elle, don't go. Don't leave with them. Stay here. Please.'

Her voice cracked. Her body shook. She dropped to her knees, clutching the edge of my skirt like a child.

I wrapped my arms around her shoulders. 'I'm not going anywhere, Mamma.'

But we both knew it wasn't up to us.

We got into the back of a van with no windows.

My mother passed out right after they sedated her.

I sat beside her, knees pressed together, hands clamped in my lap.

The van smelled of leather and disinfectant.

Everything inside was spotless-dark wood panelling, cream upholstery, gold trim along the minibar.

There was a bed. A desk, a sofa, a fridge, even a compact bathroom tucked behind a sliding door.

I'd never seen anything like it.

Aurelian sat opposite, typing.

His jacket was folded on the back of the chair.

He didn't look at me. Didn't glance at my mother.

I watched his fingers move. The screen glowed pale blue across his face.

Throughout the ten-hour journey, the only thing he said to me was, 'You're my sister. We're family.'

We returned to Port Azure.

Or rather, we were returned.

The Bellarmine family controlled everything there. You couldn't piss in a gutter without someone logging it.

They dealt in weapons. Contract killings. Shipments went in and out of the docks every week-some marked, most not.

There was a rumour they ran a training facility on the outskirts of town. No signs, no names. Just an underground range behind a fish processing plant, cameras mounted at shoulder height.

They had legitimate businesses, too. Cafés. Hotels. A logistics firm with a fake international wing.

But those were for show.

The real power sat under the surface, and no one outside their circles got close enough to measure it.

People in Port Azure called them respectable. Private. Quiet.

They weren't.

They were just careful. And terrifying.

They kept me at Villa Argento for weeks before I saw anyone apart from the staff.

The villa sat halfway up Monte Argento, wrapped in stone walls and pine trees.

Four storeys, fifteen rooms per floor, not counting the kitchens or the servants' wing.

Marble floors. Cold stairwells. Everything echoed.

My mother wasn't there. They sent her to Villa Forteza. No one told me why.

I'd never been apart from her before. Not for a single night.

They gave me a bedroom with a balcony. The sheets smelled of lavender and starch.

The tutor showed up every morning at eight. Her perfume made my throat itch.

The maid followed me from room to room, smiling too much and never saying anything useful.

When I asked to see my mother, she'd say, 'Signorina, it's not the time,' and press another biscuit into my hand.

I didn't scream. I didn't throw things.

That wasn't how I'd been raised.

I waited. I cried where no one could see me.

A month passed before I met anyone new.

Dorian Bellarmine arrived without warning.

Twelve years old. Taller than me by a head and a half, hair trimmed short, always in shirts with stiff collars.

He barely spoke. Just walked past me like I wasn't there.

Eavesdropping on the tutor's conversation, I learned he was Remigio Bellarmine's fourth son. He only came to the villa during school holidays.

When I passed him on the staircase, he didn't nod.

When I tried to speak to him, he didn't reply.

The villa felt even emptier with him in it. The ceilings stretched higher. The silence deepened.

One afternoon, after another useless lesson, I slipped out through the west hallway and into the garden.

I sat beneath the wisteria trellis, knees drawn up, face buried, crying into my own sleeves so no one would hear me.

The dirt was damp. My uniform stuck to my back.

I kept thinking of our old flat, its chipped tiles, the rust on the bathroom tap, the way my mother hummed while she made coffee.

Thirty square metres. No hallway. But it had been warm.

I would have given anything to go back.

I didn't mean to cry. I tried not to.

But the longer I sat there, the more I couldn't stop thinking about her-my mother, somewhere I couldn't see, couldn't reach.

I was terrified she might already be dead.

I'd seen what dead looked like.

A man hit by a lorry on Via Marina, his leg folded the wrong way, blood soaking into the tarmac.

A kitten crushed under tyres, twitching, then still.

Old Signor Giordano from next door, wrapped in white cloth, rolled away and burned until nothing was left but a bone-dry jar.

Dead meant gone.

Dead meant something that used to breathe, used to move, used to hold your hand, didn't anymore.

I pressed my face down harder into my knees and cried harder.

I didn't hear him coming.