Page 45 of Fire and Silk

Then the overdose call came.

They found her in her bathtub, barely breathing. Pills on the floor. No note.

I signed her into rehab myself. Drove through the night. Paid cash. Never gave my full name. Stayed in the city for three weeks in a shit motel off Sydney Road just in case she needed someone, even if she didn’t know it was me.

She never saw me.

But I saw her.

The third week, she started to hum again. Quiet, fractured little melodies that broke off halfway through. I watched her from behind mirrored glass while she threaded beads onto a string with shaking hands. She was still in there. Damaged, yes. But alive.

And then—I ran.

Because if she looked at me with gratitude, I would’ve shattered.

I left Melbourne that night. Took the first out-of-country contract I could get. Romania. Then Istanbul. Then Singapore. I told myself I was keeping her safe by staying away. That distance was penance. That exile could be redemption if I let it rot me slow enough.

I lived with my sins. Slept beside them. Named them.

And then the message came.

Nicola, sobbing. “She’s gone.”

I didn’t ask who. I didn’t have to.

The name carved itself into my chest like it had been waiting all along.

Dantès.

The old patriarch was dead. Whispers had already started—estate divisions, internal fractures, blood oaths resurfacing. And if the lines were being drawn, Lira wasn’t just legacy... she was leverage. And they had her. Right in the middle of a war she didn’t even know had started.

I slam the car door shut, the sound echoing across the garage like gunfire. My boots hit the concrete harder than I intend. The air tastes like dust and engine oil. I take the service elevator up—fifth floor, end of the hall—and already something feels off.

My hotel room door is closed, but there’s something wedged in the frame.

A letter.

Heavy stock paper, cream-toned, folded crisp.

I pull it free.

No wax seal. No name. Just an address printed in neat, archaic script across the top.

Dantès Estate.

Below that, a line of coordinates. No room for misinterpretation.

And at the very bottom, a final sentence, written in black ink so dark it nearly bleeds through the page:

She is with me.

Chapter Eight – Severo

Giardino Inferiore, Dantès Estate

The morning sun spills over the garden walls like honey, clinging to the stone and soaking into the folds of my open shirt. The soil is already warm beneath my knees, its scent thick with minerals and damp roots. I dig in deeper with gloved hands, adjusting the twine I’ve used to coax the rose stems along the trellis. These new cuttings—Crimson Glory, temperamental little things—don’t respond well to brute force. They require suggestion.

Behind me, the gravel path shifts under a pair of approaching boots.