Page 31 of Lost Room Lawyer (Room #4)

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Nico

“Nico!”

Leo’s voice snapped me out of my daze, bringing me back to the kitchen.

I blinked, disoriented, scanning the room.

Boxes were scattered everywhere, packed and ready to be moved.

The larger furniture—the bed, the couch, and the dining table—was set to be hauled away today, likely by some junk dealer.

“Are you done?” my father asked. My silence told him everything. He took the box and set it down with the others by the door.

“It’s just too early,” I replied with a choked voice.

“Please, we’ve been through this,” Leo said, sighing wearily. “Tenants are lining up. The waiting list is two pages long. Clearing space for them feels almost like an act of charity.”

That I had been able to move back to Zurich with my mother was entirely thanks to my father.

For years, he had invested his money in real estate and owned several apartment buildings throughout the city.

His claim that he was doing a favor for society was just the worst because Leo was far from being a philanthropist.

On the other hand, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Money had always been at the top of his list. The special deal he made with my mother would be recouped within a year, especially since nowadays people were willing to pay almost any price for an apartment in the city.

“The funeral was just a week ago,” I said with a trembling voice, making no secret of how much his behavior pissed me off.

Leo was on the verge of losing his temper when Maya walked in with two paper bags. She had cleared out the room that my mother had used as an office.

“That’s everything.” She set the bags down and came over to say goodbye. “You have my number. Call me when you’re ready, and we can go through the stuff together and decide what to do with it.”

“Thanks, Maya.” I put my arm around her and said goodbye. “For everything.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Her venomous glare at Leo didn’t escape me and provided me with at least a bit of solace.

Maya also didn’t understand why this move couldn’t have waited another two weeks.

However, she knew Leo well enough to understand what it meant when he said he could handle things himself.

He would probably have just thrown everything into a dumpster.

Not long after Maya left, Grazia brought a few empty cardboard boxes into the kitchen.

“The bedroom is done,” she said. “Nico, I left some things on the dresser. Maybe you want to keep something as a memento.”

I’d never really gotten along with Grazia—good grief, she was only seven years older than me and technically my stepmother—but since my mother’s death, she had turned out to be a genuinely good person. Without acknowledging Leo again, I left the kitchen and headed into the bedroom.

With every step I took in the apartment, my muscles grew tenser. Standing in front of the dresser, I spotted my mother’s jewelry carefully laid out, and my breath caught in my throat.

I no longer feared losing consciousness and collapsing.

The past few days had proven I wasn’t capable of that, despite how much I wished I could just shut down.

My thoughts weren’t only about my mother.

As devastating as the shock of her loss was and as vast as the emptiness she left behind, what had happened last Friday at Hector’s apartment had completely broken me.

Inside, where my heart had been—or the shriveled, dried-out thing that used to be a heart—there was now only a void.

Nothing remained, or at least it felt that way. Just a hollow, aching emptiness inside.

I shook off those thoughts and tried to refocus. My gaze fell on a gold chain with a small pendant resembling a seal. In small, delicate letters it read: A Heart of Stone.

I remembered how my mother had bought the pendant from a street artist in London. “If something is carved in stone, it’s made for eternity,” she had said.

“Most people would interpret that saying differently,” I had replied with amusement.

“But we’re not like most people.” The way she had winked at me mischievously, I would never forget.

By now, I knew that even if a heart was made of stone, it could still break. God! I had thought my heart was made of stone. How else could all those one-night stands be explained? But now I stood here, and it was shattered into a thousand pieces.

I took the pendant and examined the rest. There were a few gold chains, earrings, and rings. Two of the rings had small diamonds. Also, Leo’s former wedding ring was among them.

“These are all yours,” Grazia said softly, leaning in next to me.

“I’ll just take this one,” I said, admiring the delicate pendant in my hand.

“If you want, I can take the rest to the jeweler and sell it.”

My head dropped lower.

“It doesn’t have to be done right away. I can keep the stuff for you for now.”

“That would be nice,” I murmured.

As voices drifted in, I cast a quick glance down the hallway and confirmed my suspicion. The Salvation Army was there to pick up the furniture. Grazia noticed how unsettling this was for me and gently placed a hand on my arm.

“It will get better,” she reassured me. “I promise you.”

“I’m not so sure about that.” I could only manage a whisper.

“I was your age when my brother died in a car accident. It was a huge shock for everyone. But over time, it got better.”

It was strange enough that Grazia was trying to comfort me, but the sudden urge to talk to her about Hector—that wasn’t happening. I bit my tongue and kept quiet, knowing I was far too messed up to confide in anyone. Nothing good would come of it.

“Nico,” my father said as he entered the bedroom. “I have to go back to the office later, but there’s something I need to discuss with you.”

His tone sounded unusually formal, considering we had been packing up my mother’s belongings all day. Grazia also sensed the seriousness of the moment and stepped toward the door.

“I’ll check on the guys,” she said.

Leo even pushed the door almost shut behind Grazia so we could talk in private, which only irritated me further.

My experience had shown that such conversations with my father never ended well.

The last time we had a serious talk, he had taken away my success with my book, all to protect his own career.

“What’s this about?” I asked, gripping the pendant tightly.

The room was empty except for the dresser. Even the bed was ready for pickup in the hallway, and the wooden shutters were drawn. Sunlight filtered through the slats, casting golden stripes on the opposite wall.

“Listen, I had a phone call with Hector yesterday.”

Just hearing his name made my knees weak and my circulation drop, forcing me to hold onto the dresser. “I’m still on sick leave this week,” I said, my voice hoarse.

“Yeah, that’s not what this is about.” Leo dismissed this fact with a wave of his hand, as if it were irrelevant.

“It’s about your internship there. He said that since his firm is so small, you might be better off somewhere else.

At Koller, Stadler & Partner, you’d get more exposure to different cases than with him.

I have to admit, he’s right. As much as I would have loved to see him as your mentor, you could learn a lot more career-wise at a larger firm. ”

Leo continued to elaborate on the benefits of switching, but I was more focused on staying on my feet.

The fact that Hector suggested the change was proof enough that I was the biggest idiot on earth.

I had fallen for my boss, a man who had been leading a double life for years and, even now, after his wife had caught us, was doing everything to maintain the status quo.

A man who, for whatever reason, couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge his preferences and wanted to continue living a lie that could never make him happy.

But I wasn’t interested in that anymore.

I was merely the affair, and as is often the case, the affair usually loses.

Now I was being erased from Hector’s life—by Hector himself!

As if that weren’t enough, my father was getting involved.

Why was he playing messenger when he had been so eager to place me with Hector in the first place?

I didn’t want any of it anymore. None of it. I felt a wave of sickness as my father explained why I couldn’t join his firm. My breath caught, and my vision blurred as darkness began to encroach and panic set in.

“I’m not doing an internship anymore,” I blurted out.

This not only interrupted Leo’s flow of words but also managed to prevent me from being swallowed by the darkness.

“What?” Leo asked, stunned. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m a writer.” I had no idea where those words suddenly came from.

“You… Oh, not this again. Just because you wrote one book years ago doesn’t mean much now. Is it Viktoria? Did her enthusiasm for your book reignite your interest in writing? But you’re not even writing anymore.”

“Yes, I am. And I can’t stop,” I replied defiantly.

Damn it! I never wanted to stop writing again.

It was the truth. In recent days, I had done nothing but write. Of course, I knew I had slipped into an unhealthy mode, but it felt as if not just a sluice had opened, but a whole dam had collapsed. The torrent swept me up, and it hadn’t even occurred to me to resist it.

“You studied law. Not just for fun!” Leo’s voice grew louder as he stared at me in disbelief. “Are you kidding me? You graduated summa cum laude!”

“It was fun,” I answered. “I need to go now.”

Leo blocked my way. “Oh no, kiddo. You’re not getting off that easily. What are you thinking? How are you going to finance all this? Rina’s inheritance isn’t going to provide you with long-term money.”

“You forgot that I wrote a bestseller. And I haven’t touched the prize money from the awards yet.”

“Calm down first.” Leo paused for a moment, drawing in a deep breath as he searched for the right words that would get through to me.

“You’re feeling all over the place because of Rina’s death.

That’s understandable. Hector bringing this up right now isn’t exactly sensitive either.

But that’s life. It challenges us. That’s no reason to just throw everything away! ”

Leo grabbed my upper arm, but I twisted away and pushed him off. “Let me go!” I hissed as I wedged myself between him and the dresser to leave the room. “Ciao, Grazia!” I called out, hurrying past her and two Salvation Army men in the hallway and left the apartment.

I wanted to scream, but the knot tightening around my chest made it hard to breathe. Completely disoriented, I walked home, wondering how much more I could endure.

Hector had clearly rejected me and chosen his family, and I couldn’t believe how much it hurt. After what happened last Friday, I had secretly hoped my chances weren’t entirely gone, that he might have found me another internship.

I was in a state of shock and craved peace and quiet. Fortunately, Dominic wasn’t home, so I retreated to my room and sat down in front of my laptop.

I was surprised to see that I had produced a substantial manuscript of nearly four hundred pages. I had written it spontaneously, without any plan. My previous book had been a meticulous process—plotting every detail, developing characters, and refining the plot before I even started writing.

This new approach felt like a liberation. After nearly seven years buried in legal texts and academic writing—where footnotes and correct citations were a constant burden—I had grown to despise it. The rigid laws and rules had stifled my creativity and shackled me. But now, I was finally free.

Realizing that it wasn’t my mother’s death that had broken the chains, but my growing feelings for Hector, I let out a desperate scream and dug my nails into my neck.

“Fuuuck!”

I pushed aside the chaotic thoughts and started working. Writing felt cathartic. It demanded all my concentration, and the more my protagonists suffered, the more my own world seemed to regain its balance.

Not today, though.

Not as much as I had hoped.

I kept drifting back to the conversation with my father. Leo had always been good at unsettling me. Even though I had proven my capabilities with my first book, he had managed to belittle me. It made me so damned angry that I couldn’t calm down and worked like a madman.

By midnight, I was utterly overstimulated and craving sleep. Yet a storm raged in my head. I kept closing the laptop and pacing the room, trying to calm down. My body wouldn’t cooperate. Driven, I sat back down and wrote furiously, teetering on the brink of insanity.

When I moved aside a notepad, Dominic’s sleeping pills came into view. My heart raced, and I was breathing as if I had just sprinted. My body felt like it was going out of control.

I took a pill out of the aluminum package. Half a pill, Dominic had said, but with my heart pumping like this, I was sure even one wouldn’t be enough.

Staring at the pills, one thought surfaced clearly: Peace. This was what I held in my hands.

I felt so drained.

I just couldn’t take it anymore.

First, my mother’s death, then Hector, now the internship…

No, I didn’t just want a little sleep. I wanted to sleep deeply and for a long time.

I extracted one pill after another out of the package and gradually swallowed them with water. The very act of taking them had a calming effect, but I just couldn’t settle down. My thoughts kept spinning, and I felt like I was slowly losing my mind.

The jingle of keys resonated from the hallway, followed by the sound of the apartment door as it swung open.

Dominic?

I got up to close my bedroom door, but I was overcome by dizziness.

My limbs felt as heavy as boulders, and leaden weights pressed down on my eyelids.

As I tried to take the first step, the sensation overpowered me like an explosion.

My body became paralyzed, and even my foggy mind couldn’t issue any commands.

My knees gave out, and I crumpled to the ground, vaguely aware I had hit my head on the table. But I was too numb to feel any pain.

“Nico! Are you okay?” I heard from a distance.