The entire family stopped in their tracks. Luca's sharp eyes darted between Camellia and Elena, his instincts immediately screaming that something was wrong. Grandpa Leo narrowed his eyes, a heavy frown settling on his face.
Breaking the paralysis, Camellia rushed across the marble floor toward Elena, dropping her handbag onto the table, reaching for Elena's hands.
"Sarah!" Camellia cried, her voice trembling. "Oh my god, are you okay now? I've been out of my mind with worry. Ever since that night, I couldn't sleep. Are you really alright?"
Elena sat rigid, her breath catching. That night? What night? She didn't know who this woman was.
Before Elena could pull away, a shadow fell over them.
Luca walked over, his stride slow and dangerous. "Camellia. Explain exactly what you mean. What happened the last time you saw my wife?"
Camellia looked up at him, swallowing hard. "Luca, the last time I saw Sarah was the night she vanished." Her hands shook. "I ran into her down by the old district. It was horrifying. She was covered in blood. There was so much of it."
A gasp echoed from the family near the doorway. Reema stiffened. Grandpa Leo's grip tightened on his cane.
"I was so scared," Camellia continued, her voice cracking. "She looked out of her mind with fear. I dragged her to a bench, told her to wait while I called an ambulance. But the second I turned my back, she vanished. When I came back, she was gone. I thought someone had taken her. Or worse."
The room fell into silence.
Luca slowly turned to look down at Elena. The cold, calculating expression he usually wore fell away entirely.
"Covered in blood."
The image tore through his chest. Who attacked her? Whose blood was it? Hers? The baby's? He searched Elena's face for the fierce, unbreakable woman he had married, trying to reconcile that with the terrified, silent creature sitting on his sofa.
Elena just sat there, paralyzed under the weight of his gaze.
Inside, her mind was already collapsing. Covered in blood. The words confirmed everything. Sarah hadn't just run away — she had been hunted. She had been bleeding. And if she vanished into thin air while bleeding, it meant she really was dead.
The word echoed through the room and hit her before she understood why.
I was driving that night.
She was pregnant.
Blood.
I killed her.
I killed her baby.
Her hands moved before she decided to move them. She struck herself once, hard, across the side of her head. Then again. The pain was almost a relief — something real to replace the thing screaming inside her with no voice and no way out.
"Sarah."
Luca was on his knees beside her before the second blow landed. His arms came around her, not gently — the grip of a man who had decided this was stopping now, that her compliance wasn't required. He pinned her hands to her sides and pulled her into his chest.
"Stop." His voice was low, close to her ear. "Look at me. Stop."
She couldn't. Her body shook the way bodies shake past the point of control.
Luca held on tighter.
"Everything will be fine," he said, and the words weren't comfort exactly — they had teeth in them, the declaration of a man who intended to make them true and didn't particularly care what stood in the way. "I'm here. I've got you. I swear it."
She felt his hand press the back of her head, holding her against his chest, and she could feel his heartbeat — faster than he'd ever admit, irregular in a way the controlled surface of him would never show. She thought, distantly, that he was burning the world down for a girl who was already ash.
At the edge of the room, Grandpa Leo moved.
He let the silence earn itself first. Then he raised his cane and brought it down against the marble with a crack that silenced the room.
"Guards."
His voice wasn't loud. It didn't need to be.
The doors opened. Armed men filed in.
Leo's hand rose, one finger extended, steady despite his age. "Blackout lock. The entire city. I want the name of every person who put their hands on a Venzagrase. I want them found. I want them brought to me." A pause. "Bring me their heads."
The room erupted into movement around a center that did not move.
At the center: Luca, still on the floor, still holding Elena against his chest, still not looking at anyone else. Reema stood with her mouth open, the composure she'd carried into every room for thirty years gone for the first time Elena had seen. Camellia hadn't moved, one hand pressed over her mouth, her eyes wet.
Luca stood, lifting Elena with him, and turned to the nearest guard.
"Find Camellia's driver from that night," he said, his voice flat and absolute. "I want to know every street she walked, every second she was out of Camellia's sight. Someone in this city saw my wife bleeding, and I intend to find every one of them."
He looked down at Elena, still trembling against him, and something in his expression hardened into a decision he hadn't spoken aloud yet.
"No one touches her again."