Chapter 15
Living with Elena again was harder than finding her.
Nobody warns you about that.
Rescue feels simple from the outside.
Door opens.
Loved one returns.
Story healed.
Wrong.
Elena woke at night believing the cottage door was locked.
She could not sleep if curtains were closed.
If a man walked behind her unexpectedly, she froze.
The first time I reached for her without warning, she recoiled.
I stepped back.
Neither of us spoke.
Then she started crying.
“I’m sorry.”
That hurt.
“For what?”
She looked ashamed.
“For being afraid of you.”
I sat across the room.
“You’re not.”
“I know.”
Her voice broke.
“My body doesn’t.”
That sentence taught me more than three years of revenge fantasies ever could.
Love does not erase what captivity teaches the body.
I stopped assuming closeness.
Asked before entering rooms.
Asked before touching her.
Waited when she needed silence.
It felt unnatural at first.
I was Salvatore Bellandi.
People waited for me.
Doors opened for me.
Then I realized that was exactly why learning to wait mattered.
One afternoon Elena sat beside me in the garden.
The white dove landed near her shoe.
She smiled.
“You kept him.”
“Thomas did.”
She looked toward the old gardener.
“I knew he would.”
“How?”
“Because he never cared who had the biggest title.”
I laughed softly.
“Apparently that makes him rare around here.”
She leaned back in the sunlight.
Then her hand moved closer to mine.
Not touching.
Almost.
I waited.
Eventually her fingers closed around mine.
May you like
Three years of searching had taught me how to tear doors open.
Elena was teaching me when not to.
