I stared at him, my voice shaking. “Stefano, those are my parents!”
They raised me with my brother. They gave up everything just to make sure I and my brother had a chance in life. The only time I ever went against them was when I chose him. That's my biggest mistake I ever did.
For a brief moment, something in his eyes softened, then his phone rang.
He answered, annoyed. “What the fuck now?” His face changed. He glanced at me, slower this time. “Fine. I’m coming.”
He hung up and looked at Vexanna. “It’s real.”
She rolled her eyes. “What a mood killer. Hmp!”
I stood up, grabbing my crutch. “So I can leave now.”
He yanked it from my hand without warning. “I’m driving you. No one else touches you.” He said it like a threat, not care.
By the time we reached the hospital, I could not even cry anymore. The halls smelled of disinfectant and endings.
“The emergency room is that way,” a nurse said.
I limped toward it, heart pounding, and stopped dead.
A gurney. White sheet. Still.
“No. No, please!” I grabbed the doctor’s sleeve. “Where are they? Where are my parents?”
Please, tell me ..”
He removed his mask, and pity flooded his face. “I’m sorry. They did not make it. They called your name until the very last moment.”
My body dropped on its own. I kneeled on the cold floor and lifted the sheet with shaking hands.
Their faces were pale. Quiet. Too quiet.
“Mom… Dad,” I whispered, touching their cold skin. “I’m sorry. I came too late. I’m sorry.”
“What were their last words?” I asked.
The doctor hesitated. “They were fading in and out. They kept saying Floryn, leave your husband.”
Stefano snapped. “Don’t spout that fucking nonsense from a dying person! Show some fucking respect.”
The doctor flinched, confused by his rage, but I was already somewhere else, drowning under the truth.
When we returned to the villa, I walked through it like a soul that never made it to heaven.
My parents were gone and now nothing Vexanna did could break me any further. My pain was already complete.
For the funeral, Stefano let me go, but placed four guards around me like I was a criminal. Rain soaked through my clothes as I knelt in front of their grave. My brother Clint was't even there. The guards waited behind me, bored and cold.
“Time’s up,” one of them said.
I touched their names on the stone. “Mom… Dad, I will leave. I promise.”
Back at the villa, my silence seemed to infect him. Stefano started flaunting his mistress harder. Ordering me to pour them wine, clean their shoes, kneel and scrub floors.
Vexanna smiled like a spoiled cat. She pressed her heel into my fingers. “Look at you. The great ballerina. Now a crawling mutt.”
I felt nothing. Pain was just air now. Anger settled in my bones like iron.
…
That night, the screaming hit like a siren straight from hell, and it wasn’t pain nor fear. It was a craft. It was a curtain rise.
Vexanna sat crumpled outside my door, mascara bleeding down her cheeks like deliberate ink strokes and her white slip torn exactly at the places that would scandalize without crossing into indecency. Thin red lines streaked her arms and neck, the kind shallow enough not to sting yet dramatic enough to photograph. She raised her eyes to me, wide and wet, not with grief but with calculation polished over mirror rehearsals.
“Why are you doing this to me?!”
She was breathless but not weak, and she waited with the poise of someone who knew her next cue. Stefano rushed out from the far end of the corridor, his steps frantic as he fell to his knees beside her. His hands hovered over her like she was some fragile relic instead of a creature who sharpened her narrative like a blade.
“What happened? Who touched you?”
Vexanna grasped his wrist, trembling in perfect tempo.
“She… your ex-wife… she attacked me.”
She pointed at me not with fear but with precision,
“I only tried to speak to her. I only wanted to help her cope… after everything she’s lost because of me. I know she blames me for her baby. And her parents. I know she resents you for choosing me. I just… I just wanted to be kind.”
The sob that followed was so polished it deserved lighting crew and applause. Stefano turned to me, fury already locked and loaded.
“What did you fucking do?!”
I met his stare, steady and tired.
“Nothing.”
Vexanna thrust herself into another sob, “She cornered me in the hallway. She grabbed me. She said if you didn’t return to her, she’d finish what the fall started. I tried to run but she—”
The note she hit was agony wrapped in silk, and Stefano’s gaze settled into finality, not sharp but sealed.
“You lost your child. You lost your family. Your ability to dance and yes, I understand your pain. But I won’t let you harm her.”
I laughed, soft and hollow, too dry to be hysteria yet too real to be denied.
“You actually believe that.”
He stepped closer, his breath carrying cold and regret in equal measure.
“She tries to make peace while you hold onto bitterness. This is what you’ve become.”
My palm met his cheek in a quiet strike and his head snapped to the side.
SLAP!
He looked at me not with rage but with the ache of someone who wanted to remember when love was easier than clarity.
“You used to be gentle.”
“And you used to be loyal.”
Before he could answer, Vexanna gasped louder than necessary, “Stef… I’m scared… don’t leave me. She hates our baby. She wants me gone.”
That was all he needed. He gathered her into his arms and strode past me, issuing orders like vows.
“Get the car. Now.”
The guards followed without hesitation.
---
The hospital air tasted like disinfectant and quiet disaster. I was dragged into the private wing, and guards gripping my arms while Vexanna lay in the bed. IV threaded into her arm, skin pale in that delicate way actresses wear during award season. Stefano ignored me until I was placed in front of him, and when he finally spoke, there was nothing soft left in his voice.
“Kneel.”
I blinked, more from disbelief than defiance.
“What?”
