The air in the grand, yet overly quiet apartment crackled with a tension thicker than the humid Milan summer.
Sunlight, usually a welcome guest, now seemed to mock the darkness brewing between them.
Alessia, her silhouette sharp against the window, finally turned to face Luca in the bedroom.
Her eyes, the color of stormy Adriatic waters, were not simply angry they were wounded, etched with a pain that went deeper than a recent spat.
"Stop it, Luca," she said, her voice a low, vibrating chord of suppressed fury and sorrow.
She took a step toward him, her hand sweeping through the space that separated them. "Stop looking at me like I'm a child you have to shelter. I'm your partner, Your equal. But you treat me like a delicate secret you might shatter."
Luca stood by the marble fireplace, his posture rigid, his usual effortless charm replaced by a defensive wall.
