---
Chapter Two – The Arrival
The house felt too quiet without Stella.
For years, she had been my shield, the one who knew how to coax me through the bad nights when breathing felt impossible and panic clawed at my chest. Now, she was gone—flying across the ocean to chase her dreams—while I was left behind with my condition and the suffocating silence of our father's villa.
Her goodbye hug still lingered, warm and desperate. "You'll be okay, Rosa. Papà promised. He found someone for you."
I wanted to believe her. But promises in this house always came with shadows.
I curled on the velvet couch in the drawing room, fingers worrying the silver cross that had belonged to our mother. Every breath felt heavier than it should, not because the illness had flared, but because of the gnawing ache inside me. Trauma had a cruel way of rewiring the body—sometimes I swore I could still hear the echoes of her last scream.
A sharp knock at the front door cut through my thoughts.
Voices followed—low, muffled, then closer. My heart picked up pace, though I couldn't say why. I was expecting a doctor, yes, but someone… gentle. The kind with kind eyes and a clipboard, maybe a middle-aged woman with steady hands. Someone I could pretend wasn't really here to babysit me.
When the door opened, I knew instantly I had been wrong.
He walked in without hesitation, tall and broad-shouldered, his dark coat falling perfectly into place as though even gravity didn't dare cross him. His hair was black, slightly tousled, like he hadn't cared enough to tame it. But his eyes—gray, piercing, unreadable—landed on me, and I forgot how to breathe for a second.
This wasn't a doctor. This was… trouble.
"You're…" My voice faltered, and I forced it steady. "The doctor?"
His lips curved, not into a smile but into something sharper. "Apparently." His accent was faint, but there—a thread of Russian woven into the syllables, subtle but impossible to miss.
I blinked. I had expected anyone but him.
"You're joking," I muttered before I could stop myself.
His brow lifted slightly, and he set a leather bag on the table like he owned the space already. "Do I look like I'm joking?"
He didn't. He looked like a man who could snap someone in half and then go right back to checking your pulse.
Something hot and unfamiliar twisted in my chest. Annoyance. Unease. Maybe both. "I thought you'd be… different," I said carefully.
"Older? Friendlier? Less male?" His voice was low, calm, but I caught the edge of amusement beneath it.
"Something like that."
For the first time, a flicker of a smirk crossed his face, but it was gone as quickly as it came. He scanned the room, every detail absorbed, like he was mapping escape routes. His silence pressed down heavier than words.
"You'll be staying here?" I asked, folding my arms.
He looked at me then, really looked, and I hated how my pulse stumbled under his gaze. "Every day. Until you don't collapse anymore."
My jaw tightened. He said it so flatly, as if my entire existence was a case file. Normally, I was polite with strangers. Gentle. But something about him made it impossible.
"I don't collapse on schedule, Doctor," I said, sharper than intended.
His eyes flickered, a gray storm barely contained. Then, to my shock, he chuckled—low and quiet, like he knew something I didn't. "Good," he murmured, "keeps me from getting bored."
I froze. Who the hell said things like that?
I wanted to tell him off, to remind him I was not his entertainment, but my breath hitched. The room tilted, the air thinning around me. Panic clawed its way up before I could stop it. My lungs betrayed me again.
I reached for the arm of the couch, steadying myself, but he was already there, crouched in front of me, eyes sharp and focused. His hand hovered near my wrist but didn't touch.
"Breathe," he said, calm, measured, as if nothing could shake him. "In. Out. Count with me."
I glared at him through the blur of panic, but the authority in his tone anchored me. Against my will, I followed, dragging air in, forcing it out. Slowly, painfully, the fog receded.
When I looked up, his gaze was locked on mine, unreadable. Too close. Too intense.
"I don't need—" My voice cracked.
"Yes," he interrupted softly, "you do."
Something in me snapped. "You don't know me," I spat, my usual politeness nowhere to be found.
His lips curved again, that infuriating almost-smile. "Not yet."
The silence that followed was heavier than any scream. My chest still burned, my pride more than my lungs. He stood, giving me space, but his presence filled the room all the same.
I hated him already. I hated his arrogance, his secrets, the way he looked at me like I was both fragile glass and a puzzle to be solved
I mean I knew I was fragile since I was a spoiled child I never begged for a thing everything was already there but something in him rose some excitement in me which I couldn't quite put a finger on.