I wake up alone in the big bed of the hotel room.
The first sensation is pain. But not a bad one. It's the kind of pain that makes me breathe out slowly and smile at the same time. My muscles protest softly when I move; between my thighs there's a tenderness, a pressure left over from an intense night.
I stretch a little, and the sigh that slips out of me is honest. Everything hurts in the right places, for the right reasons. Exactly the way it should hurt after sex. After the first time done properly.
I never would have imagined that pain could feel this good. That it could come bundled with calm. With fulfillment. With that deep, quiet sense that nothing was wrong, nothing stolen, nothing forced.
The room is bathed in a soft, cinnamon-colored light. The curtains are half drawn, and the air is warm and clean, carrying a scent that is still his. Skin, sex, something solid. The bed is enormous, far too big for one person, with satin sheets that caress my overheated skin.
Duca isn't beside me.
I reach out and touch the empty pillow, feel it slightly rumpled, as if he got up not long ago. I don't feel panic, or that hollow anxiety twisting my stomach. My body knows he hasn't left my life—only the room.
I get up slowly, carefully, and the pain makes itself felt again, clear and present. I smile without meaning to, because I recognize it and welcome it like a comforting proof. Proof that last night was real. That it wasn't a dream, or a beautiful illusion, or a story my mind invented to protect me.
It was him.
This man who, just a few weeks ago, was a stranger. An imposing man, hard to read, intimidating. Beautiful. Now he's the man without whom I can't imagine my happiness.
Because he's the first who held me without making me afraid. The first who touched me without making me feel small or wrong. The first beside whom my body didn't learn to defend itself, but to open. The ache between my legs reminds me of that. The sensitivity in my body reminds me of that.
In the bathroom, the warm water wraps around me immediately. I close my eyes under the spray, letting my head fall back. I run my hand over my skin, over the tender traces, over the places that still flinch at my touch, and I feel a small knot rise in my throat—a question that appears before I can stop it: am I starting to fall in love?
I step out of the shower clean, warm, still dizzy with thoughts and sensations, in no hurry to get dressed. I feel good in my skin. Whole. So I leave the bathroom naked, barefoot, the towel forgotten behind me, certain I'll find Duca in the other room.
The apartment is quiet. Too quiet.
I take a few steps, feeling the cold floor under my soles—and then I see him.
Ivar.
He's in the living room, leaning against the low table, and when he lifts his gaze and sees me, he simply freezes. He doesn't move. He doesn't blink. Time compresses into a long, heavy second, his eyes traveling over me without haste, without modesty, too attentive to be ignored. He sees me naked. He sees me vulnerable. He sees me in a way that suddenly makes the air feel too cold on my skin.
"Ah!" I cry out sharply, more startled than ashamed, and instinctively bring my palms to my chest and between my legs, clumsily trying to cover myself. My heart jumps into my throat, and my body—so certain just moments ago—suddenly remembers that it isn't alone.
Ivar seems to come back to himself only then. He clears his expression, shifts his eyes to the side, and draws in a deep breath, as if forcibly tearing himself away from the moment.
"Good morning," he finally says, his voice lowered, slightly rigid, as though he's making a conscious effort to sound calm.
Only then do I fully realize how exposed I am—and how large the world is that I stepped into without noticing. A shiver runs down my spine, not just from embarrassment, but from awareness, and I stay where I am, my palms still pressed against myself, unsure whether to run or to stay.
"Good morning," I answer at last, my voice betraying a hesitation I can't quite hide.
Ivar moves quickly, grabs a shirt from the back of a chair, and holds it out to me without looking in my direction.
"Duca stepped out for a moment," he says shortly. "He'll be back any second."
I take the shirt and put it on without haste, and as the fabric slides over my skin, something simple and heavy hits me at the same time: last night didn't just bring me closer to Duca—it pulled me into a larger, harsher world, where every gesture matters.
Ivar's phone vibrates, the sharp sound cutting through the charged quiet of the room. He lifts it to his ear immediately, turning slightly away from me, and the tone of his voice changes at once—low, controlled, professional.
"Yes… I understand… now," he says curtly, staring into nothing, focused.
I take advantage of the moment.
My heart is pounding too hard, and the feeling of exposure crashes over me again, sudden and unforgiving. Without thinking anymore, I turn and run out of the living room, almost sprinting down the hallway, my bare feet slipping lightly on the floor. I duck into the bedroom and slam the door harder than I meant to, leaning back against it, breathing in broken gasps, as if I've just escaped something far bigger than me.
I barely have time to draw a full breath when Ivar's voice stops me.
"Alla."
I open the door slowly and stick my head into the hallway, with a childlike reluctance.
"Duca said to bring me the black folder from his briefcase," he says simply. "It's important."
For a moment, I stay frozen in place, taken aback by the normality of the request—by the fact that, in the middle of this strange moment, I'm being asked for something so mundane. I nod and close the door again, trying to gather my thoughts.
Duca's briefcase is on the chair, exactly where he left it. I recognize it instantly. Black, heavy, immaculate—just like him. I grab it with both hands and pull it closer, feeling a strange flutter as I open it, as though I'm intruding into a space that doesn't fully belong to me.
I go through it carefully, without hurry, until I find the black folder. It's thicker than I expected. I take it out, hold it in my hands for a second, and then—without really knowing why—I close the briefcase and take it with me as well.
I leave the bedroom with steadier steps than before, the folder and the briefcase pressed to my chest like something precious. When I reach the living room, Ivar has finished his call and is looking at me again.
"I brought the folder," I say with a brief, conciliatory smile, holding out the entire briefcase to him.
His gaze slides from the briefcase to me, and for the first time, a flicker of surprise crosses his face.
"Alright," he says after a short pause. "Thank you."
The door bursts open abruptly, the sharp noise of it slashing through the air, and Gaston's entrance cuts into the room almost physically, as if someone had ripped the silence away by force. His eyes sweep the living room in one fast, precise motion, missing nothing: me, with the briefcase and folder still in my hands, standing too close to Ivar; then Ivar, far too calm, far too relaxed, wearing that small, sly smile that seems to say he knows more than he should.
"What's going on here?!" Gaston shouts, his voice filling the room—harsh, alarmed, erasing any trace of normality.
He doesn't get to finish.
The gunshot comes sharp and dry, so unexpected that for a fraction of a second I can't even connect it to reality. Then Gaston's head jerks abruptly, as if someone had switched off the light, and the bullet hits him square in the middle of the forehead, throwing him backward with blind, final force.
Everything slows down.
I see him falling without a clear sound, his body collapsing as if it had suddenly given up all will, and the blood appears only after—too red, too real—spreading across the pale floor in a contrast that turns my stomach.
The gun is still raised in Ivar's hand, and the silence that follows is more terrifying than the gunshot itself.
I understand everything in a fraction of a second—and at the same time, I understand nothing.
I scream.
The sound explodes out of my chest, uncontrolled, unbroken, airless—a long, torn scream that won't stop, that feels like it's ripping something out of me. The briefcase slips from my hands, the folder falls to the floor, but I hear nothing except my own cry.
I scream until my throat burns, until my lungs refuse to give me air, until everything I am collapses into pure, animal panic—shapeless, thoughtless.
I can't stop. I can't breathe. I can't understand.
And all I feel is that the world I stepped into with small steps, with fragile trust, has collapsed in a single second and turned into a place from which there is no way back.
I faint—or I die. I don't know.
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