CHAPTER 113: 113

The moment his words cut through the air

"Should I refer to you as my sister-in-law or my wife?"

my breath snagged in my throat.

But before I could speak, before I could even flinch, the world around me blurred

The flickering lights...

The blood on his hands...

The suffocating darkness in the greenhouse...

all dissolved into a muted haze, and my mind dragged me backward.

Back to the moment the night before this morning.

I jolted awake with a sharp gasp, chest rising and falling like I had been drowning. Sweat clung to my skin. My heart raced so violently it hammered against my ribs.

The remnants of the nightmare clung to me

Nix’s voice,

the maids pulling me away,

the heavy weight of being thrown out,

Nyxella crying..

I touched my face and found tears that I didn’t even remember crying.

I turned my head sharply at the sound of movement

and found Nix sitting upright on the couch, eyes fixed on me.

He must have been asleep moments ago; his hair was messy, shirt wrinkled, exhaustion pooling under his eyes. But the moment he saw me struggling to breathe, he stood and took two slow steps toward the bed.

Instinctively, without thinking, I pulled Nyxella closer, shielding her with my arm and he noticed.

His jaw tightened, hurt flickering in his eyes, but he said nothing about it. Instead, he sat down on the edge of the bed, leaving enough space between us for silence to settle.

The air suddenly thickened as no words were said between the both of us

His gaze drifted from me...

to Nyxella...

then back to me again.

And something heavy,.something that felt like fear settled across his features.

"How are you feeling?" he asked quietly.

I shifted, inching farther away from him.

His eyes followed the movement, darkening.

The tension between us strangled the room.

"I’m not going to ask why you ran," he murmured, voice soft... flat... and controlled. "But.."

He stopped.

Then something unbelievable happened.

He dropped to his knees right in front of me.

My breath hitched, as my eyes widening.

"Nix.. what are you.. ?"

His head bowed. His hands trembled slightly at his sides. The sight of him kneeling this man who never bowed to anyone stole the air from my lungs.

"Please..." he whispered, lifting his face to me, eyes shattered with fear I had never seen in him.

"Please don’t take my child away from me."

My entire body tensed and my grip on Nyxella tightened.

The words sliced through me like a broken glass.

"I won’t force you to stay by my side," he continued, voice strained. "I won’t keep you under this roof if you don’t want to be here, but.. "

"I don’t understand what you’re talking about," I managed to say pulling my hand away when he reached for it.

But he caught it again gently, but firmly his touch warm and desperate.

"Carmela..."

"I’m Elisa," I snapped, voice rising. "Not Carmela."

He flinched.

Then nodded slowly, his breath unsteady.

"Okay... Elisa. Fine. Be Elisa. Take whatever identity you want. I’ll accept it."

His eyes softened but burned with something deeper.

"But Nyxella.. she is still.. "

"She’s my child," I shot back, standing abruptly. "Not yours. And I am your sister-in-law, Nix. Not your wife."

The words stabbed him and i saw it but did nothing

His shoulders stiffened. His eyes lost a bit of their light.

But he didn’t move, but that still didn’t stop me from moving.

I walked to the door head high, but with shaky legs gripping the handle with more force than necessary.

"I’m returning to Italy tomorrow," I said sharply. "And I want you to leave my room."

Nix slowly rose to his feet.

He stepped toward the door, toward me, and I tried to avoid his eyes but he stepped in front of me, blocking my path.

His voice was low, shaking with restrained pain.

"You doing this... hurts me more than you think, Carmela. Please.."

"I’m not Carmela!" I yelled, with my voice cracking. "Stop forcing that identity on me! She’s dead.. and I’m not her. I’m Elisa. Please just.."

He silenced me.

Not with words but with a sudden, desperate kiss.

His hand cupped my jaw, his other arm wrapping around my waist, pulling me against him with a force that shattered every breath I had left.

His lips crashed into mine..

raw, aching, and terrified..

like he’d been waiting years to breathe again.

I pushed at his chest but he pulled me closer.

As I tried to speak he kissed the words away again.

My fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt out of instinct

not to pull him closer,

but because my body forgot how to stand.

His kiss softened

from forceful desperation

to trembling need

to something unbearably tender.

Something familiar.

Something dangerous.

And that terrified me more than anything.

I jerked back abruptly.

His breath ghosted against my cheek.

My palm moved before I could stop it

The sound cracked through the room.

His head turned slightly from the impact.

My chest heaved.

"Get out!" I screamed, voice shaking. "Get out!"

He didn’t speak.

Didn’t yell.

Didn’t defend himself.

He just stared at me with eyes that looked like he was breaking from the inside out.

And then

He walked out.

Closing the door silently behind him.

The memory ripped away

and I was back in the greenhouse.

Back in the suffocating quiet.

Back in front of Nix.

Back in the moment where he held my wrists above my head, his hand bleeding, his eyes dark with a truth I wasn’t ready to hear.

He leaned in slightly, breath trembling against my cheek.

"Tell me..." he whispered, voice raw, wounded.

"Which identity do you want me to believe?"

I swallowed hard, trapped between fear, guilt, and a truth I’d buried too deep.

He stepped closer, his blood dripping onto the dagger between us.

"You fought me in that room..."His voice dropped, rough... almost shaking.

"You kissed me without my permission," I shot back, my voice sharper than I intended. As I tried to step away, tried to turn my face from him, but

He caught my chin with his injured hand and I flinched.

His palm was wet with blood, and warm against my skin. He didn’t even seem to care that it hurt him.

He used the same injured hand to guide my face back to his, forcing me to meet his eyes.

My heart slammed so violently against my ribs it hurt to breathe.

Nix leaned forward until his forehead almost touched mine so close I could feel his breath tremble against my lips. His eyes searched mine, desperate, frantic, and broken.

Then a drop hit my cheek.

Warm.

Soft and

Silent.

It was tears, Nix’s tears.

My breath caught watching him squeezed his eyes shut, his jaw tightening as another tear slid down his face and fell onto my cheek, mixing with the smear of blood from his palm.

"You think..." he whispered, voice cracking, "you think I wanted any of that?"

His grip on my jaw softened not letting go... but shaking.

"You think I wanted to corner you? To force anything? To see fear in your eyes when you look at me?"

Another tear slipped down.

"I lost you once," he breathed, opening his eyes again,and it was filled with a pain so raw it made my knees weaken. "Do you know what that did to me?"

I couldn’t speak.

He leaned closer, his forehead finally resting against mine, our breaths mixing, the distance between us dissolving into something dangerously intimate and painfully heavy.

"You died in my arms, Carmela..." his voice broke entirely, the words tumbling out in a whisper so shattered it barely held shape. "And I lived with that memory every day. Every single day."

His fingers trembled where they held my face.

"When I saw you again... when I realized you were alive..."He choked on air caressing my cheeks

"It felt like my chest opened and started bleeding all over again."

My stomach twisted and my throat burned.

I couldn’t make myself pull away.

Not when he sounded like that.

Not when he was breaking like that.

"I didn’t know how to act. I didn’t know how to breathe. I didn’t know how to hold myself together when you looked at me like a stranger."

His voice fell to a raw whisper

"I fought you because I was angry. I kissed you because I was drowning. And God help me... I held on because I’m terrified that if I let go again, you’ll disappear.. forever this tim and I wouldn’t find you"

My hand trembled as something inside me shook loose.

He swallowed hard, his thumb brushing my cheek with the gentleness he didn’t show the world.

"I’m not trying to hurt you," he whispered.

"I’m trying not to lose you."

And his next breath...

turned into a sob.