❝ 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐢𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐧𝐞. ❞
When Ricardo Esposito bursts through a door and finds a girl handcuffed on the floor, he decides to take her in and give her something she never had.
A fam...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
"He will go to prison for the murder of Samuel Belloni."
Twenty years, at least, or for life- Alessia looked it up. That's how long he would have to pay for a crime she had committed.The risk of Antonio, of anyone in this life, having to serve a prison sentence was not unlikely; she knew Alessandro had been accused but acquitted once due to lack of evidence, and Rafael had spent a few months in prison.
But this was different. This could be prevented, and it was not his doing. It was hers.
No one deserved the pain this case would bring. The wound of Sarah and her children did not need to be ripped open again if it had ever healed at all.
Angelina had given Alessia three days, and she had needed those three days to make herself believe she was doing the right thing by someone who had never done her wrong.
And she concluded that she was doing that and also protecting herself.
The day would come when Antonio would realise what he had gotten himself into, and he would regret it; Antonio would regret her; and leave her. She didn't want that realisation to hit him one day, seven years from now, when she trusted him blindly.
The elevator doors to Antonio's penthouse opened, and she stepped out, not seeing him anywhere yet.
Not even a moment later, arms wrapped around her waist and her back came in contact with a hard chest.
"You have to stop doing this," she whispered. She didn't know how he, being the complete opposite of inconspicuous, always managed to appear out of nowhere.
Antonio loosened his grip around her a bit so she could turn to face him, but not ready to let her go yet. Alessia's gaze moved from his eyes to his lips and back again before she rested her face in his chest.
This was not something he was not accustomed to. No matter how hard she tried to hide it, he saw the hesitation and doubt in her eyes whenever he took a step closer to her.
She embraced him longer than usual, her grip tighter than usual as if she was scared of letting him go and afraid that letting him go now meant letting him go forever.
For the last three days, she had thought about it incessantly, and one thing became clear to her, he deserved better than the remains of someone else.
Alessia knew she had to do it believably as she would not get a second chance from Angelina. She had sometimes played with the thought of not taking Angelina's threat seriously, but when she thought back to the look in Angelina's eyes, she knew it was best for everyone involved not to go against her.
So, she engaged in a conversation with Antonio but navigated the topic to fit what she was about to say.
As a comfortable silence fell over them, Alessia grabbed a charging cable and went to plug it in. Antonio watched her fumble around to plug the charger into the socket and took it from her hand to do it for her while she rose from her squat.
