Ruins of Autumn

24• Too High Price

    Leonora needed to talk to her brother as soon as she could. She had no contact number of his, and it didn't sound like a good idea to her to rely on the possibility that she could accidentally run into him somewhere and warn him of the threat of Albioni. She feared that, by then, he would have even killed Graniti.
 
    "Nora."
 
    She recognised her brother's voice the second she heard it, and she turned her head back to look at Graniti, who was approaching her with quick steps and a worried look on his face.
 
    He had been waiting at a bar in front of her house, with the intuitive doubt that Leonora was going to change her mind and want to stay in Albania. When he had seen her with a suitcase, he had immediately gotten up from the table, alarmed and with the excuse prepared, that if she would ask him, angry if he had been keeping an eye on her, he would say that he had met some of his friends, and they had invited him to have a drink at that bar.
 
    "What happened?" Graniti inquired with a breath, referring to her suitcase.
 
    "I asked for the divorce," Leonora confessed with inexplicable guilt.
 
    "What did he say?" he probed more softly this time.
 
    "He said..." The words were hidden from Leonora, not to be said out loud. Fear constricted her throat, and her lungs protested for oxygen. "He said..." 
 
    She was going to cause a war if she told the truth. Graniti would hold Albioni accountable and beat him; Albioni would tell Agustini about him; Graniti would end up in prison; and he would probably consider his sister the reason why he was involved in such trouble. If she hadn't objected to the life she was living, everything would have been fine. She wasn't sure how likely it was for him to admit that all that chaos in their lives had happened because of him in the first place.
 
    "Speak. Don't let me find out myself." Graniti demanded in a harsh tone, impatient to know. "Tell me," he asked in a low voice, in order not to scare Leonora more than she already was. 
 
    "He said that he has helped you a couple of times when your life has been in danger," she told him while noticing his ambiguity turning to rage and the blue of his eyes getting darker and darker with Leonora's other words. "And now he won't be responsible when something bad happens to you if I get the divorce from him."
 
    Graniti shut his eyes harder than usual with his head down, not to show his fury in front of his sister and scare her.
 
    "Where are you going?" he asked, seemingly calm.
 
    "To Denada."
 
    "Is she waiting for you?"
 
    "Yes."
 
    "Okay. If you don't feel comfortable there, come and stay at my house in Tirana. I'll send you the address on WhatsApp."
 
    "You don't have my number." Leonora looked at him, surprised.
 
    He smiled at her innocence and ran his hand softly through her hair to the left. 
 
    Leonora didn't throw away immediately the feeling of safety she got from her brother's gesture and expressed to Graniti, with a look almost in tears, how much she felt the need for that action from him.
 
    "Come and live with me," he asked. "So I won't be worried about you because of Albioni. You can stay as long as you want. I don't mind at all."
 
    She couldn't deny that she also had that fear for him—that she would get bad news about him while she was waiting to be freed from the prison of the marriage with Albioni, which still partially kept her in slavery—an action that she was understanding now, that even if it became reality, it wouldn't have the result she was expecting.
 
    People, in one way or another, constantly imprison themselves in life.
 
    If she had him in front of her eyes, she would feel more certain that her brother was fine, and she would feel calmer. In her prison, there would be one less lock on the multi-locked door. 
 
    She allowed herself to understand and felt the regret in his look of being exhausted too by the life they were doing and how he was squirming to change things between them, as much as he was given the chance and desperately needed her help.
 
    Graniti noticed how Leonora lowered her shields and took in the energy of love caused by the blood bond they had, but the realisation that he was too late hit him silently and made his whole being tense with pessimism when his sister instantly banished that energy of love with a battle of her eyelashes and raised her shields higher than before against him.
 
    "No," Leonora answered in a harsh tone. It was still too early to close the distance between them. She needed more time to find out his true intentions and why he was being so nice to her.
 
    "OK." Graniti didn't put more pressure on her and let her walk away. 
 
    In the evening, he texted her on WhatsApp to ask her if she was okay. Leonora only replied with a 'Yes.' and with the question of how he was.
 
    "I'm fine," her brother also affirmed, and neither of them texted any more under the influence of the thought that maybe they would annoy each other.
 
    She had been afraid that Albioni had been able to convince Graniti that Leonora had lied to him; it had actually been him who had asked for a divorce because his wife had been cheating on him, Albioni had found out about it and demanded an explanation, she had denied the accusations at first, but then she had admitted that she had committed a sin, and she hadn't rued that at all; Graniti had sided with his brother-in-law, he had regretted wanting to propitiate with his sister and hated her with disgust, but from his message, she understood that her brother was still on her side.
 
    Even so, they didn't meet anymore after she told him that Albioni had threatened her with his life. 
 
    He had kept Leonora under observation during all that time to make sure that she didn't have problems with anyone, and he had decided to wait for her inside the car when she left the court. Denada was also waiting for her while sitting on a bench near the institution.
 
    Leonora hurriedly approached her best friend, smiling, and Graniti opened the window to listen to how the session had gone.
 
    "What happened?" Denada asked with a heavy heart.
 
    "It's over. We're divorced."
 
    "Oh, you're finally free. Now you can do whatever you want," Denada said, relieved, as if she had been saved. "Are you happy?" She wanted Leonora to say the answer out loud so that she herself would believe it more. 
 
    Leonora hid her face in her slightly spaced fingers and began to sob.
 
    Graniti lowered his head incontinently and allowed himself to be hit by the pain of her tears, which he felt were because she was remembering every suffering experience and still couldn't believe that they were really over.
 
    It was the price he was paying. In the past, he didn't care at all about Leonora when she cried, but now he would rather be blind than see tears in her eyes.