Alternative History - Chapter 2 - Federico

In the Previous Chapter:

Lucia was chosen to appear in a commercial. Despite Kuka's objections, Tavo supported the client's decision. In the end, he went to Iguazu with Lucia alone because Kuka's daughter had fallen ill.

During the shoot, Lucia lost her balance in the water and began to drown. Tavo immediately rushed to her rescue. The model was deeply upset, worried that her inability to swim might have disappointed the client, and blamed herself for causing the interruption. Tavo reassured her, insisting that she hadn't ruined anything. The following day, they finished filming the commercial without any problems.

On their last day in Iguazu, Tavo and Lucia spent the day sightseeing. During a walk to the waterfalls and a rafting trip, they grew increasingly close. While they were shopping, Tavo secretly bought a pendant that had caught Lucia's eye in a shop window earlier.

Lucia was still worried about how the finished commercial would turn out, but Tavo was very pleased with her work. That evening, they had dinner together, and on their way back, they both ended up falling into the pool. That's when they kissed.

The journey back to Buenos Aires was awkward, but eventually Tavo and Lucia talked things through. At the agency, Kuka saw the photographs from their trip and began to suspect that something more had happened between them. Her suspicions only grew stronger when she saw Tavo's reaction to a phone call from Lucia.

Alternative History - Chapter 2 - Federico

"Federico betrayed me"

Lucia’s room was filled with late-morning sunlight. The thin curtains allowed the sun to pass through and spread softly across the walls and floor, completely indifferent to the events of the previous day. Outside the window, the world continued at its usual pace. Cars passed along the street, someone laughed on the pavement, and a dog barked somewhere in the distance. Everything looked exactly as if nothing had changed.

Lucia sat on the bed with her back against the wall. She wore loose, comfortable clothes and had tied her hair up carelessly, without the effort and attention she usually devoted to getting ready to go out. Since morning, she had barely moved. Once, she walked over to the window. She made herself tea, but she didn't even taste it. Then she returned to the bed and sat in exactly the same place.

The night before, they had returned from Iguazú. Exhausted from the journey, they went back to their own apartments, leaving behind a few days that felt as if they belonged to another world. Even in the taxi, they had found a way back to reality. They agreed that what had happened at the waterfalls would remain between them alone.

Their secret.

In the morning, however, everything fell apart again.

Kuka had caught Federico and Daniela together. The news spread through the house almost immediately. The girls spent a long time wondering whether they should tell Lucia straight away, but none of them could pretend that nothing had happened. They tried to comfort Lucia, each in her own way. Eventually, they all had to leave for the agency.

Once they were gone, the house was empty, and the silence brought back the thoughts she could no longer escape.

She heard a quiet knock.

"Come in."

The door opened almost silently. Tavo stepped inside and closed it behind him.

From the moment he entered, he knew that something was wrong. It wasn’t exhaustion from the trip. He knew that feeling all too well. Lucia looked as if she had lived through something inexplicable in just a few hours.

She sat completely still, her hands clasped together in her lap. She didn’t even attempt to smile when she saw him.

He walked over to the bed and sat down beside her, leaving enough space to avoid invading her personal space. He didn’t speak immediately. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable. Sometimes, silence was all you could offer someone.

Only after a while did he look at her more carefully.

“Tell me what happened. I need to know everything so I can help you."

Lucia turned her head away. A faint smile appeared on her lips — the first since he had entered the room.

"You've already helped me."

Tavo smiled widely, almost instinctively. Her answer reminded him of their conversation in the café. For a moment, he allowed himself to believe that perhaps not everything between them had been destroyed by what had happened that morning.

But the smile disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. Lucia lowered her eyes.

"I’m so stupid..."

Her voice broke on the last word. She sniffed softly, almost unconsciously.

"I guess I’m just old-fashioned. I would have sworn Federico loved me."

Tavo’s expression immediately became serious. His first instinct was to ask for details, but he realised that any questions would be like touching a fresh wound. He felt a sharp pain at the thought of how easily someone else could hurt her. He clenched his jaw slightly to hide how deeply it affected him.

"Did you two have a fight?"

She slowly shook her head. She didn’t want to put it into words because, if she started talking, she would have to admit that she was still trembling inside from the news, and that what hurt the most was not only what had happened, but also the fact that she had been left alone with it for hours.

"No, I haven’t seen him, and I don’t want to."

His eyebrows drew together slightly. Initially, he felt angry with Federico, but then he had another thought: no matter what he said, he couldn’t change what had happened that morning or make the feeling that something inside her had broken go away.

"Federico brought Daniela home... and he slept with her."

Silence fell between them.

Tavo lowered his gaze. For a brief moment, he said nothing. It wasn't because he had no words. He was trying to imagine that morning. A house full of whispers. The looks from her roommates. The news reaching Lucia not from Federico, but from everyone else.

Only then did he look at her again.

"And now I've found out," she finished quietly.

He sighed.

"What a paradox."

Lucia lifted her eyes to his. Her eyes were red, but no tears had fallen yet.

"Listen, I don’t understand what you mean."

Lucia tried to breathe normally, but every word felt heavier than the last. Her mind was filled with chaos — anger, shame, and something else she couldn’t name.

"But I know I’m completely confused, and I feel terrible. There’s so much anger inside me...”

She stopped. For a moment, she struggled with herself.

"But I don’t have the right to feel this way, Tavo."

He watched her carefully.

"I betrayed him too."

The words hung heavily between them.

Tavo didn’t answer immediately. He didn’t want to dismiss it too quickly. He knew that would sound like empty comfort, something that not even he would believe. He felt something tighten inside him. Not because she had placed herself on the same level as Federico, but because he could see how harshly she was punishing herself.

He didn’t want to comfort her just to make her pain disappear. However, he also couldn’t allow her to believe that the two situations were comparable.

"What happened between us was completely different, Lucia."

She immediately shook her head and pulled her shoulders inwards.

"How is it different?"

Her thoughts had already moved on — back to herself. To that moment near the waterfalls and the fact that, for the first time, she had stopped controlling her feelings.

"We kissed, but it wasn’t an innocent kiss."

He looked at her for a moment without saying anything.

Then, unexpectedly, he smiled. Not because he found it amusing. That smile was an attempt to pull her away, even if only for a second, from the place where she was accusing herself.

"Yes."

He nodded slightly.

"And that one kiss can change everything in the world."

For a moment, he himself was transported back to Iguazú in his thoughts. He remembered the roar of the waterfalls and the mist hanging in the air. He remembered her face so close to his and the moment that happened before either of them had the chance to stop it.

He couldn’t call that kiss a mistake. But precisely because of that, he didn’t want it to make Lucia feel guilty. His expression grew serious, the smile remaining only in his eyes.

"It was just one kiss. That’s all."

He looked at her for a moment longer than before, as if he had noticed something she herself hadn’t yet realised.

Suddenly, he smiled again.

"You’re blushing."

Lucia looked up sharply. For a brief second, she stared at him in disbelief, then stood up abruptly from the bed.

"Don’t say that. I don’t like it."

She turned her back on him and took a few steps towards the window. She could feel her cheeks burning. She became irritated quickly, but it wasn’t directed at him. It was directed at herself, because one teasing comment had been enough to make her body betray her.

Tavo stood up slowly. He didn’t want her to think that he was mocking her. His smile disappeared almost immediately.

"Lucia..."

He stopped a few steps behind her. He hesitated, as if he was checking whether what he was about to say sounded normal.

"I’m old enough..."

The words hung in the air, sounding different to how they would have done just a day earlier. It was as if he only understood their weight after saying them.

Lucia didn’t move. It no longer mattered whether he was joking or trying to ease the tension.

She turned around and looked at him, her expression a mixture of irritation and helplessness.

"Yes, I know. You could be my grandfather."

A brief shadow of a smile appeared on his face. It disappeared before it could develop further.

'more like your father."

He said this quietly, without the light tone he had been trying to maintain moments earlier. He looked at her for longer, as if he was seeing her state of being for the first time.

A short silence followed.

"All right," he said after a moment, his voice steady now. "I want you to know that I’m always close. Just like I am now. When you need me. When things are difficult. I want to help you."

Lucia looked at him for a long time.

Since he entered the room, he hadn’t tried to justify himself once. He hadn’t used Federico hurting her as an opportunity. He hadn’t tried to convince her that the kiss at the waterfalls should replace the life she had before.

He had done only one thing.

He had tried to lift the weight from her shoulders — the weight that she had placed there herself.

She shook her head. It wasn’t just that she looked different. It was that she no longer knew how to hide her feelings. Her body revealed everything before her thoughts could catch up.

"Tavo, everyone can see it."

Her voice broke again.

"When the girls saw me, they said I looked different."

She looked down at her hands.

"So don't tell me it doesn't matter. It matters a lot."

He said nothing for a moment.

This was the first time he had seen her like this. Not the girl who laughed beside the waterfalls or the one who fought hard for every casting opportunity.

In front of him stood a young woman trying to reconcile two different versions of herself, unable to make them fit together.

"I didn’t say it doesn’t matter."

He spoke very calmly. He knew that if he dismissed it now, she would close herself off even more. At the same time, however, he couldn’t allow this one moment to grow in her mind to the same size as Federico’s betrayal.

"I’m only saying that you didn’t betray Federico."

He took a small step towards her.

"It was only a kiss. A simple kiss, nothing more. We just let ourselves be carried away by the circumstances. By nature, by the call of the wild, by your first commercial, by your first trip."

As he said this, he found himself thinking again of Iguazú. To everything that had happened there that day.

He wasn’t trying to diminish the importance of the kiss. If he could turn back time, he wasn’t sure he would have acted differently.

But he knew Lucia couldn’t carry it with her for the rest of her life like a sentence.

She looked at him helplessly.

"Yes..."

She stopped.

Her thoughts had already moved on — not to Federico, but to herself. She thought about how easily she had allowed herself to do something she had never planned, and how impossible it was now to extricate herself from it.

"So what am I supposed to do?"

She had asked herself that question countless times since this morning. She still had no answer.

Her voice became quieter.

"What do I have to do to forget it? To stop thinking about it? What?"

Her voice broke at the end, as if her final word was a plea rather than a question.

For a moment, his heart beat faster.

He didn’t know if she was referring to Federico or to what had happened between them. This uncertainty affected him more than he wanted to admit.

He looked at her carefully.

"Forget what?"

Lucia frowned slightly, taken aback by the question.

"Federico."

She answered almost automatically.

"Who else?"

For a moment, he looked away.

The question he had asked suddenly seemed almost childish. He said nothing more.

Lucia fell silent as well.

The silence between them was completely different to the one at the start of the conversation. That one had been full of tension. This one no longer demanded an answer.

After a while, Tavo stepped closer.

Slowly, he lifted his hand and gently moved a strand of hair that had fallen against her cheek away from her face. The gesture was brief and almost shy.

He wasn’t trying to say anything with it.

He just wanted her not to be alone with all this for a moment.

Lucia didn’t move away.

She looked at him for a long time.

For the first time since that morning, she felt that she didn’t have to find the answers immediately.

It was enough that someone was there.

Federico regrets... but not what he should

Lucia had been putting off this conversation all day, even though she had known since the morning that it would eventually happen. She had walked past Federico’s photography room several times, slowing her pace and lingering for a second too long as if the mere presence of that door might provide her with an answer. Then she would continue on her way, irritated with herself for still looking for an excuse not to have the conversation.

Throughout this time, she had tried to cling to the belief that there must be some explanation. Danielle was too clever to simply get caught up in something like this without putting up any resistance. Lucia went back over every conversation, every look and every unfinished sentence, searching for the missing piece of the puzzle. Maybe it had been a mistake. A moment of weakness. Something that could still be explained if only she had heard the right words spoken in the right tone.

The worst part was that, in every version of events she created in her mind, Federico was someone who could still be saved. Even if he had failed her and hurt her, there was always regret at the end of every imagined conversation. An apology. A sign that he understood what he had done.

It was this belief that kept her going.

Finally, she stopped in front of the door and knocked briefly, more out of habit than courage. Then she walked inside.

Federico was sitting at the table covered with photographs. When he looked up, he smiled instinctively and naturally, as if nothing had happened. The familiarity of that smile hurt more than she had expected. For a moment, Lucia felt herself being pulled back into the past, to a time when everything between them had seemed simple.

"Can we talk?" she asked.

The smile disappeared, but not completely. It retreated as if Federico was still reluctant to let the situation slip beyond his control.

"About what?" he replied cautiously.

Lucia closed the door behind her and immediately sensed a change in the atmosphere of the room, as though the conversation itself had altered the air around them.

"About Danielle," she said directly.

Federico leaned back in his chair with a resigned air, as if the subject were unpleasant to him, though not in a way that suggested guilt.

"What about her?"

Lucia watched him for a moment longer than necessary. Not because she was hesitating, but because she was searching his face for something that would confirm the version of events she desperately wanted to believe.

Anything.

"You know what I’m talking about. Everyone in the house knows," she said quietly but firmly.

Silence fell between them. Federico did not immediately find an answer, and it was this silence that made Lucia begin to tremble inside, even though she still refused to accept what it might mean.

"I don’t know what you’re talking about," he finally said.

Her throat tightened, but she refused to let him see it. She was still clinging to the idea that he was just trying to buy time.

‘Federico...’

"I really don’t know," he repeated, a thin layer of irritation entering his voice as if she were the one making the conversation difficult.

‘Stop it,’ she whispered, more exhausted than angry.

His eyes moved away from her towards the photographs and the surface of the desk, as if anything were easier to look at than her face.

"Danielle likes to get inside people’s heads," he said eventually.

That was the first moment Lucia felt something shift.

Not because of the words themselves, but because of the way he said them.

It was as if he were talking about something that had happened to him. Something external. Something he had been dragged into.

Not something he had chosen.

"So nothing happened between you two?" She asked carefully, even though deep down, she already knew the answer.

"Of course not," he replied too quickly.

Too quickly for her to ignore.

Lucia felt something fragile tighten inside her chest. It wasn't pain yet. Not quite. It was merely the first crack in something that had always seemed solid.

"Look at me," she said.

Federico clenched his jaw, but he obeyed.

"And tell me the truth."

For several seconds, nothing happened.

The silence was heavy and unnatural, as if they both knew there was no longer any room for another version of the story.

Finally, Federico exhaled more slowly than before.

"It happened once."

Lucia closed her eyes for a moment. Not because she wanted to shut him out, but because she needed a moment to process the emotions rushing through her.

When she opened them again, the world was exactly as it had been before.

And somehow that felt even more unreal than the confession itself.

"Once?" she repeated.

"Yes."

"When?"

He hesitated.

That hesitation said more than any answer could have.

"Does it matter?" He asked eventually.

Lucia felt something inside her slowly shift, as if a mechanism that had been holding her upright was beginning to move out of place.

Someone who truly regretted something would not answer like that.

"Federico..." She began, quieter than she had intended. ‘Do you even regret it?’

He frowned as if the question itself was difficult to understand.

"Of course I do."

The answer came quickly. Too smoothly. As if he had already rehearsed it many times.

"What do you regret?" She asked.

This time, he fell silent for longer.

Lucia kept looking at him, even though something inside her was slowly slipping away without her permission.

"That it came out," he finally said.

His words weren't loud, but they landed in the room heavier than anything he had said before.

Federico seemed to realise immediately how they sounded. His face tightened for a moment as if he wanted to take them back but couldn't find a way to undo them.

Lucia stared at him without moving. Then she realised something she had not wanted to acknowledge. This was not a man who regretted his actions. This was a man who regretted being caught. There was no sudden explosion. No scene. No shouting. There were no tears, either, as she had once imagined there inevitably would be.

Instead, there was something much quieter. A slow, irreversible collapse of the thing that had kept her upright. The hope that it could still be fixed.

Federico cleared his throat, as if trying to pull them both out of that moment.

"Since we’re talking about honesty..."

Lucia felt the cold before he had even finished the sentence.

‘What do you mean?’

"How was the trip?" he asked.

Only then did she realise that he had changed the direction of the conversation.

"It was good," she answered briefly.

"Just that?"

"Just that."

A faint tension appeared between them.

"Only you and Tavo?" Alone for several days?"

Lucia felt her body react before her mind could register it. She straightened up slightly, as if creating distance between them could somehow protect her.

"Federico..."

"I’m only asking."

The curiosity had gone from his voice.

Something harder had replaced it — something that sounded like an attempt to regain control of the conversation.

"Nothing happened, if that’s what you’re implying," she said clearly.

"Nothing?" He repeated, and something sharp and unpleasant appeared in his eyes. "You expect me to believe that?"

"Yes."

"Because everyone sees the way he looks at you.”

Lucia felt a sudden uneasiness. It wasn't because she felt guilty, but because Federico was dragging Tavo into something that didn't concern him.

"Don't bring Tavo into this."

"Why not?"

"Because we’re talking about you. Maybe that’s why you’re so eager to avoid the subject."

"I’m not avoiding anything."

"Sure."

He stood up. He moved confidently, but there was something tense beneath that confidence, as if he needed to prove something — to her, or perhaps to himself.

"Maybe you found yourself a better option."

"Stop it," she said more sharply than she intended.

"Everyone sees it."

"Federico."

"Tell me the truth."

He stepped closer. Too close.

He was close enough that Lucia felt an instinctive need to move back, although she didn't do it immediately.

"What do you want me to say?" she asked.

His eyes stayed fixed on her.

‘Did you kiss him?’

The question hung in the air.

Heavy.

Unmistakable. 

Lucia knew the answer was simple. But that wasn't important now. What mattered was the way he was looking at her. As if he already knew, as if he had already judged her.

"I knew it," he said suddenly.

"You don't know anything," she replied instinctively.

"I knew it."

He grabbed her wrist. Lucia flinched, more from surprise than pain. His grip was firm and certain, as if physical contact could end the conversation where words had failed.

"Federico," she said, her voice tightening.

"Answer me."

"Let go of me."

"First answer."

And then the door opened without warning.

"What’s going on here?"

Tavo’s voice cut through the room like a sudden gust of fresh air in a place where it had become impossible to breathe.

Lucia felt all the tension in her body soften for a moment, as if she could finally take a deep breath.

Tavo stood in the doorway, looking calm, but his eyes immediately fell on Federico’s hand.

He let go of her at once. Too quickly. It was as if he had only just understood the meaning of what he had done.

"Nothing," he said.

Tavo did not answer immediately. He looked at him for a moment, calmly and carefully, without any easily identifiable emotion.

"Are you sure?"

"I said nothing happened."

The silence that followed was brief but heavy.

Federico picked up a folder from the desk.

"I have to go," he said.

He left without looking back. The door closed behind him.

Only then did the tension in the room have nowhere to hide. Lucia stood still for a moment, only now realising how much her hands were shaking and how long she had been holding her breath.

Tavo walked closer. He didn't say anything at first. He simply stopped in front of her and gently placed his hands on her shoulders. His touch was calm and steady — completely different from what had happened moments earlier.

Perhaps that was exactly why it affected her so much.

He slowly moved his hands down and back up again as if to comfort her and make sure she was still there. Still herself.

"Are you sure you’re okay?" He asked finally.

Lucia nodded, although her answer was not entirely truthful.

"Yes."

Tavo did not respond immediately. He watched her for another moment, but did not press her further. It was as if he understood that there was still a limit she could not cross.

"Good."

He stayed there a moment longer than necessary.

When he finally lowered his hands, Lucia felt their absence almost immediately. Faster than she was ready to comprehend.

Massage

Lucia always left last.

She had simply become accustomed to it during her first weeks at the agency. Someone would leave cups in the kitchen, someone would forget to turn off the lights and someone would overlook the small things that would irritate everyone the next morning.

That afternoon, the office was almost empty. Only the faint smell of coffee lingered in the air and most of the lights had been turned off, leaving soft shadows stretching through the corridors.

As Lucia walked towards the kitchen, carrying the cups, she noticed that one of the offices still had a lamp on.

She stopped instinctively.

Tavo.

He was sitting at his desk, leaning over some documents, but he didn't look like he was actually reading them. He looked more like someone trying to keep himself together over something that had stopped making sense. One hand supported his temple while the fingers of the other hand moved restlessly over the pages.

Lucia hesitated in the doorway. For a moment, she considered leaving him alone. Maybe he would finish soon. Maybe it was none of her business.

But he didn't even look up. It was precisely that which made her step inside.

"You're still here?" She asked softly, placing the cups on the conference table.

Only then did Tavo react. He lifted his eyes a moment later than he should have.

"Just for a little while longer," he answered, but his voice sounded as if it arrived after the rest of him.

Lucia immediately noticed that something was wrong. It wasn't just the exhaustion after a full day's work, but something heavier. Something persistent that had been following him for a long time.

"Headache?" She asked carefully.

Tavo moved his hand across his temple as if the gesture itself could serve as an answer.

"A little," he admitted after a moment.

In his case, "a little" sounded like something that should have been taken seriously hours ago.

Lucia stood still for a moment, unsure whether she should get involved. She still did not know where the boundary lay with Tavo — the point at which concern became too personal.

"Can I try to do something?" she eventually asked.

Tavo looked at her. For a moment, there was a change in his expression. Not exactly a surprise. More like quiet observation, as if he was trying to understand why she would even offer.

"What do you mean?" he asked calmly.

Lucia hesitated slightly.

"A massage. Sometimes it helps."

For a moment, he said nothing. Not because he was refusing, but because he was considering something beyond the suggestion itself: the fact that someone had noticed.

The fact that someone had offered help without expecting anything in return.

Finally, he leaned back slightly in his chair.

"Try," he said quietly.

It was neither a complete agreement nor a refusal. It was more like a cautious permission.

Lucia walked closer. For a moment, she became strangely aware of the space between them — a space that suddenly seemed more significant than usual. There was nothing romantic about it, and yet she found herself moving more carefully than necessary.

She stood behind his chair.

"If it feels uncomfortable, tell me," she added, more for her own reassurance than for his.

"I will," he replied calmly.

When she placed her hands on his temples, she immediately felt the tension beneath her fingers. Not sharp, not sudden, something deeper. It was as if he had been carrying stress around with him for hours and had simply forgotten what it felt like not to.

Tavo took a slightly deeper breath, but did not move. The warmth of her hands was soothing.

That was characteristic of him — he never pulled away from touch, but he rarely initiated it either. He let things happen around him, observing them from a distance, even when they involved him personally.

Lucia began slowly and carefully, testing to see if his body would respond at all. After a few moments, she felt the tension beneath her fingers start to change. It did not disappear; it softened.

Tavo closed his eyes. It was a small gesture, but she noticed it. For once, he stopped controlling what he saw and simply allowed himself to feel.

"A lot of work?" She asked, wanting to break the silence.

For a moment, he did not answer. The question seemed to take him by surprise.

"A lot of thinking," he said finally.

Lucia smiled faintly, even though she knew he could not see it.

"That sounds like the worst kind of work."

Tavo exhaled through his nose, emitting a sound that was halfway between a quiet laugh and a breath of amusement.

"Definitely."

Lucia moved her hands lower towards his neck. She could clearly feel the tension there. It eased very slowly, as if his body was only now remembering that it was permitted to relax.

And Tavo...

He began to change. Not suddenly, not in a way that anyone would immediately notice. 

Only after a while. His shoulders, which had been slightly raised before, lowered just a little. His breathing became deeper. The tension in his forehead eased. For him, it was not only physical relief.

"Better?" She asked after several minutes.

Tavo opened his eyes.

For a moment, he looked as though he had come back from somewhere far away — somewhere too peaceful to feel entirely real.

"Yes," he answered finally. Then, after a pause, he added more quietly: "Much better."

Lucia stopped, as if checking whether it was the right moment to finish. She did not want to prolong something that could suddenly become awkward.

"Is that enough?" She asked.

"Yes," he nodded.

She lowered her hands and took a step back. Suddenly, she became aware of them again. Her own hands.

Tavo, however, did not move right away.

He remained in the same position for a moment, as if reluctant to return too quickly to his previous state.

"Thank you," he said eventually, slowly straightening up.

Lucia shrugged and turned towards the cups.

"No problem."

There was silence for a moment. But it was no longer the heavy silence from before.

Tavo watched her for a while before speaking again.

"You're still staying after everyone?"

Lucia turned her head while gathering the cups.

"Someone has to," she answered lightly.

"You don't have to anymore."

She smiled to herself.

"But I want to."

Tavo remained silent for a moment longer than was necessary for the conversation. He was thinking about something he wasn't ready to say out loud yet.

"I'm glad you stayed today, too," he said quietly at last.

Lucia stopped moving for a moment.

"I think so too," she replied more softly than she intended. Then she quickly left for the kitchen.

Tavo watched her disappear.

Only after a long moment did he begin gathering his things, although he was no longer in such a hurry.

Breakup with Federico and attack

Lucia walked to his flat with the strange, persistent calm that sometimes accompanies a decision made either too late or at precisely the right moment. She kept telling herself that it would only be a conversation. At least Federico deserved to hear the truth from her directly.

Betrayal was no longer something that made her want to scream. Instead, it had become a quieter disappointment that had been growing inside her for days, ever since she had learned the truth. The worst part, however, was not what he had done.

It was how little he seemed to understand that it was wrong. His lack of remorse hurt more than the betrayal itself.

"I thought you would at least admit it," she said, standing in his room and clinging to the last shreds of her courage. "I thought you would say something that would make it all make sense. But you’re not even pretending, Federico."

He shrugged. He stood beside her, far too relaxed, with that lazy expression which had once seemed confident to her, but which now looked indifferent.

"You’re exaggerating," he muttered.

The word was like the final crack in something already broken.

Lucia felt something inside her harden.

"No. I’m just ending what you destroyed a long time ago," she replied quietly. ‘I don’t want to drag this out any more. Not after this."

For a moment, it seemed like it really was just a conversation. Maybe he would laugh and say something dismissive, and that would be the end of it.

But then she sensed the change.

The smell of alcohol, which she had previously refused to acknowledge, suddenly became impossible to ignore. Federico moved more slowly, as if his body could no longer keep up with the emotions building inside him.

"I don't even understand why I came here," she said suddenly, more to herself than to him, as if trying to distance herself from the conversation one last time.

Federico narrowed his eyes.

"Did you finally stop believing in fairy tales?"

Lucia held her breath.

"I created my own fairy tale about a prince. In my dreams, you were the prince."

For a moment, the room fell completely silent. Federico smiled crookedly, but there was no lightness left in his smile.

"And who was Tavo in your dreams?"

Lucia flinched as if he had hit her with his words.

"What are you talking about? You’re drunk."

"Yes, who was Tavo in your dreams?!" He repeated more harshly, stepping closer.

There was something in his voice that was no longer a joke. Lucia immediately took a step back, sensing that the conversation was spinning out of her control.

‘Leave me alone!’

"You can’t just walk away like that," he said suddenly, the earlier ease completely gone.

Lucia moved back half a step.

"I can," she answered calmly, even though her heart was already beginning to race. "And that’s exactly what I’m doing."

She only remembered the movement.

Sudden.

Violent.

Before she had time to understand his intentions.

Then she felt the hardness of the mattress beneath her back and the air being forced from her lungs. Before she could push herself up, she felt his weight and his hands grabbing at her clothes with nervous, chaotic force.

There was no precision to it. Only desperation and alcohol blurred the boundaries between right and wrong.

"Federico, stop!" She screamed, trying to push him away.

She struggled, hitting his shoulder and chest instinctively and without any plan. The fabric of her blouse tore with a dry ripping sound, followed by another piece giving way under his desperate pull. Her body reacted faster than her mind, defending itself by moving backwards and fighting for the space he refused to give her.

"Stop!" she repeated, her voice sharper now, panic beginning to rise.

There was still no silence in the midst of the chaos — no moment in which she could comprehend what was happening. Only movement, force and cut-short breaths remained.

To her, it lasted forever. She was fighting for her dignity, even though only a few minutes had actually passed.

And then, suddenly, something inside Federico broke. He froze, as if he was seeing what he was doing for the first time.

The image he had created in his mind shattered into pieces, no longer matching the reality beneath him: Lucia, who was neither silent nor yielding but terrified. His hands stopped mid-movement. He looked at her. At the torn fabric of her clothes.

Her face was twisted with fear and anger. Something inside him shifted. Not justification, not anger. Only a sudden, brutal moment of awareness. He pulled away so quickly that he almost fell off the bed. He stood up. He remained there for a second, breathing heavily, as if he no longer knew what to do with his own body.

"I..." He began.

But the word hung in the air, unfinished.

Lucia stared at him in horror. Her lips trembled. She curled up, clutching the torn pieces of fabric tightly against her.

Federico stepped back. Then he took another step back. His gaze shifted away from her, unable to bear the reality of what had just happened. Finally, without saying another word, he turned around and left the apartment as quickly as possible, as if he were running away from himself.

"Tavo come, please"

Lucia sat on the edge of the bed, unable to fully accept that it was over.

Federico’s room looked exactly the same — the same sheets and things abandoned in random places — but everything appeared to her as if she was seeing it through thick, uneven glass. Sounds were muffled; the world was too sharp in some places and impossibly distant in others. She had the strange feeling that her body was still in the room while she herself had not yet returned.

Her breathing was quick and uneven. Every few seconds, she took a deep breath as if she were learning how to do it all over again. Her hands were shaking so badly that the phone nearly slipped from her fingers. For a moment, she stared at the receiver, unable to understand what she was supposed to do with it.

At first, she dialled her mother’s number. Slowly and uncertainly, as if it were the only safe direction she could turn to. Her finger hovered over the button for the final digit.

Then something stopped her.

She quickly deleted the number, almost as if she were afraid that, once she chose last digit, there would be no way back. It was as if making the call would mean admitting something she still wasn’t able to put into words. She sat motionless for a moment, staring at the phone.

Then, almost without thinking, she entered another number:

Tavo.

She didn’t stop to wonder whether it was the right decision. She was no longer capable of making conscious choices. Everything was happening somewhere beneath thought, driven by the simplest instinct of all: the need to be rescued.

The ringing sounded unnaturally loud in the silence of the room.

He answered almost immediately.

"Hello?"

His voice was calm and ordinary, just as it always was.

And it was that ordinary sound that hurt her the most.

Lucia opened her mouth, but for a moment, she couldn't produce a sound. Her throat was dry, refusing to let words through. Only her breathing escaped, broken and uneven, revealing more than she wanted.

"Lucia?" he repeated, his tone changing slightly. More alert. More focused.

She squeezed her eyes shut, as if that would help her to gather herself.

"I..." she began, but her voice broke. 'tavo..."

"Breathe," he said more gently, but his voice was different now. He was completely focused on her. "What happened?"

For a moment, she didn’t answer.

She stared ahead, but saw nothing. In her mind, everything had blended into one trembling blur: Federico’s hands, the sudden weight, the fear, the struggle, the sound of fabric tearing beneath his fingers. And then the emptiness afterwards.

"I... I’m at his place," she finally managed to say.

There was a brief silence on the other end of the line. Controlled. Measured.

"Whose place?" he asked immediately.

Lucia swallowed, but her throat refused to cooperate.

"Federico’s... I... I can’t stay here."

Her voice broke at the end of the sentence. It was as if even saying his name carried too much weight.

"Okay," Tavo answered instantly. No hesitation. No questions. No demand for explanations. "Don't move from there."

Lucia closed her eyes tighter.

"I don’t know... I don’t know what I’m supposed to do," she whispered.

The words came out fragmented and disconnected, as if they didn’t belong to her.

"Please... come."

"I’m on my way," he replied simply. Then he hung up.

Lucia remained sitting there with the phone in her hand, though she wasn’t even sure if she could still feel it. Time had lost all structure.

Every sound in the apartment seemed painfully loud: the creaking of something inside the walls, distant footsteps in the hallway and her own uncontrollable breathing.

Every few moments, she had the terrifying feeling that something was about to happen again; that this couldn’t possibly be the end.

She didn’t know how much time had passed when she heard the door open.

Tavo walked in quickly and determinedly, as if he knew exactly where he was going. He paused only briefly when he saw her.

For a moment, he stood still. His body needed time to process the image in front of him before he could react. Her voice on the phone had sounded broken, but only now did he see the extent of her distress: her trembling, curled-up figure on the bed; the unnatural stiffness of her shoulders; the torn fabric that she was nervously pressing against herself and constantly adjusting; her pale, tense face, as if every breath required effort.

Something inside him tightened immediately. Instinctively. It was not panic, but rather a heavy, cold focus that appears when a person realises that a situation is serious, even before knowing all the details. He felt a brief, unpleasant constriction in his throat, but forced it down almost instantly.

Not now.

His expression did not change dramatically, but his eyes did. They became instantly alert and sharp, completely focused on her as if the rest of the room had ceased to exist. There was something else, too — something he refused to name. Anger. It had no target yet, but it was already there.

He didn’t ask anything.

He went straight to the bed. Lucia flinched as if she had only just realised that someone else was in the room.

"Lucia," he said softly.

There was no surprise or panic in his voice. Only presence.

He took off his jacket and, without a word, draped it over her shoulders. The fabric was heavy and warm. It carried a familiar scent, something safe, though she couldn't name it yet.

Lucia curled up even more instinctively, but didn’t pull away. Only then did her breathing loosen slightly.

Tavo crouched beside her.

"Can you stand up?" he asked calmly.

After a moment, he added more quietly:

"Or I can carry you."

He hesitated only briefly.

"I'll pick you up if you want me to. Can I?"

Lucia looked at him for a long time, as if trying to determine whether the question was genuine or just another fragment of a world that no longer adhered to any rules.

Everything inside her was shattered and broken. It was only now that she was beginning to understand that someone had actually come. That she was not alone in this room.

She nodded very slightly, as if even that small movement required more strength than it should have.

Tavo released a quiet breath almost imperceptibly and only then allowed himself a small measure of relief — relief that she had responded and was still capable of answering. It was not complete relief; just the first cautious easing of the tension he had held inside since hearing her voice on the phone.

He could still see her face from a few seconds earlier. That image had not disappeared. It remained overlaid with everything he was trying to do now.

He lifted her carefully and steadily, without rushing, as if every movement had only one purpose: to avoid hurting her any more.

When he felt her weight in his arms, he tensed for a moment longer than intended — not from the effort, but from the emotions that had briefly broken through his control.

He forced them down immediately. There was no room for anything except calm.

At first, Lucia was completely rigid, as if unsure whether she was permitted to be close to him. Only after a moment did her body almost unconsciously find the only point of support it could trust in him, and she instinctively leaned into his shoulder.

The movement was fragile and uncertain, as if she herself didn’t trust her own reaction.

Inside, everything was still shaking, but a new feeling emerged as well: the slightest sense that she no longer had to stand alone.

Tavo felt it immediately and tightened his hold, not with force, but with care.

Her condition was obvious without the need for questions, and the awareness of it created a heavy, painful feeling inside him. It was an anger that still had no direction, but was already searching for somewhere to go.

At the same time, he had to stay strong for her. He could see that if he lost his balance, she might have nothing left to hold on to.

Lucia trembled slightly for a moment, as if part of her still wanted to pull away and go back to that room to make sure it was really over. But she didn’t turn her head. Instead, she gripped his jacket more tightly, as if it were the only real thing left in the world.

She no longer looked at the room as he carried her out. She didn’t look at the bed or the door, even though she knew deep down that those images would stay with her for a long time. She focused only on the space ahead of her and the way the world slowly changed from enclosed to open, as if every step was taking her further away from what had happened.

When they stepped outside, the air was noticeably colder. It struck her face like something real, something physical. Lucia drew in a slightly deeper breath, though it was still uneven. For a brief moment, she felt her body begin to shake even more.

Only now, with the danger gone, did her body allow itself to react. Tavo noticed immediately. He held her more securely yet gently, as if trying to strike a balance between keeping her safe and not overwhelming her.

Something inside him had not calmed either. He could still feel the sharp, unpleasant tension cutting through him.

But when he looked at her, he saw only one thing. That the only thing that mattered now was getting her to the point where she could breathe normally again.

For a brief moment, as they walked towards the car, they were both suspended somewhere in between. She was still broken. He was still too tense.

But they were already on the same side of a silence that didn't need words anymore.

The way to Tavo's home

The car moved smoothly and the silence inside was completely different to that in Federico’s apartment. It was no longer tense and unfamiliar. Instead, it was heavy but contained, as if it had boundaries.

Tavo drove steadily with his hands firmly on the steering wheel, though his entire body remained tense as if he might need to stop and turn around at any moment.

Every now and then, he glanced at Lucia. Not for long. Not insistently. Just brief, controlled looks to check whether she was still breathing, still present, not somewhere deep inside herself.

She was curled up in the passenger seat as if trying to make herself smaller, to take up less space in a suddenly painful world. The jacket he had given her earlier was far too big for her, but it was also the only thing holding her together, giving her a sense of solidity.

He didn’t ask anything.

He knew that any questions would only hurt her more right now. The answers were already forming in his mind, even if he didn’t want to give them names: the torn clothing, her voice on the phone, the way she had trembled when he found her.

All of these things came together to form an image that he never wanted to see, but that already existed.

And that was exactly what fuelled his anger. Not a sudden, explosive one. Something deeper. Colder. It was the kind of anger that did not search for words or gestures, but rather for a place to direct itself.

His fingers tightened more than necessary around the steering wheel, but his face remained calm. He couldn’t allow himself to show any other emotion while she was sitting beside him in that state.

Meanwhile, Lucia was slowly sinking further into herself.

At first, there was only the uneven quiet of her breathing. Then came small, broken sounds — quiet sobs that she no longer tried to hold back.

The stress and shock that had kept her upright in the apartment were beginning to dissipate, making way for something much more difficult to bear.

Her shoulders trembled slightly, and she gripped the fabric of his jacket tightly as if it were the only stable thing left in the world.

Tavo noticed this immediately when he glanced at her again.

For a moment, his jaw tightened, but he quickly softened his expression, forcing himself to remain calm. He didn’t want her to see anything in him that could frighten her further.

"We’re almost there," he said quietly, more to break the silence than to provide information.

Lucia didn’t answer. She only curled up even more, as if his voice had both soothed and reminded her that all this was really happening.

Tavo tightened his grip on the steering wheel and focused his eyes on the road. Inside, he felt as though every passing minute was both too slow and too fast.

The only thing keeping him in control was her fragile, silent presence beside him, breathing. He knew that he would only allow himself to lose control once he had brought her somewhere safe.

Shower and the first shock

Tavo didn’t ask any more questions on the way. He pulled up outside his house and, only after turning off the engine, looked at Lucia more carefully, as if checking whether she was ready to take the next step.

But she remained curled up in the passenger seat, still closed off from the outside world, as if it was too sharp and overwhelming to face.

He got out first, walked around the vehicle and opened her door. He didn’t try to pull her out. He simply waited until she moved, even slightly, of her own accord.

When she finally stepped out, she did so slowly and uncertainly, holding onto the edge of the door as if she needed an extra moment to convince herself that her legs could still carry her.

Without hesitation, Tavo wrapped an arm around her and guided her inside.

The house was dim and quiet, but the silence wasn’t suffocating. It surrounded her and allowed her to breathe.

Tavo closed the door behind her and stood beside her for a moment, not pushing or asking anything more, giving her time to adjust to the unfamiliar space.

"Do you want me to call a doctor?" he asked calmly.

Lucia shook her head immediately, faster than she should have done. A shadow of tension crossed her face as if even the idea was unbearable.

"No," she said quietly but firmly.

She was still trembling and nervously adjusting the torn remains of her clothes around her. After a moment, she added more softly:

"Nothing like that happened. I just... I want to wash. I want to wash this dirt off me."

Tavo didn’t push. He simply nodded and led her to the bathroom. He returned to the bedroom for a moment and came back with a towel and a shirt. It was too big for her, but it was clean and neatly folded.

"Put this on," he said.

Lucia took it without a word. Her fingers were still trembling, but less than before.

In the bathroom, she closed the door and only then allowed herself to stand still for a moment. Leaning her back against the cool surface, she breathed more deeply, though still unevenly. The shower water was warm, almost too warm, but it brought a kind of relief, as if it could wash away not only what was on her skin, but also the tension that had settled into every muscle in her body.

She stood there for a long time, not rushing, as if she needed time to find her way back to herself.

When she came out of the bathroom, she paused in the doorway of his bedroom. Only then did she notice that the bed had been made and everything had been prepared as though she were going to stay there. She looked at it in silence for a moment, as if unsure whether it was a mistake.

Tavo looked at her and immediately noticed that she was breathing more calmly and that her shoulders were less tense, although there was still caution in her eyes.

"Better?" he asked quietly.

Lucia hesitated, then nodded slightly.

"A little," she answered.

That "a little" was an honest answer. It didn’t mean that everything had passed; it just meant that the wave that had overwhelmed her earlier had finally begun to recede.

"Tavo, this is your room," she blurted out before she had time to think it through.

Tavo looked up from where he was adjusting the mattress. He seemed calm and composed, as if he had expected her reaction.

"Tonight, you sleep here," he replied, without pressure but also without leaving room for discussion.

Lucia frowned slightly as if she wanted to object again, but before she could, he added calmly,

"I’ll sleep on the couch."

She hesitated for a moment, as if two different needs were fighting inside her: her desire not to become a burden, and her exhaustion, which no longer allowed her to argue about things like that. In the end, she said nothing more.

She walked over to the bed and carefully sat on the edge, as if testing whether she had the right to be there. The blanket had already been turned down. Tavo didn’t touch her immediately. He gave her a moment to decide what she wanted for herself.

Only when she lay down did he pull the blanket up higher and carefully wrap it around her, moving slowly and attentively without crossing any boundaries. Lucia shivered slightly but didn’t pull away. Instead, she allowed it to happen, as if her body had finally stopped resisting touch.

Tavo sat on the edge of the bed, far enough away not to invade her personal space. He was close enough for her to see him, but far enough away that she could forget he was there if she needed to.

Then they talked briefly and quietly without going into detail. Tavo only asked simple, everyday questions: whether she wanted tea, if she was cold and if she preferred the light dimmed or left on. Lucia answered slowly, sometimes pausing first to find each sentence inside herself. But she answered, and for Tavo, this was a sign that she was slowly returning from wherever she had disappeared to.

For a while, neither of them spoke. It was Lucia who finally broke the silence, very softly.

"I’m sorry… that I’m here," she said, looking away.

Tavo immediately shook his head.

"No," he replied calmly. "Don’t apologise for that."

Lucia swallowed as if she wanted to say something else, but the words wouldn't come. In the end, she just closed her eyes for a moment and her breathing slowly steadied.

"Try to rest," Tavo added quietly after a while.

It didn't sound like an order. It was more like something she could accept or ignore. Lucia gave the slightest nod.

"Thank you," she whispered.

Tavo only responded with a brief nod before slowly standing up.

"I'm right here," he said one last time. "If you need anything."

He stopped in the doorway and looked at her once more, for longer than before. It was as if he needed to make sure that she was truly lying there, that her breathing had calmed down and that she had stopped falling apart, even if only for a moment. The urgency of action had left his eyes, replaced by the vigilance of someone who didn’t want to miss even the smallest sign that she might break again.

Only then did he reach for the light switch, leaving the room in soft darkness broken only by the faint glow of streetlights filtering through the curtains.

Lucia lay beneath the blanket, motionless for a long time, as if unsure whether she was permitted to rest. The silence in this house was different from before. It didn’t close in around her, it simply existed alongside her. It didn’t demand anything or push her for answers. For the first time in many hours, it was a presence that did not threaten her.

Only after a while did her breathing truly begin to settle. It was still uneven, but no longer so erratic. Her body slowly began to relax, though the tension remained somewhere deep inside, like the echo of something that had not disappeared, only grown quiet for a moment.

The door closed softly.

Tavo walked into the living room and stood in the dim light for a moment before sitting down on the couch. Resting his elbows on his knees, he lowered his head and took his first truly calm breath since answering her phone call.

The house was quiet, but not empty. He could still feel her presence behind the closed bedroom door, and he thought about her breathing even though he could no longer hear it.

He didn’t lie down straight away. Instead, he sat completely still with his face hidden in his hands for a while, as if trying to make sense of his thoughts, which refused to form anything logical. He could still see her as he had found her, and he knew that image would not disappear quickly.

It was only much later that he finally lay down on the couch, but sleep did not come right away.

He lay there in the dim light, listening to the silence of the house — a silence that was both silence and something more. He stayed awake, even as exhaustion slowly took over his body. His thoughts no longer returned to what had happened, but to what could still happen, and to everything he never wanted to allow to happen again.

In that quiet vigilance, he remained until the night finally became heavier than his thoughts.

Nightmare

Lucia woke up suddenly, as if someone had pulled her out of the middle of something she was never meant to remember.

For a second, she was unaware, only feeling pure, instinctive fear. The darkness in the room had no shape, and her body reacted faster than her thoughts could catch up — her heart pounding too hard and her breath breaking up almost instantly. For a brief moment, everything came back in one chaotic flash: the weight of a body, the struggle, the loss of control, and an overwhelming sense of danger so intense that it was almost impossible to comprehend.

She sat up abruptly, her hand gripping the sheets instinctively, as if trying to find something solid in a suddenly unfamiliar world.

"No..." escaped her lips, first quietly, then louder, brokenly and desperately. "No, stop, no, no..."

Her voice broke on the last repetition, as if her body was no longer capable of producing the sound or controlling it.

The door opened quickly. Tavo entered almost immediately, before he was fully awake, acting more on instinct than thought. The moment he heard her scream, he started moving. In the dim light, he saw her sitting on the bed, and his body instantly shifted from the heaviness of sleep to complete, focused awareness.

"Lucia," he said softly but clearly. "I’m here."

Tavo did not approach her suddenly. Instead, he stopped beside the bed for a moment, giving her space and refusing to enter her world too quickly, even though his presence had already filled the room. He watched her carefully, his tension hidden beneath the surface. His eyes moved over her posture, her breathing, the way she held herself and how tightly she had closed herself off, as if trying to understand her condition without asking questions.

Lucia did not recognise him at first. Her unfocused eyes drifted towards the darkness of the room, as if she were still searching for a threat that was no longer there. It was only when he repeated her name more calmly and firmly that her gaze finally settled on him. Slowly, through the fog of panic, something familiar began to reach her.

Then, without fully realising what she was doing and guided only by an instinct that had nothing to do with reason, she reached for his hand.

She grabbed it tightly and suddenly, as if he were the only stable point in a world that was still trembling beneath her feet.

Tavo did not pull away at all. Instead, he let her hold onto him and, after a moment, he took her hand in his. His heart was beating faster than he would have liked, but his face remained calm. The same tension returned immediately inside him: the memory of her phone call, her voice, the state he had found her in hours earlier — everything blended together with the sight of her sitting in a panic on the bed. It awakened something sharp and painful inside him, but there was no room for that now.

Lucia’s breathing came in broken fragments, as if she had to fight for every breath. Only after a while did her eyes begin to steady. Recognition came slowly, in waves.

"I’m sorry," she whispered suddenly, letting go of his hand as if she had been frightened by her own gesture. "I... I didn’t mean to..."

"No," he interrupted immediately, calmly but firmly. "Don't apologise."

At the same time, he made a gentle but deliberate movement. He took her hand and carefully placed it back on top of the blanket, holding it there for a second, as if he wanted to stop her instinctive retreat — not from him, but from herself. There was no force in the gesture, no pressure. Only a quiet, steady presence, intended to anchor her.

Lucia trembled slightly, as though her body was only now remembering that it was still carrying all that tension. Her shoulders remained rigid and her breathing uneven, as though the air itself had not yet become completely safe.

Tavo sat down on the edge of the bed and watched her silently for a while, as if trying to sense the fragile boundary between what required silence and what needed his presence. After a moment, he moved closer and carefully wrapped his arms around her, pausing for the briefest moment to give her one last chance to pull away.

Lucia did not.

Only then did he draw her towards him slowly and carefully, as if every movement had one purpose: to avoid awakening any new fear inside her.

He could feel how tense her body was, stretched tight like a wire, but not because of him — it was because of everything inside her that was still trembling and refusing to calm down. Her breathing was quick and uneven, as if she was still searching for a place where the air would no longer hurt her. Yet when she found herself in his arms, that tension began to loosen slightly, as if something inside her had finally stopped fighting for the first time in hours.

Lucia suddenly clung to him almost desperately as if she was only now allowing herself to completely let go of control. She tightened her grip on his shirt and buried her face in the fabric, searching for something steady. In that moment, she seemed smaller and more fragile. But she was also no longer alone, even if she did not yet know it.

"Don't leave me..." she whispered, her voice breaking just above a whisper.

Tavo felt something tighten inside his chest. He did not answer immediately. First, he slowly moved his hand along her back, one steady motion after another. Repetitive and grounding, it was a rhythm meant to replace the chaos inside her. Only after a while did he speak quietly.

"I won’t leave you. I’m here."

Lucia gave the slightest nod, as if she needed to hear those words more than she needed to understand them. It wasn't complete understanding, just an acceptance of something simple that allowed her to survive the next moment.

Her breathing slowly began to change. It was still uneven, but not as erratic as before. The tension in her shoulders gradually eased, dropping by a few millimetres, as if her body was relearning that it did not need to be on the lookout for danger at all times.

Tavo continued to hold her close without putting any pressure on her. One arm held her steady while the other occasionally moved, barely touching her back in a slow, rhythmic way. It was as if he wanted to keep her connected to the present and prevent her from disappearing completely into the silence. He remained silent, knowing that words might only disturb the fragile calm they had managed to find.

"Come here," he finally whispered after a while. "Let's lie down."

Lucia did not object. She let him guide her back down and, when she sank onto the mattress, she was still holding onto his shirt tightly as if he were her only connection to reality.

Tavo lay down beside her, but not under the blanket. He lay on top of it, carefully making sure that he did not invade her personal space any more than necessary. For a while, they remained there in silence, surrounded by the soft half-light of the room, which no longer demanded any decisions from either of them.

After a few minutes, Lucia moved closer.

Not out of panic this time. Not suddenly. It was almost unconscious, more instinct than thought; as if her body itself had found the direction it needed. She rested her head against his chest, and he wrapped an arm around her.

She listened to his breathing — steady, calm, alive.

Within that rhythm, something inside her slowly began to soften as if her body had been searching for something to hold onto, finally finding it. Gradually, her breathing began to follow his, becoming less chaotic and heavier with exhaustion than fear.

Tavo felt her presence throughout his body, not as a physical weight, but as an emotion that had not yet disappeared but had begun to settle, layer by layer. The anger was still there inside him, deep and quiet, but pushed aside with no outlet. In that moment, the only thing that mattered was that she had finally stopped falling apart.

Lucia fell asleep slowly, almost without either of them noticing. It was as if sleep were simply another step in the process of breathing, rather than a conscious choice.

Tavo remained still for a long time afterwards, keeping his eyes open more out of necessity than choice.

Peaceful sleep in the morning

Morning light slipped into the bedroom through the half-closed curtains, spreading golden streaks across the room. The house was still quiet. Beyond the window, the city was beginning to wake up, but here, time moved more slowly, as if the night had not quite ended yet.

Tavo woke up first.

For a few seconds, he lay completely still, unable to quite understand why he felt uncomfortable. It took him a moment to remember the events of the previous evening. Looking down, he saw Lucia sleeping beside him.

During the night, she had moved closer to him. Her head was still resting against his chest and her hand was loosely curled around the fabric of his shirt. She was sleeping deeply and much more peacefully than she had been only a few hours earlier.

She still didn't look like someone who had truly rested. There were still traces of exhaustion beneath her eyes, and her face still bore the marks of tears and the emotions of the previous day. But the tension he had seen in her from the moment she called him was gone.

He watched her for a moment longer than he should have. Not because she was beautiful, although she was. It was something else.

The night before, she had looked as if the entire world had slipped beyond her control. Now, for the first time in hours, she seemed safe. This alone brought him a sense of relief greater than he wanted to admit, even to himself.

Very carefully, he tried to slip out from beneath her.

Lucia shifted slightly in her sleep and frowned faintly. Tavo immediately froze, ready to stop even the slightest movement in case it woke her. Only when her breathing had settled again did he finally stand up and leave the room quietly.

Breakfast and "I'm fine"

When Lucia opened her eyes, she lay still for a few seconds, staring at the ceiling. This time, she did not wake up screaming. There was no panic and no sudden feeling of danger tearing her out of her sleep in the middle of the night. Only a brief moment of confusion remained. She did not yet understand where she was or why she was sleeping in an unfamiliar bed.

Then the memories came back:

Federico.

The struggle.

The fear.

The phone call.

Tavo.

She closed her eyes. Even now, she still couldn’t think about what had happened the previous day without her stomach tightening. And yet, at the same time, she realised something else.

For the first time in a long time, she had woken up with someone beside her. The thought was strangely comforting. Slowly, she sat up in bed and adjusted the oversized shirt she was wearing. Only then did she notice that Tavo was not in the room.

The door opened slightly. He stepped inside, carrying a tray.

For a moment, Lucia simply looked at him. After everything that had happened only a few hours earlier, the sight was so ordinary and impossibly normal that she felt an unexpected wave of emotion.

On the tray were tea, coffee, a few sandwiches and some fruit. Nothing extraordinary. And yet, no one had ever made her breakfast with such quiet certainty before, as if taking care of her were the most natural thing in the world.

"You shouldn't have done this," she said instinctively.

The words escaped before she could stop them. Seeing Tavo walk into the room with breakfast stirred a mixture of gratitude and slight embarrassment inside her.

He placed the tray on the bed, looking like someone who had no intention of turning this into a discussion.

'Too late. I already did."

Lucia felt the corner of her mouth lift slightly.

The smile appeared on its own before she had time to stop it.

When Tavo sat down in the armchair beside the bed, Lucia looked at him properly for the first time.

Only then did she notice his wrinkled shirt, his more dishevelled-than-usual hair, and the shadows beneath his eyes that even the soft morning light couldn’t hide. He looked like someone who had spent the night on watch rather than sleeping.

This realisation caused a tightening beneath her ribs.

"Did you sleep at all?" she asked.

"A little."

Lucia raised her eyebrows, and he immediately noticed.

"Tavo..."

"Lucia."

There was amusement mixed with a warning in his expression. It was the same look she had seen for months — the look of someone who already knew what was about to be said and had no intention of allowing it.

"Don't start."

For a moment, they simply looked at each other in silence.

Lucia felt something strangely familiar. The night before, she had been broken and terrified, unable to form a coherent thought. Now, for the first time in hours, she was doing something normal. An ordinary disagreement. A conversation that had nothing to do with fear.

It seemed that Tavo had realised the same thing, because he leaned back more comfortably in the chair and added:

"I’ll warn you right now. You’re not going anywhere today."

"Tavo..."

"No."

"You don’t even know what I was going to say."

"I know perfectly well."

A faint trace of satisfaction appeared on his face.

"You were going to tell me that you’re fine, that you can handle everything yourself and that you have a hundred things to do."

Lucia let out a short laugh.

"Maybe a little."

"Then save yourself the effort."

She shook her head, slowly turning the cup between her hands. The warmth of the porcelain gradually seeped into her fingers.

Only a few days earlier, she would have argued. She would have insisted that she didn’t need help and that she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. But now, she simply didn’t have the strength.

The exhaustion was still deep inside her, as was the memory of the previous evening. But alongside that, she felt a sense of relief at not having to be strong for a while.

She lowered her gaze to the cup and, after a few seconds, nodded.

"Okay," she said quietly.

Something that looked like relief crossed Tavo’s face — relief that he wouldn’t have to fight her for the right to rest this time.

He didn’t comment on his "victory". In fact, he didn’t look particularly pleased that he hadn’t needed to argue with her for once. He simply nodded and reached for his cup, accepting her decision as obvious and natural.

For a while, they ate in silence.

Outside the window, the city was slowly waking up. Occasionally, the sound of a car or fragments of conversations from passers-by could be heard from the street, but inside the bedroom, it was as if someone had turned the volume of the world down for a few hours — it was a separate, quieter reality.

Lucia sat against the pillows, holding her cup of tea, and discovered with surprise that she felt no need to fill the silence with words.

This realisation was new to her, almost foreign, and yet incredibly soothing.

For most of her life, she had grown used to the idea that another person’s presence came with tension — the need to explain herself, to control her emotions and sometimes even to defend her choices.

But here, silence was neither a demand nor a judgement. It simply existed, and Tavo seemed to expect nothing more from her.

This simplicity touched something inside her that she still couldn’t name. It was soft yet painful, as if she was only now beginning to understand how exhausted she truly was.

She lowered her gaze to her cup of tea and watched the thin stream of steam rising from it, gathering the courage to speak the words that had been circling in her mind since morning.

"Thank you."

She spoke quietly but without hesitation, as if she was no longer going to shy away from her feelings.

Tavo looked up from his cup.

"For breakfast?"

A barely visible smile appeared on her face, more instinctive than deliberate.

"For everything."

She was silent for a moment, searching for the right words, because expressing gratitude this way was difficult for her. It was unfamiliar. It was something she had never learned how to accept or give.

Only now, sitting in a safe room and looking at him in the morning light, did she truly begin to understand how frightened she had been the day before. How alone she had been before she heard his voice.

"For coming," she said finally, more slowly, as if she had to translate each word into something she could say. "For taking me away from there."

She paused for a moment, swallowing against the sudden heaviness in her throat.

"For staying."

The last words were almost inaudible.

"And for the night."

There was silence, but it was no longer tense. It was heavier than that. Full of meaning.

Tavo turned his gaze towards the window for a moment, as if he needed some space to take in what she had said. Lucia watched his profile and only now noticed that he was bearing traces of that night, too. Not just exhaustion, but something deeper; something that suggested part of his attention was still there with everything that had happened, something that could not simply be left behind.

When he looked back at her, his expression remained calm, but his eyes had softened.

"Lucia," he said gently. "You don’t have to thank me for that."

She shook her head almost immediately, with a quiet determination that came not from exhaustion, but from the need to speak the truth.

"I do."

Their eyes met for longer than was comfortable, but not quite long enough to convey all that was left unsaid.

"If it weren't for you..."

She stopped. She couldn’t finish. It wasn’t that she didn’t have the words; it was that every possible ending felt too heavy to say out loud.

Tavo watched her silently for a moment, then put his cup down on the table. He shook his head slightly, not in disagreement, but as if to stop the thought from growing into something too painful.

"It’s okay," he said softly. "You’re here."

Lucia felt something tighten in her throat. The sentence wasn’t meant to convince or comfort her. And yet, that was exactly why it worked.

It didn’t promise anything beyond the truth. It didn’t reach into the future. It didn’t touch the past. Instead, it kept her in the present moment — a place that, for the first time in a long time, did not feel dangerous.

You’re here. She didn’t have to go back to yesterday. She didn’t have to think about tomorrow yet.

For now, it was enough that she was sitting in that room with a cup of tea, his presence beside her and a silence that asked nothing of her. And, for the first time in a long time, this simplicity did not feel empty.

Coping with trauma

Lucia did not get out of bed straight away.

For a long time, she sat propped up on the pillows, gazing at the spot where the breakfast tray had been just moments before. It was as if she were trying to hold on to the fragile balance of the morning.

Memories of the previous evening returned in waves. Not all at once, but in fragments that her mind carefully tried to arrange: Federico, his apartment, the sudden tension and fear, and then just the phone call, with Tavo's voice sounding as if he needed no explanation before deciding to act.

Whenever she tried to relive those moments in greater detail, she could still feel the familiar tightening in her stomach. However, this time it was no longer as paralysing as it had been the night before.

Something inside her was beginning to move away from the centre of what had happened, as if her body and mind were slowly accepting that it was over.

Then, almost unnoticed, her thoughts changed direction. Instead of Federico, there was Tavo. Not suddenly. Not as a contrast to that night, but as its quiet continuation.

His presence when he answered the phone. The calm with which he entered the apartment. The fact that he didn't ask questions when she couldn't answer them. Then there were his hands — so careful as to verge on hesitation, as if every touch carried more meaning than words ever could.

Lucia realised that she also remembered the smallest things: details that, under different circumstances, would probably have gone unnoticed. She remembered the way he kept his distance when she needed it; how he paused before touching her; and how he let her decide, even when she herself wasn’t sure what she wanted.

He had not pushed her. He had not rushed anything. It was as if he understood something she still didn’t know how to name.

This affected her more than she had expected. And somewhere in the middle of all those memories, the dream came back to her unexpectedly.

She could feel the warmth of his shirt against her skin. The weight of the fabric that did not belong to her, yet which had become something safe for several hours. Even its subtle, familiar scent — a mixture of soap and something else she couldn’t quite identify — returned to her with such intensity that she felt strangely unsettled for a moment.

She quickly lowered her gaze, as if she didn’t want to admit to herself how much that small detail had calmed her.

Finally, as though she needed to move to stop herself getting lost in those thoughts, she pushed the blanket aside and slowly got out of bed. Her feet touched the soft carpet and she stood still for a moment, adjusting to a space that was not hers but which no longer felt unfamiliar in a frightening way.

Tavo’s bedroom was simple and orderly, free of unnecessary things. There was none of the chaos that often surrounded people who lived their lives constantly rushing from one thing to another. Everything seemed to have its place, as if even the silence belonged to that sense of order.

Lucia took a few careful steps, more out of curiosity than necessity, allowing herself to explore the space where she had spent the night quietly.

She stopped by the small table and the bookshelf, though she didn’t touch any of the books.

It wasn’t about the objects. It was about the knowledge that this space belonged to him and yet yesterday he had welcomed her into it, accepting her for who she was.

This brought a feeling that she couldn't fully define — a mixture of gratitude and quiet unease. It was as if she had suddenly become aware of just how deeply she had been allowed into someone else's private world, at the exact moment when she needed it most.

Lucia stopped by the window and looked outside. The city was already fully awake, but here, inside this room, time seemed to have stood still.

For the first time since the previous evening, she allowed herself to think about what had happened and who had been with her when everything began to fall apart.

Cecilia's unexpected visit

Lucia had barely begun to adjust to the quiet of the house that morning when she heard the sound of a key turning in the lock.

For a moment, she thought it might be Tavo, back earlier than expected. However, it was only when the door opened without a knock — too confidently and casually — that she realised someone had walked in as if they had every right to be there.

Still standing in the bedroom wearing his shirt, the fabric of which reached almost halfway down her thighs, she saw a woman step inside.

She did not stop in the doorway. She didn’t hesitate for even a second. She simply walked further into the room, as if she knew the place by heart and had never needed permission to move through it.

Her eyes immediately swept over the space with the effortless familiarity of someone who had been there many times before. Only then did her gaze settle on Lucia.

For a moment, silence filled the room.

A silence that held surprise, judgement, and something else Lucia only recognised a second later.

Amusement.

The woman carried herself with such confidence that even an ordinary glance felt like a comment. Her eyes moved over Lucia more slowly than was necessary, lingering on the shirt, the bed and the entire morning scene, which from the outside could easily suggest something completely different to what had actually happened.

Lucia felt a warm flush of embarrassment rush to her face that she couldn’t stop.

Even though there was nothing between her and Tavo and everything that had happened the previous night had a different meaning, in that moment she saw herself through this woman’s eyes: wearing someone else’s shirt.

In someone else’s bed. In a space that did not belong to her.

Suddenly, she felt as though she had been caught doing something she hadn’t done — something that, despite everything, was far too obvious to easily explain away.

"Oh," the woman finally said, drawing out the word. A slight smile appeared on her face, suggesting amusement more than surprise. "I wasn’t expecting company here this early."

Her voice was soft, relaxed and almost playful.

But beneath it, Lucia sensed something else: a subtle note of judgement, as if the woman was already fitting this missing piece into a puzzle in her mind.

Lucia felt her throat tighten. She tried to say something, to explain before the situation slipped further out of her control, but her words refused to form anything coherent. All she could think was that it wasn’t like that, that it wasn’t what it looked like, and that she shouldn’t be there, wearing his shirt and sitting in his bed. Yet everything about her situation seemed to contradict this.

The woman took a few more steps into the room and looked around without hesitation, as if she knew the space well and saw no reason to treat it as anything other than familiar. Only then did Lucia realise just how intimate this intrusion actually was. Not only because someone had walked in without warning, but also because the person who had entered clearly wasn't a stranger.

"Tavo didn't mention he was having company today," she said lightly, almost casually. But there was something in her tone that made Lucia feel even smaller.

That one sentence was enough to conjure up a thousand unwanted interpretations in her mind. "Company" sounded like a polite way of saying something that should have been announced, not discovered in someone else’s bed while wearing someone else’s shirt.

"It's not like that," Lucia blurted out before she could stop herself.

She immediately regretted it because her voice sounded too high and nervous, as if she were defending herself against an unspoken accusation. Her fingers tightened around the fabric of the shirt and she became acutely aware of her appearance, her stance and how completely out of place she seemed in a scene that someone else had already begun to interpret in their own mind.

The woman raised her eyebrows and a hint of not entirely innocent amusement appeared on her face.

"Relax," she said with a soft laugh, the kind meant to ease the tension, yet somehow making the moment even more obvious. "You don’t have to explain yourself. You’re a model, aren’t you?"

But Lucia felt that was the worst part.

Because not needing an explanation did not mean that she had not already been judged. In fact, it meant that the judgement had already happened and that there was no point trying to change it.

So she stood there in silence, painfully aware of her appearance and vulnerability, and of how easily this moment could be misunderstood. For the first time since the previous night, it was not fear that tightened her stomach.

It was something far more humiliating and helpless: the feeling that she had somehow stepped into someone else’s story before she had had the chance to understand the ending of her own.

The problem with clothes is not the problem

The phone rang at noon, when the house had once again fallen into that particular kind of silence — no longer unsettling, but still requiring Lucia to pause and find her place within it. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, still wearing his shirt. In the corner of the room, almost outside her awareness, lay the torn clothes she had thrown there instinctively, as if they were no longer of any use to her.

She answered the phone before she had time to decide whether she wanted to talk or not.

"Hello?"

For a moment, there was only silence on the other end of the line. Then, his calm, familiar voice entered the silence so naturally that it felt as though it belonged in the same space as her.

"Lucia, it’s me. How are you feeling?"

Hearing his voice made her feel slightly more relaxed, though she wasn’t sure whether it was relief or simply her body beginning to trust him. For a moment, she stared at the wall in front of her as though she might find a more honest answer there than the one already forming in her mind.

"Better. Really," she finally replied carefully, as if testing whether that word still belonged to her.

A brief silence followed, but there was no uncertainty in it. Only a quiet acceptance of what she had said, as though he didn’t need anything more.

"Good," he answered simply.

Lucia felt that the conversation demanded nothing more from her. At the same time, that was exactly what surprised her the most. In other circumstances, silence between people had always been tense, something that needed to be broken or filled. Here, however, it simply existed as if it were part of how they were together.

She hesitated, and then said more out of uncertainty than necessity:

"I don’t have anything to change into."

The moment the words left her mouth, she felt a small wave of embarrassment, as though she had revealed something too ordinary or too personal. She wasn’t sure why that particular thing felt so important, but she couldn't think of anything else to say at that moment.

There was a pause on the other end of the line. This time it was different — shorter, but more intense, as if his attention had briefly shifted away from the conversation.

"Alright," he eventually said. "I’ll take care of it after work."

Lucia blinked, momentarily surprised by how quickly he had accepted it without asking questions or making comments. Inside, she felt a mixture of relief and uncertainty — the old habit of expecting every request to be met with negotiations, explanations and justifications. She wanted to say something else, perhaps to clarify that it wasn’t that important, but the words never had a chance to form.

"I’ll be back later," he added.

Before she could respond, the call ended.

Lucia stood there, phone in hand, staring at it as if trying to understand why such an ordinary, brief conversation had left her with a sense of peace she never expected to feel again after the previous day.

She put the phone down and stood still for a while. Her eyes drifted back to the torn clothes in the corner of the room. Yesterday returned for a moment, not in sharp detail, but as a series of images that still refused to form a coherent picture. She pushed the thought away quickly, as if it were too heavy to carry in the morning.

Only later, as the day progressed and the apartment grew quiet again, did that sentence return to her: "I don't have anything to change into."

And with it came the realisation that Tavo had truly responded without hesitation.

When she heard the key turn in the lock and footsteps in the hallway, she immediately stood up. Tavo entered the bedroom, still wearing his jacket. He placed a bag on the bed with the same effortless ease with which he did everything else. Only then did he look at her.

"I got you some clothes," he said calmly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

For Tavo, there was nothing complicated about it at all. When Lucia mentioned over the phone that she had nothing to change into, he took it as a simple fact requiring a quick solution, rather than something to analyse. It was only on his way home from work, when he passed a few shops, that he realised how ordinary yet inconvenient this problem was for her, and how deeply embarrassing it could be. He didn’t think about it for long. He walked in, chose some neutral items, and left, feeling as though he had merely completed a task rather than made a meaningful gesture.

Lucia looked inside the bag and fell silent for a moment. The clothes were new and neatly folded, still carrying the scent of the shop. There was also something unfamiliar about them, which immediately gave her the strange feeling that everything was becoming too much. For a moment, she looked at them as if they were not just clothes, but something more — a gesture that carried weight, even though she wasn’t sure she had the right to accept it. An uncomfortable tension immediately settled inside her, born from the simple awareness that someone had spent money on her so effortlessly, without hesitation or discussion.

As soon as she understood what he had done, she set the bag aside and looked at him, her eyes showing slight tension.

"You shouldn't have spent money on me," she said quickly and more firmly than she had intended. Her voice conveyed a mixture of embarrassment and the need to set boundaries.

It wasn’t just a protest about the expense. There was something deeper behind her reaction: an instinctive need to regain control of a situation in which she had suddenly found herself on the receiving end of someone else’s generosity. She wasn’t used to that. In her world, such gestures had always come with strings attached, and she had always felt obliged to return the favour or repay the debt. But here, there was nothing to balance, nothing expected in exchange.

Tavo looked up from the jacket he was taking off.

For a moment, he watched her more carefully, as if he had only just realised that her reaction was not really about the money, but about something much more vulnerable than he had thought. There was no surprise in his expression, only a brief, quiet shift in his attention.

"What was I supposed to do?" he asked calmly, as if he genuinely couldn't see another option. "I couldn’t exactly go to Kuka’s house and pack your things."

To him, that was an obvious boundary, almost a practical one. He knew he had no right to enter her space, take her belongings or interfere in her life before that night in a way that would allow him to simply “organise” things for her. Buying clothes was the simplest answer, free from the emotional weight that would come from invading her privacy.

If he had shown up at the models’ house and started searching through the wardrobe for Lucia’s clothes, questions would have arisen immediately. Simple questions, asked casually and innocently, but which would have brought him far too close to what he preferred to leave untouched.

Why was he there? Why was he taking her things? What had happened?

Even without knowing the full truth, Tavo had a feeling that Lucia would rather hide what had happened the previous night than have it become the subject of someone else’s curiosity.

Lucia opened her mouth, but then closed it again.

Because that was the truth she couldn’t easily avoid. An uncomfortable realisation surfaced somewhere inside her — it wasn’t only about the money. It was about the fact that someone else would now have to solve problems that had previously been entirely her responsibility. And that feeling was far more complicated than mere gratitude.

"I know," he added more quietly, as if he wanted to drop the subject before it became a bigger issue. "I just bought a few things. That’s all."

It didn’t sound like an excuse or an attempt to convince her of anything. It sounded more like he was closing the matter where it belonged — somewhere it didn't need to be analysed any further. For Tavo, it really was just that: a decision that had been made and carried out without the need for a story to be built around it.

She hesitated for another moment, looking at the bag as if she were still trying to find something unacceptable about it. Eventually, she only gave a small nod.

"They’re new..." she said quietly, more to herself than to him.

Tavo simply shrugged, as if he couldn’t see anything unusual about that.

"I actually had fun choosing them," he replied.

And that was all he said about it.

An attempt to return to normality

During lunch, the apartment was filled with the kind of calm that helped Lucia make sense of yesterday’s events. Her body was slowly regaining control over what had been chaos only that morning.

When they finally sat down to eat dinner, the silence between them was light. Tavo didn’t try to fill it, and Lucia didn’t feel pressured to say more than she could.

It was only after a while that Lucia put down her fork.

"I’d like to go back," she said.

Her words were calm, but the moment she spoke, she felt a tightness in her chest. Before she had had time to think it through, she asked herself: was it too soon to return to a place where everything was still painfully fresh?

Tavo looked at her carefully. The request didn’t align with what he could see in front of him. His first instinct was that it was too soon. Yesterday was still inside her, even if she was trying to hide it. He could see it in her face, in the way she sat at the table and in how she spoke cautiously about ordinary things. He felt that returning now would only create more tension for her to deal with.

"Why are you in such a hurry to go back?"

Lucia lifted her eyes from her plate. For a moment, she was grateful that Tavo had accepted her unconditionally. Their time together was simple and peaceful, different from everything she had ever known. But almost immediately afterwards came the feeling that she shouldn’t stay too long. She didn’t want to occupy a space that didn’t belong to her.

"I can’t keep hiding forever," she answered quietly. "Besides, I don’t want to make your life difficult."

Saying this was more difficult than it should have been. In her experience, situations like this always ended the same way: sooner or later, someone reached their limit, even if they had never said a word before.

Tavo frowned slightly.

“Please don’t say things like that. You’re not making anything difficult."

He said it calmly but firmly. To him, this conversation had no hidden meaning. He didn’t see her presence as a problem. In fact, quite the opposite was true: she had naturally become part of his daily routine, and there was nothing difficult or burdensome about it.

Lucia remained silent for a moment, as if considering something. Finally, she pushed her plate slightly away.

"You know... I was thinking," she said more quietly. "I’m not going back to the agency."

Her words were calm, but something changed in her eyes. This wasn’t a decision she had made on the spot. She had been holding onto it since morning; she simply hadn’t had the courage to say it out loud.

Tavo froze for a moment.

"But why would you say something like that?"

There was genuine surprise in his voice. Only moments earlier, she had been talking about returning, and now she was cutting herself off from a place that had been a part of her life.

Lucia tightened her fingers around the edge of the table.

"Because Federico is there."

Those few words were enough to make her tense up again. The thought of walking into the agency and seeing him, or anything that reminded her of him, made her instinctively draw in.

Tavo put down his cutlery.

"If this is because of Federico, then he doesn't work at the agency anymore," he said after a moment. "So you won't have to see him there."

Lucia lifted her head more quickly than she had intended to. She immediately thought that Tavo might have made that decision because of her. The idea unsettled her. She didn’t want to influence his actions, especially when they affected other people.

"Why?" she asked uncertainly.

Tavo hesitated for only a moment.

"He left," he finally said. "And we don’t know where he is. On top of that, he stole money from the agency."

Lucia stared at him for a moment without moving. She tried to fit these words into her image of Federico. Or at least the image she thought she knew.

"Seriously?" she whispered.

There was no emotion in her voice yet. Only a quiet refusal to accept what she had just heard.

Tavo nodded.

"Yes. I didn’t want to tell you, but it's better that you hear it from me."

Lucia lowered her eyes. For a moment, nothing seemed to make sense. Everything she thought she knew about him was beginning to crumble. She remained silent for longer than was comfortable.

"You didn’t tell anyone what happened?" she finally asked, more quietly.

If Tavo had fired the photographer, he would have had to give an official reason, which she wouldn’t have been able to bear. But if he was telling the truth, then the secret she was ashamed of was still safe.

Tavo looked at her immediately. This time, there wasn’t even the slightest hesitation in his answer.

"No," he said calmly. "Of course not. No one will ever hear about it from me. You can be sure of that."

There was finality in the simplicity of those words. Lucia nodded slightly, but the relief did not come immediately. For a while, the tension remained, not arising from a single source, but from several overlapping thoughts.

A lie sewn with thick threads

Kuka had returned home earlier than expected, but the house was quiet. Surprised, she looked for Daniela, but she could not be found on the ground floor. She started up the stairs, but the sound of the front door opening made her stop. For a moment, she froze on the landing, not knowing why.

Lucia and Tavo appeared in the doorway. The girl slowly took off her jacket and the two of them sat down on the sofa. Herrera immediately rested his arm along the back of the sofa behind her.

"How are you feeling?"

There was unmistakable concern in his voice. He was still not convinced that coming back so soon had been the right decision. Lucia did not answer. Instead, she moved closer without thinking and rested her head against his chest.

That told him more than words ever could. His hand, which had been on the back of the sofa, moved to her shoulders. He gently wrapped an arm around her and began stroking her back with slow, soothing movements.

At that moment, he did not analyse what was changing between them. The only thing that mattered was that she was no longer trembling and her breathing was becoming steady again. Lucia was in a state where the outside world reached her with a delay, and he was the only thing that did not hurt her. To him, it was simple: if he could make her stop being afraid, even if only for a little while, that was all he needed.

He was beginning to realise more and more clearly that caring for her was no longer just a temporary impulse. It had become a constant presence in his life, regardless of where he was or what he was doing.

Kuka watched them in stunned silence. The sight of them together was too significant to ignore. She did not speak immediately. She tried to determine whether what she was seeing was just a moment of weakness or something more. Eventually, she began to walk down the stairs.

Tavo heard her first and turned in her direction. Lucia lifted her head a second later, reluctantly, as if being pulled away from something that had not yet ended. His hand was still on her back, but he stopped moving.

"You?"

Kuka's voice carried genuine surprise at seeing him there.

Tavo removed his hand from the girl's shoulders. Lucia immediately straightened up, although her body still betrayed the tension she was carrying. For a moment, she looked like someone who no longer knew where she was supposed to stand in this situation.

"Yes," Tavo replied calmly. "And who were you expecting?"

His tone was natural, giving no indication that anything was wrong.

"No one. I just wasn't expecting you." Kuka shifted her gaze to the model, and only then did she look at her more carefully. "Lucia, are you all right?"

The girl took a breath that seemed to catch halfway. She felt the attention of two people fall suddenly on her, along with an urgent need to explain something that was still shapeless.

Tavo stood up, adjusted his jacket and took responsibility for the conversation. He decided it would be better to remove her from the centre of it. Not only because she was tired. Every question that Kuka asked could draw her back into everything she was trying to leave behind. Tavo had no intention of letting anyone push her further right now. Taking responsibility for the conversation was easier than watching her lose herself in it.

"The problem is that Lucia isn't feeling well," he said calmly. "I decided to bring her here."

Kuka narrowed her eyes, studying her charge more closely. The other models had already mentioned that Lucia had not slept at home that morning. Combined with the tenderness she had witnessed moments earlier, this stirred an uncomfortable suspicion inside her.

"You stayed at your mother's?"

Lucia stood up more slowly than she should have. She hesitated for a moment before answering. She had not prepared a version of events. Her mind went blank, and that emptiness immediately turned into tension. Every word she said could betray her, but staying silent felt even worse. She felt herself losing control of the situation. She had never been good at lying, and now she didn't have time to fabricate a story.

"Yes," she said.

Then, as if she had to fill the silence with something more convincing, she immediately added, too quickly:

"The thing is, when I was coming here... I was attacked."

Her eyes briefly moved past Kuka towards Tavo. She was looking for confirmation; she wasn't asking him for help directly, but hoping that one glance would tell her whether she was going in the right direction. She wasn't even sure if the story she had started telling still made sense, but stopping now felt harder than continuing.

Tavo watched Lucia carefully. He didn't interrupt, but checked on her from time to time to make sure she wasn't losing her train of thought.

He let her speak. He knew that this was the only way she could regain a sense of control over the situation, however small. He would not stop her. If she started to lose her way, he would take over the conversation. For now, it was enough that he was there.

The room became even quieter. Kuka forgot about her suspicions and immediately turned to her with concern.

"Attacked? Where?"

Lucia swallowed. She looked from Kuka to Tavo, who was standing behind her. Searching his face for reassurance, she tried to determine whether she had gone too far. Whether what she was saying still made sense. Every look from Kuka made her feel more exposed, but there was no turning back now.

"When I was getting off the bus to change lines. They hit me... several times."

Her voice trembled at the end of the sentence, despite her efforts to keep it steady. The memory returned suddenly, not as words, but as something physical. The tension in her body, the sudden pull, the chaos. Even though she wasn't saying everything out loud, her body remembered enough for her reaction to be genuine. For a moment, she felt as if she were there again, as if everything were happening right beside her instead of belonging to the past.

"Well, you know how it is... I didn't want to give them my money..."

Kuka stopped right in front of her. Immediate concern appeared in her eyes, accompanied by a sense of unease that was quickly searching for answers.

"Did you report it to the police?" Kuka asked.

Tavo noticed Lucia's tension and how she was avoiding eye contact, struggling internally to keep her story together. He knew she could fall apart at any moment. He also knew that if anyone was going to maintain this version of events, it had to be him. So he answered before Lucia had a chance to open her mouth.

"Actually, no," he said calmly. "You know how it is. You'll only waste your time at the station, and later they won't even look for those criminals."

Lucia glanced at him briefly. She didn't correct him, but her expression showed something that looked almost like gratitude for him taking over the conversation.

Kuka shook her head.

"Lucia, why do you go to places like that alone?"

Lucia lowered her gaze.

"I don't know."

The words came out quietly, with no attempt at self-defence.

Kuka shifted her attention to Tavo. There was something in her eyes now, beyond concern for Lucia: a question about why he was there and his role in all this.

In her mind, details that had previously seemed unrelated began to connect: his presence in the house; the way he spoke on Lucia's behalf; her reactions to him; the quick glances between them; the way she seemed to rely on him, even in the smallest of gestures. She still did not have the answer, but she could feel that the picture in front of her was incomplete. She could also sense that they were both choosing their words very carefully.

Tavo raised his eyebrows slightly.

"What happened?" he asked before the tension had a chance to settle.

Kuka hesitated, but when she spoke, there was certainty in her voice.

"What you're telling me doesn't match what really happened."

Lucia flinched immediately. In that instant, the desire to disappear returned. The feeling of being seen through hit her with sudden force. Every word from Kuka now sounded like an accusation, even though it wasn't. She wanted to escape the conversation and stop being part of it. The only thought in her mind was to leave before another question was asked that she would not know how to answer.

She lowered her gaze and stared stubbornly at her shoes.

"I'm going to my room," she said quickly. Before anyone could react, she turned and walked away.

Tavo watched her go. For a moment, he allowed himself to take in what had just happened. The return had not gone the way he had imagined. It was supposed to be calm, safe and under control. Instead, things had become more complicated. He regretted bringing her here instead of giving her more time. But there was no going back now. She had disappeared into her room and he felt as though he was leaving her alone at a time when she needed peace the most.

He looked at Kuka with disappointment.

"Lucia needs support," he said calmly, though there was tension in his voice. "I expected more from you."

Kuka did not answer immediately. She stood there, no longer just an observer, but part of something she did not fully understand. She looked at the stairs, at the empty space where Lucia had been moments earlier, and then back at Tavo.

In her mind, she replayed fragments of the conversation, searching for the moment when everything had begun to fall apart.

In the silence of the room

The door closed quietly behind Lucia, but to her, that sound carried a sense of finality. It separated her not only from the hallway, but also from the entire afternoon during which she had had to appear stronger and calmer than she truly felt.

She stood with her back against the door for a moment, her eyes closed. She did not rush. Simply entering the room did not mean that she had returned to herself.

Only after a while did she walk over to the bed, sit on the edge and let the day fall away, along with the clothes that had been her armour only moments earlier. Changing into pyjamas was a simple, almost mechanical process, yet that evening it felt strangely heavy. Every movement was slower than usual. Her body had not yet caught up with the realisation that she might not have to stay in control anymore.

Slowly, she took off her jumper, then her trousers. Her clothes fell onto the chair one piece at a time, carelessly and without the attention to order that she usually gave. That evening, it did not matter.

When she finally lay down, she stared at the ceiling for a while. A car passed outside the window. Somewhere in the house, a door slammed shut, and then everything became quiet again. Sounds that only a few days earlier would have gone unnoticed now seemed strangely distant, as if they were coming from a place she could not quite return to yet.

Only then did the entire day begin to replay in her mind from start to finish.

The conversation over lunch. Coming back home. Kuka’s gaze lingering on her a little too long. The story about the attack, invented in a moment of panic. And Tavo, who had not corrected her once. He did not take over the story immediately. He let her speak for as long as she was able.

Thinking of him came naturally and without effort.

She remembered how he had answered her hardest questions with such calmness. His hand moving slowly along her back. She remembered that around him, she did not have to be careful with every breath or wonder if she would have to defend herself again in the next moment. His presence was enough.

Only now did she realise how quickly she had grown used to his presence. When he had still been close, yesterday, everything had seemed easier.

Not because he solved all her problems. None of them had disappeared, after all. Federico still existed. What had happened in his apartment still existed, too. So did the lie she had told Kuka.

But with Tavo, those thoughts simply did not consume her entirely. Now they all came rushing back at once.

She rolled onto her side and pulled the blanket up to her chin. She closed her eyes, trying to force herself to sleep. For a moment, she was almost instinctively tempted to turn her head towards the space beside the bed, as if someone might still be sitting there.

Only a second later, she realised the room was empty.

She opened her eyes. She did not cry. She wasn't even afraid. Only exhaustion spread through her entire body, accompanied by a strange, quiet emptiness.

For the first time in two days, she was alone with it all.

Another nightmare and Kuka

Lucia's sleep was shattered in the middle of the night.

There was no transition. One moment she was surrounded by darkness and heavy breathing, with someone holding her wrists in a strong, painful grip that wouldn't let go no matter how hard she tried to pull away. Then came the sudden force dragging her backwards, the loss of balance, and the dull sound of her body hitting something hard and cold.

“Stop! Let me go!"

The words escaped her before she even understood them.

And then everything stopped.

She woke up suddenly, but for a moment she did not know where she was. For a few seconds, she wasn't sure if she was still holding onto something. It was only when she looked down at her fingers that she realised the pressure she could still feel around her wrists had nothing to do with the blanket.

In the darkness of the room, her scream seemed to echo in her ears, even though it had already faded away. Her heart was beating so fast that, for a moment, she could not tell whether she was still trapped in the dream or had returned to reality.

She sat up abruptly in bed.

The room was the same — familiar — but her body refused to accept it. She swallowed, but her throat refused to cooperate, as if it still remembered the pressure of the nightmare. The dream did not end immediately. It remained in her muscles, in the tension in her shoulders, in her uneven breathing, which refused to calm down, and in her stiff, cold fingers, which were still clutching the blanket even though there was nothing left to hold onto.

For a moment, she had the feeling that someone was standing beside the bed. The worst part was that she was alone.

The night before had been different. That nightmare had ended the moment Tavo appeared beside her. His presence had broken through the panic and allowed her to calm down and fall asleep with her head resting against his arm without needing to stay alert.

Now, there was no one.

Only silence and uncontrollable darkness remained.

The door opened hurriedly.

Kuka stepped inside without turning on the light, leaving only a narrow strip of shadows from the hallway behind her. She still held a cup in her hand; the tea must have been freshly made because steam rose lazily from it in the cooler air.

She stopped the moment she saw Lucia sitting on the bed.

It looked as if the girl had not even realised that someone had entered.

For a brief moment, Kuka felt as though she was seeing something that did not fit with the story she had created in her mind, nor with the suspicions she had harboured throughout the evening. Lucia looked too frightened for it all to have been invented. Something had truly happened.

This thought crossed her mind quickly and disappeared just as quickly, replaced by something much simpler:

The instinct to move closer.

"Lucia?" She said softly, more as a way of checking on her than asking a question.

The sound reached Lucia with a delay. Lucia blinked. Once. Then again. For a moment, she didn’t answer. She was still somewhere between sleep and waking, her body as tense as a drawn bowstring. She had the feeling that she wouldn’t be able to hide what had just happened to her. Her breathing was still too shallow and uneven. Her heart was beating too fast and irregularly, as if it had not yet realised that it no longer needed to fight. Only after a moment did she swallow, as though trying to find her voice again.

"A bad dream," she finally said quickly, almost instinctively. "It was just a bad dream."

It sounded more like an attempt to close the subject than an explanation. As if saying it out loud could make the nightmare feel less real.

Kuka didn’t stop to question what she had seen. She put the cup down on the floor faster than she could think, then sat down on the edge of the bed. She didn’t touch her, but she was close enough that her presence filled the space beside Lucia.

"I went to make myself some tea and I heard you from the hallway," she said calmly, without reproach, speaking with a quiet kind of honesty. "It sounded... bad."

Lucia lowered her gaze. She was still trying to catch her breath, which refused to settle. She felt ashamed, though she couldn’t fully explain why. The broken images from the dream were still circling in her mind, refusing to disappear even though the room around her was safe.

"I’m sorry," she whispered automatically.

"Don’t apologise," Kuka replied immediately, her voice warmer. "Just tell me if you need anything. Some water? Do you want me to stay for a while?"

Lucia shook her head. The movement was small and hesitant, but determined.

"No, it's... better now."

It wasn’t the whole truth, but it was enough to maintain control of the situation.

Kuka didn’t press her further. She watched her for a moment longer. The suspicions she had been harbouring had not completely disappeared, but they no longer seemed as important. Something else had taken their place: concern for the girl, who looked very alone at that moment.

She nodded.

"All right," she said quietly.

She didn’t try to continue the conversation. She stood up slowly and reached for the cup. At the doorway, she paused for a moment longer.

"If you need anything, I’m right next door," she added simply.

Lucia nodded without looking at her.

The door closed softly, and only then did the tension leave her body.

First, it left her hands, which stopped gripping the blanket so tightly, then her shoulders, which dropped as if they had suddenly lost all their strength. Her breath caught for a moment before returning unevenly and too quickly.

She didn’t make a sound. She simply lay there, motionless, staring into the darkness that she no longer tried to control.

There was no one left to tell her that it was only a dream.

And then came what she had not allowed herself to show before: a quiet, contained breakdown, without a sound and without witnesses, in a place where no one had the right to see her like that.

A broken cup

Lucia walked into the office as if the previous day had never happened. Or rather, as if it had happened to someone else, in a different life that she had left behind the moment she stepped through the door. She smiled gently, responded to every greeting with effortless politeness, and approached her work with such natural ease that routine seemed capable of covering everything else.

For the first few hours, it even worked.

Her movements were calm, her voice steady, and when she moved between the different rooms, no one paid her any particular attention. She tried not to draw attention to herself either — not to what was still there beneath the surface, quiet and persistent.

The kitchen was bright and ordinary. The smell of coffee mingled with the morning rhythm of the office. Someone was talking in the background and someone else laughed near the door. Lucia stood by the coffee machine, lost in thought, and didn’t notice Facundo enter.

“Lucia, could you…?”

She didn’t hear the end of the sentence.

It was only when she felt a hand on her shoulder — sudden and completely unexpected — that something inside her broke instantly and without warning. Her body reacted before her mind could register what was happening. She jerked away instinctively before she even saw his face.

As if he wasn’t Facundo.

As if it were something that had returned without warning.

The cup in her hands trembled, struck the counter, rolled onto the floor and shattered with a sharp, dry crack. Coffee spilled across the surface and fragments of porcelain scattered everywhere.

"Sorry... I'm sorry, I..." she blurted out, taking a step back as if she wanted to remove herself from the situation altogether.

Facundo immediately raised his hands in a calming gesture. Instead of stepping away, however, he crouched down to help her. His face was calm and focused, showing no trace of irritation.

“Hey, it’s okay, really. It’s only coffee,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Lucia nodded, although her breathing was still uneven. She crouched beside him and carefully picked up the larger pieces of porcelain, more out of instinct than awareness. It was only now that reality was beginning to reach her — it had only been an accidental touch. Nothing was happening. But her body had not caught up yet.

In the doorway, unnoticed, stood Tavo.

He had arrived a moment after Facundo, but had stopped immediately when he saw them in the kitchen. He didn’t step inside. He didn’t say anything. His eyes remained fixed on Lucía at the exact moment her body reacted to the touch — before the cup fell and the apologies began.

He saw everything.

It was a pure reaction: the tension, the reflex, the panic that arrived faster than thought. It wasn’t exaggeration or nervousness. It was the memory held by her body, responding before her conscious mind could.

Tavo took half a step forward, then stopped. His hand tightened briefly as if he wanted to interrupt, even though he didn’t know what he would say. He was angry with himself for not persuading her to rest for longer.

Facundo helped her gather the remaining pieces, then stood up straight, still feeling slightly embarrassed.

"I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you," he repeated sincerely.

"It’s not your fault," Lucia answered too quickly. “I just spilled it. I’ll make another one.”

Her voice still trembled slightly, but she tried to hide it. She stood up, brushed her hands off, and added more steadily,

"I’ll bring you coffee to the photo studio, OK?"

Facundo nodded, checked once more that she was all right, and left, throwing a brief   “Really, it’s nothing, don’t worry” over his shoulder.

It was only then that Tavo entered the kitchen.

Lucia was wiping the last of the coffee off the counter. She had only just started when she felt his presence. She simply knew it was him.

He didn’t say anything at first. He came closer and stopped beside her. His gaze moved to her hands and lingered longer than necessary. Despite her efforts to control them, they were still trembling slightly.

He didn’t ask, “What happened?” He already knew.

Instead, he simply took her hands and held them gently, as if preventing something from falling apart. His touch was neither sudden nor demanding. For a moment, he simply held her hands, and then his thumb began to move slowly and rhythmically over the backs of her palms, as if to remind them what calm felt like.

Lucia exhaled shakily.

That was when Kuka appeared in the doorway.

She stopped immediately. She didn’t step any farther inside. Her eyes moved over the scene before her: Lucia, tense and still pale, with Tavo holding her hands in his. It was a quiet gesture that lasted a little too long to be accidental, and one that needed no explanation.

Kuka said nothing. But there was a change in her expression. It was no longer just curiosity. It was the quiet realisation that something between them had shifted in an irreversible way.

When Tavo saw that Lucia’s breathing had slowed and her grip had loosened, he began to let go very carefully, as if any sudden movement might pull her back to that same place.

He didn’t step away immediately. He remained close enough for her to feel his presence, but not so close as to overwhelm her.

The emotions inside him had not disappeared. They had simply changed direction.

What had been a state of focused, almost automatic vigilance moments earlier became something heavier: a quiet need to ensure that it would not happen again. That her body would no longer have to react this way.

Meanwhile, Lucia reached for the kettle, but her movements were different now. More deliberate. Slower. It was as if she was trying to regain control over even the smallest of gestures.

Every sound and every touch of the cup against the counter kept her anchored in the present because everything else was still too close to the surface.

"I can handle it," she said quietly at last, more to herself than to Tavo.

Tavo nodded but didn’t immediately look away. He watched her for a few more seconds to make sure she was truly returning to herself. The tension from the situation had disappeared from his eyes.

Only something more persistent remained. The memory of how quickly that fragile balance could fall apart.

Kuka remained in the doorway a little longer than she should have.

Her gaze remained fixed on their hands, not moving away immediately, as if there was something about that image that did not fit with what should have been ordinary. Eventually, she turned around and walked away because what she had just witnessed could not be explained simply.

She leaned against the hallway wall and closed her eyes.

She wasn’t angry.

It was something quieter than that — a tiredness born from something she couldn’t easily name. Jealousy mingled with something more painful: the feeling that something which had once seemed certain was slowly slipping away.

The thought of Tavo came unbidden.

How naturally he had taken his place beside Lucia, how tenderly he touched her. He had simply found a new place in someone else’s life without looking back.

Chapter 3 - Jealousy and a Letter

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