CHAPTER 273
KATYA POV
I woke up slowly.
Not the peaceful kind of slow—no birds chirping outside my window, no sunlight stretching lazily across the bed like an invitation to stay. This was the kind of waking where consciousness crept back in piece by piece, dragging the full, unavoidable weight of memory along with it.
My head throbbed first.
Then my chest tightened.
Then it all came rushing back at once, like my brain had been waiting for me to be awake enough to suffer properly.
Nonna.The entry hall.Chiara passing out like a sack of flour.Michael standing beside me, quiet and steady in the middle of it all. And the dinner invitation that hadn't felt like an invitation at all.
I groaned softly and rolled onto my back, staring up at the ceiling of my room. Gray walls. Faint cracks near the corners that Nonna refused to fix because they were "part of the house's history."
Right now, history could mind its business.
