His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides.
Then—crash.
His fist slammed into the glass sliding door.
Shards exploded across the floor like scattered diamonds, catching the dim light as they fell.
"My voice recorder. Where is it."
He closed the distance between us, his voice strained and unraveling at the edges. The words came out rough, broken—nothing like the smooth commands of a man born to lead.
Blood dripped from his right hand, one drop at a time, spattering against the marble like a metronome counting down to something terrible.
I had never seen him this unhinged. This human.
I summoned every ounce of courage left in my battered body and shoved him away.
Dragging my injured leg behind me, I tried to escape through the front door. Tried to flee this mausoleum of a marriage, this beautiful prison I had decorated with my own hands.
That's when it happened.
"I'm Nico Volpe. I'm eighteen years old. I want to confess my feelings to Massima."
The voice burst into the silence like a gunshot.
Young. Earnest. Full of hope.
A voice I had never heard—because by the time I entered his life, he had already stopped speaking.
"Massima, today marks our second anniversary. I hope we'll always be together."
"Massima, we've been together for three years now. My wish this year is still the same—to be with you forever."
"Massima... why did you leave?"
"Massima, I've decided to get married."
Something clattered to the ground behind me.
A worn voice recorder—the kind from another era, before digital files and cloud storage—rolled out from a corner where it must have been dislodged during his frantic search.
Its red light blinked on and off like a dying heartbeat.
Playing its contents for the empty room.
They were love letters. Confessions he had recorded for her, starting from when he was barely more than a boy. Year after year of devotion, captured in magnetic tape. A shrine to the woman who had abandoned him.
"Goodbye, Massima. I hope I'll see you again."
"Goodbye."
The recorder seemed to be broken. Damaged, perhaps, from years of obsessive handling.
It kept repeating those two words.
Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.
He lunged forward and snatched it up, cradling it against his chest like a wounded animal.
His fingers fumbled desperately at the buttons, trying to silence it.
It wouldn't stop.
My footsteps halted at the threshold.
I turned slowly.