CHAPTER 2 — The Silence After the Scars
The room didn’t move.
Not even the air seemed willing to.
Harper still knelt on the floor, clutching the torn front of her wedding dress together like it could somehow undo what had already been revealed. Her shoulders shook in uneven, broken rhythms. Every breath sounded too sharp, too controlled—like she had learned to survive by never fully inhaling.
Enzo didn’t speak.
That alone was strange.
Men like him always spoke. Always commanded. Always filled silence with power.
But now he couldn’t decide where to put his eyes. Not because he was ashamed—he didn’t believe in shame—but because what he was seeing didn’t fit anything he had prepared for.
Scars don’t lie.
These weren’t accidents. Not childhood falls. Not careless burns.
They were structured. Repeated. Intentional.
“Get up,” he finally said.
Harper flinched hard at the sound of his voice, as if it had physically struck her.
“I said,” he repeated slower, colder, “get up.”
Her fingers loosened slightly, but she didn’t move.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Enzo added, the words tasting unfamiliar.
That made her laugh once—small, broken, disbelieving.
“You’re Enzo DeLuca,” she whispered without looking at him. “That’s what people like you say right before they do.”
Something inside his chest tightened, sharp and unwelcome.
He crouched—not close enough to touch her, but enough that she had to see he wasn’t towering over her anymore.
“Look at me.”
Slowly, she did.
Her eyes were wrecked. Not just fear. Something older. Conditioned.
“Who did that to you?” he asked.
Harper’s throat moved as she swallowed.
“No one,” she said automatically.
Enzo exhaled through his nose, a humorless sound.
“That’s a trained answer.”
Her lashes trembled.
“I said no one.”
He studied her for a long moment.
Then stood.
“Fine,” he said. “Then I’ll ask your father.”
That did it.
Harper’s head snapped up.
“No—don’t.”
It wasn’t a plea this time.
It was terror.
Enzo paused.
So it was not ignorance.
It was protection.
Interesting.
He turned slightly toward the door. “You’ll stay here.”
“I always stay,” she whispered, almost to herself.
That sentence followed him more than her scars did.
And when he left the room, he didn’t lock the door.
For the first time since his brother died, Enzo DeLuca did something without certainty.
May you like
He hesitated.
Then walked away anyway.
