Lina closed the door behind her without sparing Albert a glance. She gently brushed her pale dress, as if shaking off invisible dust, then placed the bouquet in a vase in the hallway. Her movements were calm, harmonious, almost ceremonial—which only intensified Albert’s sense of the heaviness of her own breathing, harsh and incongruous with the elegant silence.
“I asked a question,” he said finally, trying to control his trembling voice. “Where were you?”
Lina turned, but not with the haste of someone caught red-handed—rather with the dignity of a woman who owed no explanations to anyone. She ran her fingers down her neck, touched the chain, and then looked him straight in the eye. There was not a trace of guilt in her gaze—only a calm, hard certainty.
“I was where I wanted to be,” she replied gently. “Where there was no smell of sweat, resentment, or obligations that no one had the right to impose on me. Where no one expected me to be a tool in someone else’s hands.”
Alberto felt a wave of rage rise to his temples.
“With who…?” he asked, his voice breaking mid-sentence. He didn’t recognize himself in that sound.
Lina raised her eyebrows slightly, as if she was only surprised by how banal his question was.
“With yourself, Alberto. Do you know what it’s like? To have one day that truly belongs to you? To wake up and not be prepared for orders? To breathe the way you want, not the way someone expects you to?”
She moved slowly into the living room, spreading that warm, refined scent—a sweet amber and bergamot note—like a prelude to something Alberto couldn’t quite name. He followed her, still in his dirty, earth-soaked clothes, his muscles still aching from the holes he’d dug and the sacks he’d carried. In that moment, all his efforts seemed foolish, even childish.
“Do you know what I’ve been doing these past few days?” he blurted out. “I’ve been working my ass off. Working like a dog so they wouldn’t notice you were gone. So they wouldn’t think… I’d lost you.”
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