The smell of burning leather wouldn’t leave my throat.
Hours later, it clung to the inside of my nose, a ghost of smoke and melted plastic drifting through the quiet hospital corridor. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, too bright, too clean, like the world was pretending it hadn’t just tried to explode me.
“They’re discharging you,” Vittorio said, like a verdict.
He didn’t sit. My father prowled the small private room as if it were a boardroom he owned, not a sterile cube with beige walls and a cracked vinyl chair. His tailored suit was immaculate, his cuff links glinting when he checked his watch, but his jaw was set too tight. A storm sealed behind expensive fabric and expensive skin.
I lay back against the white pillows, hospital bracelet cutting into my wrist. Tiny purple bruises ringed the skin from where they’d dragged me out of the wreckage and stuck needles in my veins. The nurse said I was lucky. That word tasted like ash.
“Already?” I asked. “Afraid the nurses will corrupt me with kindness?”
His gaze snapped to me, dark and sharp. “This isn’t funny, Ariana.”
“I wasn’t laughing.”
There was a beat of silence. His phone buzzed in his hand; he ignored it. That alone made my stomach tighten. Vittorio Bellanti never ignored business.
“The car—” I started, then stopped. The room tilted for a second, a flash of memory: door handle in my fingers, the slam of it shutting, my driver, Tommaso, nodding at me in the rearview, his thermos of coffee between the seats. I’d been scrolling my phone when the world turned white.
I swallowed hard. “Tommy?”
My father’s expression didn’t change. Not much ever reached his eyes. “Taken care of.”
I hated that phrase. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
A tiny pause. A confirmation. “He knew the risks.”
“He knew the risks of driving me to brunch?” My voice rose, sharp and thin. “He was there because of me.”
My father stepped closer to the bed, shadow falling over my bare legs. “He was there because he worked for me. Don’t romanticize it.”
I flinched, then forced my shoulders back against the pillows. If he saw weakness, he’d lock it in with chains.
“So that’s it?” I asked. “My driver explodes, the city dodges a fireball, and we pretend it’s just another Sunday?”
His eyes narrowed, a flash of something like fear buried under steel. “We don’t pretend anything. We reinforce. We close ranks.” He exhaled slowly, straightening. “And we eliminate problems.”
The way he said eliminate made my skin prickle.
“What problems?” I asked quietly.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he reached into his coat and pulled out my phone. It was a new one—the last had been in my purse, now probably charred metal somewhere in an evidence bag.
“You’ll use this,” he said. “Numbers are preloaded. If you need anything, you call Elena.”
I stared at the device in his palm. “Elena? Not you?”
“I’m restructuring.” The word was ice. “And you won’t need much. Your movements will be restricted until we find who did this.”
There it was. The cage, rising invisible around the hospital bed.
“Restricted how?” I asked. “Like… no more brunch? No more fresh air? Or am I allowed to breathe without permission?”
He ignored the sarcasm like he always did. “You’ll stay at home. No clubs, no galleries, no charity events unless I approve. No slipping past the gate at midnight. Your guards report directly to me.”
