Chapter 48 Guilia

• MATEO
• The abandoned house sat at the end of a narrow road surrounded by dead grass and twisted trees. The sky above was gray, and the cold wind made the branches scrape against one another like old bones. I stood beside my car for a moment, staring at the house Elara had grown up in. It looked smaller than I expected. Older too. The paint was peeling from the walls, and several windows were cracked. Nothing about it looked dangerous, yet a strange feeling settled heavily in my chest. It felt like the house was watching me. I told myself that was ridiculous. It was just an old building. Just wood and stone and dust. But after everything I had learned during the past few weeks, nothing felt simple anymore. Every answer I found about Elara only created more questions. The investigator's report was sitting on the passenger seat of my car. Giulia Romano. Former wife of Alessandro Romano. Official cause of death: suicide. Unofficially? Nobody seemed to understand what had happened. Every person interviewed described the same thing. Fear. Paranoia. Isolation. The same words that had been used to describe Bianca before she was sent away. The similarity refused to leave my mind.
• The front door groaned loudly when I pushed it open. Dust floated through the air as sunlight slipped through broken windows. The smell inside was old and stale. It smelled like forgotten years. I stepped carefully across the wooden floor, listening to the silence. Every sound seemed louder than it should have been. My footsteps echoed. The wind whistled through tiny cracks in the walls. Somewhere upstairs, something shifted with a soft creak. For a second, I froze. Then I shook my head. "You're losing your mind," I muttered quietly to myself. The sound of my own voice felt strange inside the empty house. I walked deeper inside, studying everything around me. There were still old photographs hanging on the walls. Most were covered in dust. I stopped in front of one picture. Elara looked about 9 years old. She stood between Alessandro and Giulia. Her face was expressionless. Not sad. Not happy. Just blank. I stared at that picture longer than I should have. Most children smiled in family photos. Elara didn't. She looked like she was already somewhere else entirely.