The afternoon stillness in the Rossi estate was a particular kind of quiet. Not true silence—the distant hum of traffic, the faint whir of old pipes, the muffled footsteps of staff—all existed, but were absorbed by thick walls and carpets, leaving behind a heavy, slow-flowing hush.
Lorenzo had just returned from the Group, carrying draft budget adjustments for the archives department to review that evening. He took the back stairs out of habit—narrower, carpet worn thin, but closer to his study and away from the main staircase where he might encounter other family members.
As he reached the landing between the second and third floors, voices drifted up from the morning room below. The door was slightly ajar. These weren't conversational tones, but a suppressed, rising tension, like an undercurrent finding a crack in the ice.
"…So that's your answer? A flat 'no'?" It was Sophia's voice, stripped of its usual elegant restraint, now sharp and metallic. "Again and again, Elisa. Massimo is your *brother*."
Lorenzo stopped instinctively, standing in the shadowed corner of the dim stairwell. He hadn't meant to listen, but the words rose clearly.
"Mother, I made myself clear last time." Elisa's voice was colder, tempered ice, each word precise and hard. "The Group is not a nursery. There are no 'trial' positions. Massimo has no interest in business—you know better than I what he does with his days. Forcing him in helps no one. Not him, not the Group."
"*Helps*?" Sophia's voice held a note of incredulous scorn. "You talk to me of 'help'? Of the Group's 'interest'? Elisa, he is your only brother! You share the same blood! Helping him, guiding him—that is your responsibility as his sister! How is it that an outsider, someone from some… rustic backwater, can find a place in your father's eyes, your grandfather's estimation, and make himself useful, while your own flesh and blood can't even get a foot in the door?"
"Lorenzo has his expertise," Elisa's voice showed no ripple, but Lorenzo could imagine the slight tightening of her jaw. "He does work he's qualified for and that is needed. His background is irrelevant. And Massimo—what is he qualified for? His gaming ranking? His skill at avoiding responsibility?"
"How can you say that!" Sophia's pitch rose sharply, the elegant façade shattering to reveal something raw and pained beneath. "Yes, he's immature! He's careless! That's why he needs someone to pull him up! His sister, who has the power and the position! Not to stand by, watching coldly, or worse… becoming an obstacle in his path!"
A short, heavy silence. The air felt thick enough to wring.
Then Elisa's voice again, lower, slower, each word like a cold stone dropped into a well:
"An obstacle? Since when, Mother, has my living, my working, doing what I am meant to do… become an 'obstacle' to Massimo?" A rare, almost imperceptible tremor entered her voice, quickly suppressed. "Is it because of what happened to my brother? Do you believe everything that should have been his was 'stolen' by me? That even this position should be his, and I am just a… shameful substitute?"
Lorenzo's heart sank.
A faint clink sounded from below—a cup rattling, perhaps, or a shaking hand.
"Stop it!" Sophia's voice turned ragged, torn from her throat. "Don't you dare speak of him! You have no right!"
"No right," Elisa repeated, the words hollow. "Yes. I never had any right. No right to your affection, no right to your pride, not even the right… to have lived. Because I was the one who survived. Not him."
There was no weeping in her voice, no anger—only a bottomless exhaustion and resignation. Its calm was more chilling than any shout.
"If I had been the one who died that day," Elisa continued, her tone flat, as if narrating another's story, "it would be my brother sitting here now, listening to you demand he 'help' Massimo. He would have done it better. He would have pleased you. Everything would be… back on the 'right' track. Massimo would have an admirable, capable older brother to lead him. Not a sister his mother resents. An eyesore."
"Elisa…" Sophia's voice trembled, the earlier sharpness gone, replaced by a chaotic, wounded confusion, as if her most hidden injury had been laid bare.
"So, Mother," Elisa cut her off, her voice frosting over again, sealing itself in a thicker armor, "please don't use 'duty' or 'family' with me. What you want isn't for me to 'help' Massimo. You want, through him, to reclaim what you believe should have been your son's. And I am the reminder of what you lost, and of what you wrongly gained."
Footsteps followed—sharp heels on hardwood, quick and final, moving toward the door.
Lorenzo turned immediately, moving silently and swiftly up to the third floor. He leaned against the wall in the shadowed stairwell entrance, his heart beating heavily in his chest. The fragments he'd heard spun in his mind—the pier, the drowned brother, the daughter who survived and became a "mistake"… All the vague unease he'd sensed, the profound, unyielding chill between Elisa and her mother, suddenly had a cruel, clear source.
Minutes later, he heard another set of heels, less steady, moving in the opposite direction—Sophia, likely. The old house settled back into its heavy quiet, but now the silence seemed to vibrate with the echoes of those sharp, blood-tinged words.
He didn't return to his study immediately, standing in the corridor for a while. Outside, dusk gathered, and Milan's lights began to wink on. He thought of Elisa's flawless composure at the negotiating table, her straight yet distant posture at family dinners, the fleeting weariness she sometimes allowed to show, the lamp in her study that often burned late into the night.
Beneath that cold, hard shell lay a story this heavy, this suffocating.
After a while, he took his files and walked to his study. Passing Elisa's room, he paused. The door was firmly shut.
Inside his study, he turned on the desk lamp but found it hard to focus on the budget drafts. The numbers floated before his eyes, while Elisa's hollow "I never had any right" seemed to linger in the air.
Some time later, a soft knock sounded at his door.
"Come in."
The door opened. Elisa stood there. She had changed out of her day suit into a simple black cashmere sweater and trousers, her hair loose. Without makeup, she looked pale in the dim hallway light, faint shadows under her eyes. She held a glass of water, her knuckles white.
"Still working?" Her voice was slightly hoarse, but she kept it level.
"Reviewing some files." Lorenzo set down his pen, his gaze steady.
She entered but didn't sit, standing by his desk, her eyes scanning his open files before moving to the window. "Issues with the budget?" she asked, her tone slipping into its usual professional register.
"Routine adjustments. Nothing major."
A brief silence fell, filled only by the soft hum of the desk lamp.
Elisa let out a faint, humorless laugh, pure exhaustion. "You heard. Downstairs." It wasn't a question.
Lorenzo didn't deny it. He nodded.
She was quiet for another moment, looking down at the water in her glass, its surface trembling slightly. "It must seem… absurd. A glossy family, harboring such a tired script." Her voice was quiet, almost to herself. "A mother who can never forgive the daughter who lived, because she loved the son who died more."
"It's not tired," Lorenzo said, his voice quiet but clear. "It's a tragedy."
She looked up, surprised. In her ice-blue eyes, the hard layer seemed to crack minutely, revealing a deep-seated confusion and… pain beneath.
"She lost a child," Lorenzo continued, his tone measured, stating a fact. "That kind of grief may never truly heal. Sometimes, the pain is so great, people can't find the right target for their anger. So… the living become the easiest mark." He paused. "It wasn't your fault, Elisa. The accident wasn't your fault. Surviving wasn't."
Her lips parted slightly as if to speak, but no sound came. She looked away again, out the window, her profile at the edge of the lamplight looking fragile. Her grip on the glass tightened.
"I know it wasn't my fault," she finally said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Logically, I've always known. But when the person closest to you uses every look, every tone, every conversation to remind you that your very existence is a mistake, a regret… in time, you start to doubt yourself." She drew a breath, slightly unsteady.
Lorenzo listened quietly, offering no interruption, no empty comfort.
"She is also a mother," he said slowly, his eyes on her tense hands. "A mother broken by a loss so vast it can't be undone. Her way of coping is wrong. It has hurt you deeply. But the pain itself—the pain of that loss—is real. Understanding a mother's grief doesn't mean you have to accept the hurt she directs at you, or carry a guilt that isn't yours."
He met her eyes. "You can acknowledge her pain, and still walk your own path. Firmly. You don't need to 'prove' anything to anyone with your achievements, Elisa. Your worth doesn't require anyone's validation. Least of all from someone… whose vision is clouded by sorrow."
Elisa was silent for a long time. Outside, the city's lights formed a flowing river in the night. The room was so quiet he could hear her controlled, shallow breath.
When she finally looked up again, the vulnerability had been carefully tucked away, a thin layer of calm ice restored over her eyes.
"Thank you," she said softly, the two words light yet seemingly costing her great effort.
"Get some rest," Lorenzo said, his tone ordinary. "The materials for tomorrow's meeting are ready."
Elisa nodded, said nothing more, and left the study, closing the door gently behind her.
Lorenzo sat in the pool of lamplight, not returning to his work immediately. He looked out at the glittering, cold cityscape, then down at the files of numbers and charts spread before him.
Beneath the gleaming surface of the Rossi empire—the family, the wealth, the power, the calculations—lay wounds this raw and sorrow this profound. Elisa Rossi, the woman called "the sharpest commercial mind on the peninsula," the one who moved through boardrooms without a misstep—at her core, perhaps she was still that girl on the pier, who had lost her brother, and with him, her mother's warmth.
He switched off the lamp, letting the room sink into darkness. Only the city's glow seeped in, casting faint, shifting shapes on the floor.
Down the hall, in Elisa's room, the lights were off. She stood by her window, looking out at the same night, still holding the now-cool glass of water. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, the look in them seemed to hold not just heaviness and hurt, but a trace of release, and a faint, not yet fully understood softening.
The night was long. The old house breathed quietly in the dark, holding all its secrets, its wounds, and perhaps, the fragile beginnings of understanding, quietly taking root.