Chương 5
“And bad people can do good things?”
“Yes.”
She thought about it.
“That’s annoying.”
“It is.”
Maya nodded like they had agreed on something important.
Luca answered the call.
“What do you want, Marcus?”
A pause.
Then a familiar voice.
“Nice to hear from you too.”
“I didn’t say I was happy.”
Marcus laughed quietly.
The sound irritated Luca because it sounded comfortable.
“Someone told me you visited Dr. Bell.”
Luca’s expression changed.
“Who?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
Another pause.
“You always did focus on the wrong detail.”
“And you always avoided the right one.”
The silence between them was old.
Not new anger.
Older.
The kind built from years of unfinished conversations.
Marcus sighed.
“Luca, I’m not calling to fight.”
“That’s usually what people say before they fight.”
“I heard there might be progress.”
Luca looked toward Maya.
She was watching him carefully.
“How did you hear that?”
“People talk.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the answer you’re getting.”
Luca felt the old frustration return.
Marcus always spoke like every conversation was a negotiation.
Every sentence had a hidden purpose.
“Why do you care?”
“Because if your condition changes, things change.”
“What things?”
“Your company.”
Luca’s grip tightened around the phone.
There it was.
Not concern.
Not friendship.
Business.
“I’m not dead, Marcus.”
“I never said you were.”
“You act like it.”
The other end went quiet.
Then Marcus lowered his voice.
“You know that’s not fair.”
Luca looked down at the table.
Fair.
A word people used when they wanted to avoid admitting something hurt.
“You made decisions without me.”
“I kept the company alive.”
“You took control.”
“Because someone had to.”
The answer came too quickly.
Too confidently.
Luca closed his eyes.
For years, he had wondered if Marcus had betrayed him.
The worst part was that he still was not sure.
Because Marcus had also been the man who sat beside his hospital bed when Luca’s own family could not handle seeing him.
People were rarely one thing.
That was what made everything harder.
“I need to know something,” Luca said.
“What?”
“Were you hoping I would never come back?”
The silence lasted longer than before.
When Marcus finally answered, his voice was quieter.
“No.”
Luca waited.
“But?”
“There was a time when I thought your old life was gone.”
The honesty surprised him.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I thought you needed to build something new.”
“And you decided what that would be?”
“No.”
Marcus exhaled.
“I decided what I thought would protect everyone.”
Luca looked around the apartment.
The expensive furniture.
The empty spaces.
The life built around the assumption that he was finished.
“You don’t get to protect people by removing them.”
Marcus did not answer immediately.
Then he said something Luca did not expect.
“Maybe you’re right.”
The call ended a few seconds later.
Luca remained still.
Elena watched him.
“What happened?”
He placed the phone on the table.
“I don’t know.”
Maya looked up.
“Another thing you don’t know?”
“Yes.”
She nodded.
“Lots of things.”
Luca looked at her.
The strange thing was that she did not say it with fear.
She said it like uncertainty was simply part of being alive.
That night, Luca returned to the window.
But this time, he did not sit there for hours.
He looked out at the city for a few minutes.
Then he turned around.
Behind him was a room with a child’s drawing on the table.
A half-finished glass of water beside it.
A jacket hanging over a chair.
Evidence that people had been there.
Evidence that the apartment was no longer just a place where he waited.
His phone buzzed again.
This time, it was not Marcus.
It was an email from Dr. Bell.
The subject line was simple.
Additional Medical History Needed.
Luca opened it.
The request was ordinary.
Old records.
Previous treatments.
Anything related to the accident.
But one sentence near the bottom made him stop.
Please include any medical information from the first year after the injury that may not have been documented in your current file.
Luca read it twice.
Then a third time.
Because there was something he had never told Dr. Bell.
Something he had never told anyone.
A week after the accident, while he was still in the hospital, he had felt something.
A small movement.
A moment so brief he convinced himself it was nothing.
Then the doctors told him there was no measurable response.
So Luca buried the memory.
Not because he forgot.
Because remembering it hurt too much.
He stared at the email.
For twelve years, he had believed the story of his body being broken.
But now another possibility appeared.
Maybe the story had never been complete.
For the first time in twelve years, Luca wondered if the worst day of his life had contained something he missed.
Not something impossible.
Not a miracle.
Just a detail.
A moment.
A piece of information that had been buried under everything that came after.
He closed the email and sat in silence.
The apartment around him had changed without changing at all.
The same walls.
The same furniture.
The same view.
But his relationship with the room had shifted.
Before, every corner reminded him of what he could not do.
Now every corner seemed to ask what he had stopped trying to do.
He hated that question.
It felt unfair.
After twelve years of accepting a reality everyone else accepted, suddenly he was expected to challenge it.
His phone remained in his hand.
He opened the email again.
The request from Dr. Bell was professional.
Simple.
No dramatic language.
No promises.
Just information.
That made it worse.
Luca had spent years being disappointed by people who promised too much.
Now the smallest possibility from someone careful felt more dangerous.
He placed the phone on the table and rolled toward the hallway.
Maya was still awake.
He could hear movement from the guest room.
A child’s voice whispered to herself.
May you like
Probably reading.
Probably creating some imaginary conversation between characters in a book.
