WHAT NOW? Some wounds never truly heal.

The scream of tires ripped through the night and ricocheted off the rocky walls of the mountain road. A second later, the BMW’s LED headlights pierced the darkness.

Anna was exhilarated. As if possessed by a rage that had finally found its language, she linked one drift into the next with insolent precision. The rear of the car swung toward the parapet; a sharp turn of the wheel brought it back into line, only inches from the drop.

The image of that man—his tattoos straight out of a magazine, his manufactured confidence—remained burned into her vision.

What had possessed her to agree to a date through an app?

She floored the accelerator. The engine filled the cabin with a deep growl. Despite the speed and the cool air rushing through the open window, the stale smell of the pub still seemed to cling to her skin: warm beer and human banality. The memory of the young man’s stunned expression, frozen on the pavement after she had abandoned him without a word, almost made her smile.

The cold leather beneath her fingers, the resistance of the steering wheel, the line held to the millimeter—little by little, her heartbeat settled into a steady rhythm.

“Dating apps. Never again.”

Anna cracked one eye open.

10:30 a.m.

She remained motionless for a few seconds, captive to the warmth of the sheets. Then she slipped free with the deliberate slowness she brought to anything involving her body. The white satin slid across her skin like warm water.

At the touch of a control, she raised the blinds. Cannes Bay revealed itself, radiant beneath a light so perfect it bordered on aggressive. Here, the blue had ceased to be miraculous; it was routine, a sumptuous monotony.

Her gaze fell on the dress from the night before, abandoned across an armchair like a discarded skin.

A brief, humorless laugh escaped her.

“All that elegance for that... What a waste.”

She made her way to the bathroom, her bare feet barely audible against the stone floor. In front of the mirror, she began her morning ritual: moisturizer, serum, sunscreen. Each gesture followed the last with the precision of choreography rehearsed long ago.

The mirror gave back a pale face with clean, sharp lines, outwardly impassive. She brushed her blonde bob, cut with geometric rigor, then crossed into the dressing room. Mirrors covered the walls, reflecting her athletic body from several angles. Anna examined herself without indulgence, with the cold detachment of an engineer inspecting a machine whose every strength and weakness she knew.

The beauty others saw in her, the attention she attracted, the misunderstandings she inspired—all of it had become foreign to her.

She slipped into a pure white swimsuit and left the room.

The long corridor of raw concrete swallowed the sound of her footsteps. Farther ahead, the staircase appeared suspended in midair, drawing a perfect line through the heart of the villa. After nothing more than a glass of water, Anna slid open the immense glass doors.

The morning heat struck her face.

The pool stretched out before her, twenty-five meters of blue water cut into a lawn too green, mown with a precision that looked artificial. Anna stood for a moment at the edge. Motionless in her white swimsuit beneath the harsh light, she might have stepped out of a David Hockney painting.

Then she dived.

The water closed over her, cold and silent. She swam lap after lap for an hour without slowing, governed by an inner rhythm that seemed to hold everything in its grasp.

Later, seated before the horizon with her chin resting on her knees, she watched the sea with a stillness that, in her, resembled absence more than contemplation.

Her phone vibrated.

She studied the screen before answering. Julia’s name flashed across it.

“Yes...”

“You could at least make an effort to sound pleased, Anna. So? The man?”

“Nothing to say. A yawning void.”

“You’re impossible... I know opening yourself up again is difficult, but you can’t entomb yourself alive. Mom worries too. You have everything you need to be happy, and yet you stay alone...”

“You’re mostly eager to see me paired off so you can stop worrying. I have to go.”

She ended the call without waiting for an answer. These intrusions into her solitude irritated her more than she cared to admit.

After a meal eaten in the immaculate silence of the kitchen, her phone vibrated again.

Céline this time.

“Again?” Anna murmured before answering.

“Are you coming into town? Julia told me about last night’s disaster...”

“You should both consider careers in espionage.”

“So, are you coming?”

“Yes. On one condition: not a word about my love life.”

“Message received. Our usual café, in two hours.”

Anna hung up.

In the living room, her attention was drawn to the white grand piano. In the middle of the spare, uncluttered room, the instrument reigned like an altar, the only presence capable of rivaling the emptiness.

She approached it, placed her fingers on the ivory keys, and began a Chopin nocturne.

From the first bars, something inside her reordered itself. Her touch possessed surgical precision, but never coldness. She did not merely play the music: she revealed its hidden architecture, its tensions, its spaces, the invisible breath between two notes. Time withdrew from the room.

When she closed the lid over the keys, the light had changed.

Despite the contempt she displayed for the gaze of others, Anna devoted an endless amount of time to getting ready. She chose her clothes, corrected a crease, started her makeup over until every line fell into place. For her, symmetry had nothing to do with vanity. It was a boundary. A fragile rampart raised against the chaos that had never stopped rumbling beneath the surface.