Owned by Silence

Livia’s POV

Alejandro Ronan Castillo went still when I told him I was leaving.

Not surprised. Not angry.

Still like I had just said something that required recalculation.

“You’re certain?” he asked.

There was nothing in his tone. No edge. No warmth. Just quiet.

“Completely,” I said.

That should have been the end of it.

A congratulation. A handshake. Maybe one of his carefully chosen compliments the kind he gave that made people feel seen in ways they couldn’t quite explain.

Instead, he looked at me like he was trying to decide something.

Then he smiled.

“Of course,” he said smoothly. “You deserve it.”

And just like that, the moment passed.

Or at least I thought it had.

The morning I left Castillo & Associates, the sky over Milan was the colour of smoke.

Heavy. Low. Waiting.

I noticed it on my way in and dismissed it immediately. I was twenty-two, freshly graduated, and walking into the last day of a job that had changed everything.

I had an offer letter in my bag.

Vitale Legal Associates.

Even thinking the name felt different. Heavier. Like it carried weight I hadn’t fully measured yet.

I had read the letter four times.

Five, if I counted the version I’d taken a photo of and sent to Lara at two in the morning followed by seventeen exclamation marks and a voice note loud enough that she’d called me back immediately, half asleep and still screaming.

“You’re leaving Castillo?” she’d said.

“I got Vitale,” I’d said.

There had been a pause. Then:

“Of course you did.”

That was Lara. Absolute confidence in me, even when I hadn’t quite reached it myself.

I had earned it.

Eight months at Castillo & Associates arriving before everyone, leaving after everyone, surviving on espresso and quiet determination.

Alejandro had noticed.

That was the thing.

He noticed everything.

He remembered details most people forgot the subject of my thesis, the way I structured my arguments, the fact that I didn’t take sugar in my coffee. He had mentioned my work in rooms I hadn’t been invited into yet. Passed my name forward when I wasn’t there to hear it.

He had been kind.

Warm, even.

Which was why that moment in his office that stillness sat somewhere in my mind in a way I couldn’t quite file.

My desk took less than ten minutes to clear.

I had never been someone who accumulated things. A habit from a childhood that had moved too often to allow it.

Still there were pieces.

A small cactus Lara had insisted would “bring personality into corporate oppression.”

A spare blazer folded neatly over the back of my chair.

And my father’s photograph, tucked inside my notebook.

I picked it up.

Held it for a second longer than necessary.

He smiled up at me the same way he always had warm, steady, a little tired. The kind of face that made you trust things would work out, even when they didn’t.

“Vitale,” I murmured softly. “You would have liked that.”

He would have.

A real firm. A real beginning.

He had always been careful when we talked about my future. Proud but measured. Like there were things about this world he understood better than he ever said out loud.

I hadn’t pushed.

I should have.

“Leaving without saying goodbye?”

I turned.

Alejandro stood in the doorway, one shoulder resting casually against the frame. Composed. Effortless. Exactly as he always was.

He was, objectively, a beautiful man.

Dark hair. Sharp jaw. The kind of quiet confidence that didn’t need to be announced. Most people in the firm responded to it instinctively admiration, attraction, something softer they tried not to name.

I had never quite felt it.

Not fully.

There had always been something else underneath. Something I couldn’t define only notice.

“I came to find you,” I said, adjusting the strap of my bag. “Your assistant said you were in a call.”

“I finished early.”

He pushed off the doorframe and crossed the room slowly.

Deliberately.

He stopped just close enough to matter.

“I wanted to see you off properly.”

There was something in the way he said it.

Something I couldn’t quite place.

“Alejandro—”

“You’re going to be extraordinary, Livia.”

His voice dropped slightly. Softer. More personal.

“You always were.”

I held his gaze.

There it was again that stillness. That quiet, careful attention that felt... heavier than it should have.

“I just want you to know,” he continued, “wherever you go, whatever happens...”

A pause.

“I’m in your corner.”

It was exactly the right thing to say.

Exactly the right tone.

Exactly the right moment.

And still—

Something in me hesitated.

Just slightly.

“Thank you,” I said. “For everything. Truly.”

He reached out then adjusting the strap of my bag.

Unnecessary.

His fingers lingered for half a second too long.

“Take care of yourself,” he said quietly.

I walked out into the grey Milan morning and told myself the feeling in my chest was just sentiment.

Endings always felt strange.

Even good ones.

I didn’t look back.

I didn’t see him move to the window.

I didn’t see the way his expression changed once I was gone the warmth gone, replaced by something colder. Sharper.

I didn’t see him pick up his phone.

Or hear the call he made.

“Tell him she’s moving.”

A pause.

“No,” Alejandro said quietly, looking out over the city. “He already knows.”

Across Milan, in an office high above the city far above anything I had ever stepped into a man stood by a window of his own.

He didn’t ask questions.

He didn’t need details.

He had already read the file.

Already made the decision.

Already been waiting.

And for the first time in my life—

I had stepped into something I didn’t understand.

End of Chapter One

💭Why do you think Alejandro went still when Livia mentioned Vitale Legal?💭And the man who was already waiting... what does he want with her?

Tell me your theories I read every single one. 🖤