Chapter 484: I Miss You
Vito took a step back, putting space between us like he always did. His expression went flat and professional. "Let’s check your assignments first."
My face fell before I could stop it.
Back when I lived with the Sanders, I’d barely been old enough for school. I was the youngest, the spoiled one, the baby everyone let get away with everything. My parents used to say that as long as I was happy and healthy, nothing else mattered. My brothers would wave me off with big grins and tell me not to worry, that they’d always take care of me. Even Elena, who could have been strict, would just pat my head and tell me a little mischief never hurt anyone.
I had grown up free, undisciplined, and loved without conditions. No one had mapped out my future before I could walk. I was just allowed to exist and be happy.
Then I ended up on this island, and everything changed.
Vito had made sure of that. He brought in teachers for academics, physical training, music, even finance. The schedule never let up, and every time he came back from wherever he disappeared to, he checked my progress with the kind of precision that made my stomach tighten. If I hadn’t kept up, there were consequences. The time I’d refused to jump during a skydiving exercise, he’d taken me up anyway and made it very clear that hesitation wasn’t an option. That specific terror had never fully left me.
So when he said he wanted to check my assignments, I knew what that meant.
I grabbed his arm anyway. "Vito, it’s been so long since I’ve seen you. Can’t we just eat first and talk for a bit? I’m not even sure I passed, so let’s at least sit down. Are you hungry? I tried to make egg fried rice this afternoon, but I think cooking might not be my thing."
I was smiling, trying to redirect his attention, but his eyes had already dropped to my hands. He caught the blisters before I could hide them.
His brow pulled together. "Hot oil?"
"Yeah." I looked down at them. "You always cook when you’re here, so I wanted to learn a few things I could make for you instead. Turns out egg fried rice nearly defeated me."
He was quiet for a second. Vito had made me learn a lot of things, but cooking had never been on the list. Everything he’d taught me was about being capable, about being someone who could stand on her own in the world. Cooking to take care of someone else , that was never his goal for me, and I think part of me had known that, even while I was standing over the stove burning my fingers.
"Don’t do that again," he said. "I can cook for myself. It’s not a skill you need." He took my hand and walked me back to the room, pulling out the medical kit before I could protest.
"It’ll heal on its own," I told him. "I’m not fragile anymore."
He pressed the blister before I finished the sentence.
"Ow!" I pulled back instinctively, hissing through my teeth.
Cool ointment followed immediately, smoothed on with more patience than the moment deserved.
"It hurts," I said, looking up at him with eyes I knew were watering.
He sighed. "I know. Hold still."
Then his gaze moved lower, to my ankle, where a thin scratch had dried into something faint but visible against my skin. "What happened here?"
"Probably a branch. It’s nothing."
He didn’t respond to that. He just knelt down, lifted my foot, and rested it on his knee.
I felt heat rush to my face immediately. He was focused, methodical, the same way he approached everything , disinfecting the scratch, applying ointment, wrapping it carefully. My foot curled slightly on instinct, toes tensing with embarrassment I couldn’t quite explain.
"Vito, you really don’t have to,"
"Done." He stood, straightening up. "I’ll test you tomorrow instead. Have you eaten?"
I held up my injured hand in answer.
He looked at it, then turned without another word and walked to the kitchen.
I stood there for a moment in the quiet of the room, and that quiet settled into me the way it always did when things slowed down enough to feel it. The island had been deeply still since Dominic died. Amber had come back once after that, long enough to take Yael with her, and then she was gone too. There were still teachers here , strange, closed-off people who delivered lessons and nothing else, never looked at me for longer than necessary, never asked how I was doing. I had a schedule, a room, every material thing I needed.
And I was completely alone.
I thought about my family every day. The feud between the Sanders and the Blackwells lived in the back of my mind like something I couldn’t set down, this constant low-level fear that something was happening to the people I loved and I was too far away to know. Vito was the only thread connecting me to any of it. He was also the reason I was here. I had turned that over in my mind more times than I could count, trying to land on either gratitude or resentment, and never quite managing either cleanly.
What I had landed on was this: when he was here, I felt real. Like a person with a life, instead of a schedule.
I followed the sound of him into the kitchen, slipping on my soft shoes and moving quietly through the hall. He was already at the counter, chopping vegetables with the kind of easy efficiency that hadn’t changed since we were kids. His back was to me. He’d grown tall , somewhere around six foot now , and where he used to look like a teenager trying on a man’s seriousness, the seriousness had caught up. He was lean and precise, like something in him had been sharpened down to exactly what it needed to be.
I crossed the kitchen without thinking about it and wrapped my arms around him from behind. I pressed my cheek against his back and breathed in , clean, familiar, like something that had been safe for so long that my body remembered it before my mind did.
His hands went still under the running water. His whole frame tensed.
I didn’t move. I just held on, my voice coming out quieter than I intended. "You’re finally back. I missed you so much."
