Chapter 17
Two years after the livestream, we held a Bellini family training day.
Different room.
Different purpose.
Children learning basic safety.
Adults pretending not to be competitive.
Ada came because she wanted to.
No straps.
No cameras.
No Sebastian.
At one point, a little cousin knocked over a water bottle.
It rolled across the floor.
Stopped against my shoe.
I froze.
Same sound.
Plastic against leather.
Ada noticed.
For a second, we were both back there.
Heavy bag swinging.
Water on the mat.
Red camera light.
Rhea’s voice promising I would kneel.
Then Ada walked over.
Picked up the bottle.
Drank.
Held it toward me.
“Thirsty?”
I laughed.
“Yeah.”
I drank.
That was all.
No flashback speech.
No dramatic closure.
The room kept moving.
People shouted.
Kids climbed onto pads.
Someone argued about gloves.
Normal.
Later, Ada sat beside me on one of the padded benches.
“You know what bothered me most?”
“The camera?”
“No.”
“Rhea saying you’d kneel.”
I looked at her.
“I thought if you did, I’d ruin you.”
There it was.
The damage they wanted.
Guilt attached to love.
I shook my head.
“If I ever kneel to save you, that’s my choice.”
She looked at me.
“And if you don’t?”
“Then there better be a damn good reason.”
She laughed.
Good.
Across the room, Rafe was teaching two teenagers how to wrap their hands.
No one filming.
No secret viewers.
No men paying to watch vulnerability as entertainment.
Two years earlier, Sebastian believed power could be measured by whether I stayed standing while my sister suffered.
He misunderstood strength completely.
Standing is easy when nobody matters.
Power becomes complicated when you love people.
That does not make love a weakness.
It makes the person trying to weaponize it dangerous.
Ada bumped my shoulder.
“Still think you passed the test?”
I looked at her.
“No.”
She frowned.
“Why?”
“Because it was never their test to give.”
She smiled.
That was the truth.
The old Bellini system had spent generations testing loyalty through pain.
Parents against children.
Brothers against sisters.
Bosses against blood.
I had finally learned the only useful question was simpler.
When someone you love is hurting, do you make their pain prove something—
or do you stop it?
May you like
The water bottle rolled away again.
This time neither of us watched it.
