Chapter 2

Marcelina's POV 

The moment the door closed behind me, I broke. Thankfully, the hallway was empty and quiet, but I barely noticed anything else as I walked down fast, wiping my cheeks with the back of my hand like that would fix it. 

But it didn't. And the tears didn't stop either. 

"Get it together, Marcel," I muttered under my breath, swiping angrily at my face again.

My chest felt too tight, like I had been holding my breath for weeks without realizing it. And I hated myself for it. I hated that I had just lost one chance I had allowed myself to imagine.

I wasn't like this.

I didn't fall apart in hallways or cry at all—not anymore. But here I was, stopping right in the middle of the hallway because I couldn't bring myself to walk anymore.

Pressing my palm against the cool wall, I bent my head and drew in a slow breath. Then another. I counted them like I always did years ago. 

"Four in, hold, four out." And just like that, I was sixteen again.

My mother had been brilliant.

That was the word everyone used.

She didn't just fill rooms with her mind, she taught in colleges, published award-winning medical journals, and debated men twice her age. I grew up watching people lean forward when she spoke and thought that was what power looked like.

But that changed when she began forgetting words.

There were small things at first—names, appointments, misplacing objects she had just held. She laughed it off as stress and overwork, we all did. But then, we started noticing the pause. The way her eyes went blank for a second too long.

Her diagnosis came later, but this was after the fear had already settled in our bones.

The condition did not kill quickly; it dismantled her piece by piece, slowly stripping her of her memory, better judgment, and independence. She forgot how to cook, then how to drive, and eventually forgot how to be alone. 

The woman who once needed no one became someone who needed help dressing, eating, and remembering her own husband and child. I became her caretaker before I even finished high school.

I reminded her who people were and learned how to smile even when my small heart was breaking. I loved her more than anything, but loving her did not make it easier to watch her disappear.

She hated it. 

And that was the worst part. Because she knew she was fading. 

"Don't let me become a burden, Marcel," She would look at me and say. 

Sometimes, it was Julia or Hannah... Any other name that wasn't mine. And that broke my heart every time, just as that sentence never left me. 

My fear was never dying. 

It was becoming someone who needed care. Loving someone, depending on them, and then losing myself while they watched, helpless, the way I had watched her. 

The condition was neurodegenerative, genetic, and autosomal dominant. If you carried it, you had a fifty percent chance of passing it on to your offspring. There was no cure and no reversal either. Only delay and wait until you take your final breath. 

I had built my life around control and became a neurologist because of it. But control has limits. And lately, the world around me has started to look... familiar.

The earliest markers of the disorder were slowly appearing in my mentors, senior colleagues, and then dangerously close to my own age group.

I saw it in the way most of them paused too long in the middle of a sentence, searching for a word they used to wield effortlessly. I saw it in the way they walked into a room, forgetting why they'd step in in the first place. The quiet retirements no one questioned, the sudden "sabbaticals".

They were fading at the edges and I recognized it. Not just because I had lived it, but because fear was very good at recognizing itself.

I wasn't imagining it, I was running out of time.

That was why Dom Vitali mattered. 

Not because he was so hot and attractive. And certainly not because his eyes made my skin feel too warm. 

I needed him because he was clean. There were no markers for neurological decline, no genetic red flags waiting to ambush a child I loved, and no inherited decay that could combine with mine to amplify the damage.

With careful selection, the probability dropped low enough to hope. Low enough that it would give my child time to grow, to remember me whole, and not need me when I could no longer be enough.

My child wouldn't carry the same terror I had lived with since I was a teenager. If I faded, it would be later. When they were older.

I wasn't dramatic enough to pretend I woke up one morning desperate for a baby. I was still whole—for now. And I wanted a child before that changed. 

I wanted to experience motherhood while my mind was still mine. While I could choose, while I could remember every first word, and every little laugh. 

Before my fertility window closed up on me.

Pushing off the wall, I took a deep breath and lifted my chin. I was not going to let this opportunity go to waste. I was not going to pass on this condition.

It was better to have my child knowing I gambled with life and tried to control every variable I could just to keep him or her safe, rather than risking nothing.

"Let's get this over with, Marcel,"

Without second thoughts, I turned around and walked back down the hallway.

My heels clicked sharply against the floor while my heart pounded so loud till it felt like it was chasing me. But I didn't slow down or think. Because if I stopped, fear would catch up with me and I would talk myself out of it.

Now was not a good time for any of those, so I pushed the door open without knocking and walked into his office. 

Dom Vitali was still there. 

Still standing where I had left him with one hand in his trouser pocket and the other, holding his glass of gin. It was like he hadn't moved at all. Like he had waited for me. 

Our eyes clashed and something dark and unreadable passed through his gaze. Surprise, maybe, or something far worse. But he didn't speak. He only watched me with those sharp, predatory eyes as he lifted the glass and finished what little gin was left inside it.

I did not give him time to think. I could already feel my nerves slipping, fear and doubt clawing their way back up my spine.

So I moved.

I let my bag slide off my shoulder and drop to the floor at the same moment he placed the empty glass on the table. That was it. There were no more exits. This was the moment where you either walked away and lived with regret, or you jumped and accepted whatever waited below.

Go hard or go home, they said.

Ignoring the way my heart slammed so hard against my chest, I took a step towards him, then another. His dark and burning eyes followed me, tracking every inch like a predator that had already decided the outcome.

When I reached him, I didn't hesitate. I jumped into his arms and crashed my mouth into his. For half a second, I thought he might push me away. But then his hands came up, gripping my waist before kissing me back just as hard.

The world tilted.

Not because I was dizzy. But because everything I had been holding tight inside me suddenly slipped loose. Fear. Want. Desperation. Need.

Unwanted heat rushed through me fast, curling low in my stomach as his grip tightened, fingers digging into my back and the back of my neck.

The kiss deepened, turned rougher, and I felt it everywhere. In my chest, in my thighs, in the sharp hitch of my breath when his mouth moved against mine like he already knew how badly this would undo me.

I forgot how to think or why I was doing this in the first place. All I knew was the way his body felt solid and perfect against mine. The way I was pressed so close there was no space left for doubt or second thoughts. 

This was supposed to be simple. Quick and clean with no emotions attached, but it wasn't. Not when my pulse was everywhere, loud in my ears, between my legs, and under my skin.

Before I could pull away or say something smart or ruin it, his lips slowed just enough to make it worse, dragging against mine deliberately, like he was taking his time memorizing me.

I hated how easily my body betrayed me and how much I wanted him to keep holding me like this. How his dark and unreadable eyes burned into me like he was already three steps ahead of wherever this was going.

Neither of us spoke.

But then, his lips curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. 

"Took you long enough," He murmured.