Chapter 30 – Unspoken Words
Chapter 30 – Unspoken Words
The world heard him before she did.
It started with a voice. Low. Raw.
“If you’re listening to this… it means I was too much of a coward to say it to your face. I still love you, Aurora. I think I always will. Even when I try to forget—your laugh, the way you look at me like I could be better—I can't shake you. I don’t want to. God, I miss you. Every part of you.”
A pause. Then a soft click. And just like that, the internet ignited.
Aurora sat frozen in her Milan hotel suite, phone screen lighting up with hundreds of messages. The leaked voicemail played again and again from reels, podcasts, news outlets. Her inbox was flooded, her PR team frantically trying to issue a response—but she couldn’t hear anything beyond that voice.
It was Damon. Unmistakably him. But not a version of him she had ever heard. It was vulnerable, exposed… honest.
Her fingers trembled as she set the phone down.
“I never got that voicemail,” she whispered.
Luca, sitting nearby with his laptop open and brow furrowed, looked up.
“It’s not a fake. Audio checks out—multiple sources are verifying it’s real.”
Her eyes widened. “Then how—who had it?”
“Maybe someone got into his phone,” Luca offered. “Or… someone close to him leaked it.”
Aurora stood abruptly, pacing the room. “Why would someone do that? That message—he never meant for the world to hear it.”
“But now they have.” Luca’s voice was quiet. “And so have you.”
---
In the Moretti penthouse, Damon was chaos in motion. He’d smashed a glass, cursed at his advisor, and now stood seething in front of the massive windows, hands in his hair.
“I never sent it,” he muttered. “I recorded it at three a.m. weeks ago. Never hit send. I didn’t even save it to my cloud.”
His advisor kept a safe distance. “We’re still trying to trace the leak. It could’ve been a staff member, someone with access to your phone…”
Celeste stood near the doorway, silent until now.
“Or someone who knew exactly what it would do.”
Damon’s eyes snapped to her. “You’re saying I leaked it myself?”
“No,” she said, stepping into the room. “I’m saying someone wanted Aurora to hear it—and wanted the whole world to know, too.”
Damon exhaled sharply, rubbing his face. “This ruins everything. I wasn’t ready… she wasn’t ready.”
Celeste’s jaw tightened. “Maybe you weren’t ready to tell her. But your heart already did.”
---
The voicemail had fractured the internet into sides. Team Damon. Team Luca. A thousand theories spun through social media like wildfire.
But none of that mattered to Aurora as she arrived at the Milan design house for her final dress fitting. Reporters lined the gates. Flashes burst like tiny lightning storms. Her driver pushed through, but the damage had been done.
Inside, as she stood on the platform with pins catching her hem, the head designer fussing around her, she felt exposed—like everyone could see through her skin.
A soft knock came to the fitting room door.
“It’s me,” Luca called through.
Aurora looked to the designer. “Give us a minute.”
Luca stepped in, his expression unreadable.
“They’re asking if you want to issue a response,” he said. “Clarify things. Deny, confirm, whatever.”
She looked at herself in the mirror. “I don’t even know how I feel yet. How do I explain that to the world?”
“You don’t have to explain it to the world,” he said gently. “Just to yourself.”
Her eyes met his in the mirror. “He said he misses every part of me. But it’s too late for words, isn’t it?”
“Only if you decide it is.”
He stepped closer, then hesitated. “But you should know… if you go back to him, I won’t stand in the way. But I also won’t be waiting forever.”
---
Later that night, Damon sat alone on the rooftop balcony of his family’s Milan estate. The city below glittered. He didn’t touch his drink.
When the soft scuff of footsteps reached his ears, he didn’t turn around.
“I figured you’d come,” he said.
But it wasn’t Aurora.
Celeste stepped forward, arms crossed. “I came to say goodbye.”
That made him turn.
“I’m leaving,” she continued. “You and I both know this thing between us… it was never real. At least not for you.”
He stood, something regretful flickering across his face. “Celeste—”
She held up a hand. “Don’t. I deserve someone who looks at me the way you look at her in that video.”
Damon didn’t argue.
“You should fight for her,” she said, softer now. “Before someone else wins.”
And with that, she walked away.
---
Aurora stood at the balcony of her suite, wind tugging at her curls. The city whispered below, alive and humming.
She pressed play on the voicemail again. Damon’s voice filled the air.
There were so many things left unsaid. But this one thing—this message—had found her anyway.
She didn’t know who leaked it. Or why.
But maybe it didn’t matter.
Because now, she knew.
And knowing changed everything.
---
Damon receives an anonymous message: “That voicemail? Just the beginning. Check your files. You’re not the only one with secrets.”