We were starting to ascend.

“Darrelle Al-Murabarak” he blurted out without looking at me.

I felt my heart skip a beat. I would have preferred not to ask, she was the one Ismail told me about once, different from him, disunited, or at least there was no close relationship between them.

“I…”

"You don't have to tell me anything" she hastened to say, putting a hand to her forehead. “I'm aware of the situation, but I didn't think I'd find you like this; I didn't imagine meeting you in an elevator by chance. Ismail never introduced you to dad and me. What are you doing here?”

I was silent for a few seconds, while I processed the information; spinning an answer became difficult.

“I work at Magnani, I've come to interview your brother, I explained with an abrasion in my voice”

“I'm so sorry for what happened to you, it must not have been easy...” I've learned to live with it, don't worry. I interrupted awkwardly.

I didn't want her pity, her regret, that she continues to babble about an apprehension she didn't know like I did. She didn't understand what it was like to walk on mines, to burn with every step I took. I couldn't feel the explosion that left me in ruins, from which hellish burns still remained; so he didn't have to pretend to put himself in my place.

“I got angry with Ismail. You were just a girl, she shouldn't have gotten involved with you knowing that it would damage your life, that it was an unforgivable sin”

"I don't know why you're sorry, you weren't even there to witness it" Please, stop talking about a matter that does not concern you, I spat shot by memories.

"You're right, it was reckless of me" she admitted, embarrassed. We didn't start off on the right foot, do you think we go back to the beginning?

I frowned, expecting a counterattack, maybe she would ignore me after facing her, the opposite was happening, Darelle insisted on being friendly.

I had no escape.

“Marianne Lombardi, Magnani journalist, I introduced myself expiring”

“Darelle Al-Murabarak, it's a pleasure to meet you, Marianne, and I stay here. he added when we reached the seventieth floor “hopefully we'll see each other again, so see you later”

“See you soon” He left as soon as the doors opened.

The day was still weird.

Upon reaching the indicated floor, I found more sumptuousness fluttering in the place, every inch screamed neatness and an almost sickly eagerness, assiduous for perfection.

It was now or never.

I assumed that the girl with the white-rimmed glasses, coming towards me with a tablet in her hand, was the assistant. He introduced himself as such, I did the same for the fourth time in less than thirty minutes.

"You may come in, Miss Leombardi."

“Thank you”

The steps I took, as soon as I stepped inside his office, seemed like a death leap. The oxygen dissipated, he was barely breathing artificially, each puff burned.

My pulse was beating derailed.

He, after having been kilometers away from me, was now only a few meters away. My heart was filled with a pain overturned by the past. He beat imperious; my legs weakened, stunting progress.

The man I loved was with his back turned, in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, immersed in a telephone conversation.

“I'll be fine, at any moment the headache will disappear”

But I understood that I continued to love him when I experienced how the floor moved under my feet, when I was caressed by the butterfly wings fluttering inside me; when the tide of scattered emotions rose, when feeling a vortex, those turbulences in the form of a spiral through my physiognomy, but with the trajectory that pointed towards him; then I understood that I had returned to my place.

I missed the Armani perfume saturating the space, the gravity of his voice…

Ismail turned around, freezing when he saw me there in front of him.

We look at each other, absorbing a pause, a dark and agonizing silence. The years had passed by fitting him wonderfully, taking accounts, I deduced his age. The man in a suit in front of me was almost forty, although he was still close to it. But contrary to what I thought, there was no decrepit old man, nor noticeable gray hair on his abundant black hair.

He looked so handsome and captivating that I suppressed a sigh, my mouth went dry for that guy who continued to steal my breath, sanity and reason. No one dared to break eye contact, to let go of our gazes, as if a war was going on in the perpetual connection of their eyes and mine, twisting with superior emphasis.

We had not said a single word to each other, but a book was opened in the meeting, raining down a cascade of memories that drowned us. We were on the page where everything ended, lost between the lines of a silent dialogue.