No flowers for the dead - Chapter 19: Chapter 19
You are reading No flowers for the dead, Chapter 19: Chapter 19. Read more chapters of No flowers for the dead.
Months passed.
Scandal cooled.
The media pivoted.
Other heirs made headlines, other empires burned—but Elias and Alina remained. Stronger. Quieter. More dangerous in the way people with nothing left to prove always are.
The world still whispered about them.
But less like a warning, and more like a legend.
⸻
Elias no longer needed to walk into boardrooms.
His name walked in first.
Alina handled the day-to-day, guiding the company with an elegance that was terrifying in its precision. She didn’t fight battles. She erased the need for them.
And Elias?
He started building again—quietly. Not corporations or buildings. But things with meaning.
He launched a trust.
Opened a foundation.
Returned to the forgotten corners of the city where his family once promised hope but delivered silence.
He didn’t tell the world.
He told her.
And that was enough.
⸻
But love, even when quiet, never stops changing.
One evening, as autumn dropped gold along the balcony rail, Elias stepped behind Alina, wrapping his arms around her waist.
She leaned into him easily.
“I’ve been thinking,” he murmured against her shoulder.
“That always scares me,” she teased softly.
He chuckled, but didn’t deflect.
“I want to take you somewhere.”
“Where?”
“Back,” he said. “To where it all started.”
⸻
They flew back to the small coastal town where they first met as children.
Where he’d first scraped his knees chasing her down a hill.
Where she once gave him half her sandwich without asking what he’d give in return.
They stayed in a restored cottage near the cliffs. No phones. No cameras. No staff.
Just them.
For the first time in years, it was quiet.
They cooked.
They walked barefoot.
They kissed under the stars like the world hadn’t tried to bury them a hundred times.
And on the third night, Elias said the thing he’d never dared say aloud.
“Sometimes I think I was meant to die young.”
She turned to him slowly, bare feet curled under a blanket.
“Don’t say that.”
“I mean it,” he said. “If I hadn’t met you—if we hadn’t built what we did—I don’t think I would’ve made it.”
Alina didn’t cry. She didn’t plead.
She just reached over, took his face in her hands, and whispered:
“You didn’t survive for me.”
He blinked.
“You survived with me.”
And when he kissed her, it wasn’t desperate or hungry.
It was final.
Like a vow.
⸻
They returned home changed.
No longer fighting ghosts.
Just holding what they’d built.
⸻
But across the city, a quiet message waited in Elias’s inbox. One he hadn’t opened.
A name.
A single name he hadn’t heard since the night the first bullet nearly ended everything.
Matteo Vale.
The man who had vanished after the scandal.
The man no one had dared mention again.
Until now.
Scandal cooled.
The media pivoted.
Other heirs made headlines, other empires burned—but Elias and Alina remained. Stronger. Quieter. More dangerous in the way people with nothing left to prove always are.
The world still whispered about them.
But less like a warning, and more like a legend.
⸻
Elias no longer needed to walk into boardrooms.
His name walked in first.
Alina handled the day-to-day, guiding the company with an elegance that was terrifying in its precision. She didn’t fight battles. She erased the need for them.
And Elias?
He started building again—quietly. Not corporations or buildings. But things with meaning.
He launched a trust.
Opened a foundation.
Returned to the forgotten corners of the city where his family once promised hope but delivered silence.
He didn’t tell the world.
He told her.
And that was enough.
⸻
But love, even when quiet, never stops changing.
One evening, as autumn dropped gold along the balcony rail, Elias stepped behind Alina, wrapping his arms around her waist.
She leaned into him easily.
“I’ve been thinking,” he murmured against her shoulder.
“That always scares me,” she teased softly.
He chuckled, but didn’t deflect.
“I want to take you somewhere.”
“Where?”
“Back,” he said. “To where it all started.”
⸻
They flew back to the small coastal town where they first met as children.
Where he’d first scraped his knees chasing her down a hill.
Where she once gave him half her sandwich without asking what he’d give in return.
They stayed in a restored cottage near the cliffs. No phones. No cameras. No staff.
Just them.
For the first time in years, it was quiet.
They cooked.
They walked barefoot.
They kissed under the stars like the world hadn’t tried to bury them a hundred times.
And on the third night, Elias said the thing he’d never dared say aloud.
“Sometimes I think I was meant to die young.”
She turned to him slowly, bare feet curled under a blanket.
“Don’t say that.”
“I mean it,” he said. “If I hadn’t met you—if we hadn’t built what we did—I don’t think I would’ve made it.”
Alina didn’t cry. She didn’t plead.
She just reached over, took his face in her hands, and whispered:
“You didn’t survive for me.”
He blinked.
“You survived with me.”
And when he kissed her, it wasn’t desperate or hungry.
It was final.
Like a vow.
⸻
They returned home changed.
No longer fighting ghosts.
Just holding what they’d built.
⸻
But across the city, a quiet message waited in Elias’s inbox. One he hadn’t opened.
A name.
A single name he hadn’t heard since the night the first bullet nearly ended everything.
Matteo Vale.
The man who had vanished after the scandal.
The man no one had dared mention again.
Until now.
End of No flowers for the dead Chapter 19. Continue reading Chapter 20 or return to No flowers for the dead book page.