Synopsis

**Lina Marchesi doesn’t remember the night her fiancé died. She only knows he drowned near their private beach house on the Amalfi Coast—and that she was found barefoot, bloodied, and unresponsive in a boat nearby. There were no signs of foul play, and Lina, an American expat novelist, hasn't been able to write since.

A year later, under the weight of trauma, gaps in her memory, and public suspicion, she returns to the same village—not to heal, but to hide. But the quiet isn’t quiet for long. Whispers trail her in the market, her old neighbors keep their distance, and someone keeps leaving pages from her *unfinished manuscript* on her doorstep—pages she doesn't remember writing.

Enter **Milo Caruso**, a former war photographer turned reclusive innkeeper with his own ghosts. He’s disfigured from an explosion, hiding out in the crumbling hills above the sea. Their paths cross when Lina takes up residence at his isolated property, and tension builds—first in silence, then in sharp, probing conversations over wine and cigarettes.

Their connection is messy, magnetic, and deeply flawed. Milo is blunt and emotionally unavailable; Lina is unraveling but seductive, using charm as armor. They orbit each other—drawn, repelled, resisting. But both know what it’s like to live with something unspeakable.

As Lina pieces together her fractured memory, it becomes clear that her fiancé’s death wasn’t as accidental as the police claimed. And someone in the village wants the truth buried.

And as she and Milo fall into a love that’s as brutal as it is tender, Lina begins to ask herself the scariest question of all:

**What if she killed him?**

The storm passed, but the air remained heavy—wet with salt and something unsaid.


Lina woke tangled in the sheets, the smell of Milo still clinging to her skin. Her body remembered him even when her thoughts fought to stay distant. She slipped into one of his shirts, padded barefoot down the narrow hall, and found him in the garden with a cup of coffee and the cat on his lap like nothing had shifted between them.


He looked up, eyes unreadable. "You left early."


"You were asleep." She hesitated. "I didn't want it to feel like something it wasn't."


He raised an eyebrow. "And what was it, then?"


Lina sank into the chair opposite him. "A mistake we'll make again."


She lit a cigarette and inhaled like it would fill the silence.


"I dreamt of the fight," she said finally. "Last night. The one with Luca. I remember shouting. I remember the look on his face—this… ugly kind of victory. Like he thought he'd won something just by making me lose control."


She continued, voice low. "He was drunk. I told him I wanted out. He called me a fraud. Said I used him like I used everything else—for 'inspiration.' Then he said he was going to tell the press I fabricated my trauma."


Milo's jaw twitched. "He sounds like a bastard."


"He was complicated," Lina murmured. "But yes, sometimes, he was."


She flicked ash into the gravel. "I don't remember pushing him. I remember standing on the dock, the wind slamming into me. Then water. Cold. So much of it. I was in the boat when the police found me."


"Almost. Hypothermic. Covered in bruises."


Lina nodded. "Some of it was mine. Some of it wasn't."


Then Milo leaned forward, arms on his knees. "You said the pages felt like warnings."


"What if someone else is writing them?" he asked. "Someone who wants you to remember. Who's been watching you."


Lina blinked. "You think someone followed me here?"


The chill that ran through her had nothing to do with the wind.


Chapter 21 - Body Memory