Leonora remained like a statue on the entrance stairs of the salon, aware of the judgmental stare in Anila's sharp eyes, even for the fact that she was breathing, and walked towards her.
 
    She stood in front of her with a small distance between them and asked to touch her soul with a kind look, but Anila stared at her rigidly, as if she didn't have a soul at all.
 
    Leonora lowered her head in defeat. Anila closed her eyes, tired from the strength shown just before, and looked at her gently.
 
    "I didn't have the courage to come earlier," she risked expressing her perceived weakness, and Leonora looked at her understandingly.
 
    "Thank you for coming." Her grateful eyes shone from the shallow layer of tears.
 
    "Shall we sit somewhere and talk?"
 
    Leonora nodded, and they walked side by side, still feeling like strangers in the reality they were living in, as if someone had thrown them unfairly into that stage of history and not that they had agreed upon themselves a little while ago to talk.
 
    Anila led her to the entrance of a bar, with pine green walls, hazel parquet floors, and carpets under each yellow square table, flanked by tea-brown sofas and round tables also in a light maroon shade, with navy blue chairs around them.
 
    As if they had agreed with words that they would need privacy to cry, they decided to sit at a round table, distanced from the others and hidden at the end of the bar by a dividing wall in the straight row of tables behind it.
 
    They waited for the waitress to take the order before one of them opened the conversation. Leonora was looking away with her heart pounding in her frail chest to keep the warrior in its grip longer, and Anila had her blank eyes fixed on Leonora's white phone with a gold-yellow case. Leonora understood Anila's dead gaze, which she once had herself and occasionally continued to have when she was not with her family, was visited by the past, and her eyes heated up in tears from her condition. She wanted to hug her and help her, as she asked. The waitress left the bill with their drinks on the table and left.
 
    Neither of them had the courage to speak yet.
 
    Anila took the cup with trembling hands to drink the tea she ordered. Why was she avoiding it? She was finally in front of Leonora to talk and finish everything.
 
    "How did you find out?" She couldn't look at her when she asked, afraid that she would give up and that she would tell her that she couldn't look at her without thinking about Blerimi and that night and for Leonora to get out of her sight.
 
    "A woman came and told me when I was living with Blerimi in America. After that, he confessed everything: that he used you to get revenge for his sister, that he had deleted your videos, and that he had killed your brother."
 
    Anila kept her eyes on the cup placed carefully on its plate. So it was true. Blerimi had literally returned to Amarildo with the same coin as the crime committed by her brother. The war had ended that night for both of them and had begun for her.
 
    "I also talked to Denada Gjozefi," continued Leonora. "She was the cousin of Blerimi and Xhuliana and, at the same time, her close friend."
 
    Anila remembered Denada's face when she met her six years ago in a bar with Blerimi and Albion Huba. She had known that she had been in danger and had remained silent.
 
    "She told me that Xhuliana had lived a few months after Amarildo's crime against her, and then..." Leonora covered her face with her hands, and Anila clenched her teeth so as not to cry too.
 
    Xhuliana's life shouldn't have ended that way. She should have been among them, to tell them how she had made it, to motivate them, and to give them strength to leave the past behind and allow themselves to enjoy the present.
 
    "She had given up on life at Denada's house." Leonora spoke with a trembling voice and placed her hands on the table. "Xhuliana had waited for Denada to go to work. Denada had found her dead in the bedroom. She still cries from that memory. She had loved her like her own sister. She lost as much as Blerimi. Trapped by the fear that Amarildo would hurt her family if she told anyone about him and Xhuliana, she couldn't say anything to you that day, when you two happened to be in the same bar six years ago. Blerimi had been with Albion Huba when she met them by chance and greeted them. Albioni knew Denada because his brother, Agustini, had been in the same class with her, but he hadn't met her for a long time. Denada hadn't known that he was a friend of Blerimi," she said with an averted gaze, and Anila listened in the same way, remembering the overheard conversation between the three of them. "Denada tried to keep you away from Blerimi and still eats herself every day with teeth out of hatred for the way she chose to do that. He had found out anyway and had secretly decided to avenge his way. Blerimi told me that he regretted it afterward."
 
    Anila looked up harshly at her.
 
    "Did you believe him?"
 
    Her cutting question, like the blade of a sword, made Leonora tremble with fear, that if she said 'No,'  Anila would declare her guilty and hate her, a feeling that would make Leonora feel as if she would remain a hostage in her life if she did not earn Anila's respect.
 
    "I didn't weigh his words at all, not even for them to go through my mind. I listened and ignored them. As soon as I found out about you, I immediately asked for the divorce," said Leonora.
 
    "What was that woman's name?"
 
    "I don't know. I was too shocked and didn't care much about it at that moment. I didn't even ask Blerimi. I just wanted to get away from him. I don't believe he would have told me the truth if I had asked him."
 
    Anila accompanied her silence with stress. Who was that woman? How had she found out? Was she still a threat to her, or was she no longer alive?
 
    "I didn't know about you two," Leonora swore, shaking her head. "If I had known before, I would never, ever have chosen him over you."
 
    Anila silently composed her honest look, and her heart trusted her. What an irony! The woman in front of her, who didn't know her at all, was telling her that she would have chosen her over the love of her life, while Blerimi, who had the chance to know her, had taken away the line to her as if he had never met her. A stranger was supporting her instead of someone else, who had been tasked with doing such an act.
 
    "I'm sorry." Leonora apologised in advance. "Sometimes, I imagine he hadn't committed that crime; I remember our moments and feel that I still have a thread of love left from the past. But I'll snap that one too," she promised with tearful eyes. "This is the right thing to do."
 
    "I was guilty too," Anila admitted. "I never asked Blerimi if he had any problems or not. I behaved like a naive summer child. I have always believed that problems can be solved with positivity, but not every time they are solved with avoidance, driven by the mindset that just being optimistic is enough. I had to be realistic, admit that there was something wrong, and face the truth. He had all that suffering in his soul. I could have saved him and myself. I would have appreciated it more if he had killed me."
 
    "Don't say that," Leonora begged her, to give up on such thoughts. "What about your family?"
 
    "It's because of them that I am alive," Anila smiled bitterly. "Otherwise, I would have put an end to everything a long time ago."
 
    "Anila, you gave Blerimi the reasons to give up on the wrong path he had chosen, but he refused and paid the consequences. He should have been more realistic, since he was older than you, knew more, and had lost more. Or... maybe I shouldn't have said that second part of the sentence. I don't know what kind of life you've lived," Leonora regretted.
 
    "You were right," Anila confirmed with desperate nostalgia, that the time when she was convinced that she had everything she wanted and was completely happy would never come again.
 
    "Or he could have loved you, and you would have been happy together," Leonora added.
 
    If that had happened, she would probably never have met Blerimi and would have remained imprisoned by Albioni for life, or maybe she would have accepted Graniti's help and been free. How differently their stories would have continued!
 
    "No, I would have broken up." Anila said, certain. "I wouldn't have stayed with him even for a second longer, knowing what had happened to Xhuliana because of Ildo. I couldn't have risked myself, wondering when Blerimi would suddenly decide to take revenge, and neither could I have risked my little sister, Visara. But I was wicked, and I risked both of us. It happens sometimes that a crisis gets someone when they don't know what loss is, and they have to learn it in the most painful way possible," she moralised with a merciless tone of bitterness in her voice.
 
    "It wasn't just Blerimi who lost, Anila, but you too. You lost your brother long before he passed away. You lost it when he hurt Xhuliana." Leonora couldn't use the word 'rape' because she knew that she would break down in tears when she remembered her past with Albioni, and it would stick more in her mind.
 
    Her sensitivity had always made her seem delicate and gentle. Empathy made her feel very deeply about the stories she heard and read and the events that happened to her.
 
    "Blerimi should have thought that you were just as much a victim as he and his sister, and he should have brought justice to you too, not to kill you in that way."
 
    Anila approved her words in grief. Leonora's understanding and support were giving her comfort so that she wouldn't feel entirely guilty that things had gone so badly and that Blerimi had been responsible as well. He had the last word since he knew more and had failed in the decision he had made.
 
    "It's over," said Leonora. "Not as we wanted to, but we have no choice but to accept the end of that chapter and focus on the present. We have family members who deserve to see us happy." A thread of joy was brought to her heart when she remembered Graniti, their father, and Zana. "Do you have people of your own?"
 
    Anila nodded silently. "My parents, a sister, and... I'm dating someone," she muttered in the dilemma of whether it would be better not to discuss that aspect of life with her.
 
    "Anila." Leonora's eyes, dry from tears, laughed with happiness. "I am so glad," she said those words from her heart. "I wish, with all my heart, that you are only happy."
 
    "Thank you," Anila was no longer feeling the weight of the past on her back. There was only the feeling left by her absence, and the smile took its place, which belonged to her closed lips. "Shall we leave?'
 
    "Yes," Leonora opened her bag to take out her wallet.
 
    "What are you doing?" Anila stretched her hand forward to stop her.
 
    The furrowing of her brows and her stern gaze unnerved Leonora when she realised what it was all about.
 
    "I thought... you know? Because..."
 
    "No," Anila took the money out of her bag and called the waiter. "I really appreciate it, but it's up to me."
 
    Leonora remained silent so as not to create an argument between them, and they both left the bar.
 
    "Which way are you heading?" asked Anila.
 
    "This way," Leonora gestured to her left.
 
    "Ah, I'm on the opposite one."
 
    They faced each other and first exchanged parting glances.
 
    "I'll be waiting for news from you that a person not related to your blood and who deserves to see you happy has been added to your list." Anila meant for Leonora to allow someone into her romantic life if the opportunity came.
 
    "No, I think I'm done at this aspect," she smiled as if she had just said a joke, but sadness straightened her lips and occupied her eyes.
 
    "Nora, what did we talk about a while ago? How to prepare pickles, or move forward, without looking back?"
 
    "How to prepare..." she shook her head. "How to move forward without looking back," she answered nervously, like a child before a strict parent.
 
    "Exactly. This is the plan, and there are no changes. If you change something, then I will change too."
 
    "No," Leonora protested with a fragile voice and tearful eyes, and a storm of chaos and inexplicable feelings flooded all her cells when Anila stretched her arms towards her to hug her.
 
    Leonora accepted her warm embrace and the good smell of the perfume she had put on, placed her hands behind her back, and took a deep breath. How lucky her sister, Visara, was to have her as a family member. Had she had her, or had she been a person of such character, she would have reached higher levels much earlier in life.
 
    Anila understood her struggle, not to sob out loud, when she felt the slight tremors of her body and felt herself in danger of crying in regret for not letting Blerimi go when Brunilda had suggested doing that for her to be saved, but Anila had been selfish and had thought only about her happiness instead of that of the girl, who could have been waiting for Blerimi in the meantime.
 
    Apologising to Leonora seemed insufficient. Anila had contributed to turning her whole life upside down with her selfishness, and yet Leonora didn't find her guilty at all. In fact, she was the one who apologised to Anila, as if everything had happened only because of her fault.
 
    She removed her hands from Leonora's back and fixed her braids.
 
    "Who else, apart from Denada, knows our history?" Anila asked her.
 
    "No one," Leonora couldn't tell her brother's name, in order not to scare Anila that he was going to use that part of her history for evil purposes.
 
    For Graniti, she was sure that he wouldn't say a word, neither willingly nor in a drunken state, because he didn't consume alcohol or narcotic substances at all. When he went out with friends, he only bought alcoholic drinks to be in line with them, but he didn't drink.
 
    "Everyone paid for their own mistakes and those of others," Anila summed up, exhausted from judging the past anymore. "We have one more obligation left, which we will have for the rest of our lives: not to repeat them."
 
    "True" Leonora supported her, motivated to fulfil that task. "Sometimes, we are not punished because we have made mistakes, but because we do not forgive ourselves for the mistakes we made."
 
    Anila nodded her head, gave her a greeting smile, and turned her back to walk away from her and the past, this time washing her hands with it for good.
 
    Leonora saw the last lock of the prison door, where she had been until the meeting with Anila, being broken, and she returned free to her home in Tirana.

    Unjustly, or because they have deserved it, many people crumble into ruins, and their stories are engulfed in the dust by those ruins. Some remain forgotten as such; others are rebuilt much stronger than before.
 
••••
    She realised by Graniti's light grey trainers on the left of her midnight blue heels that her brother was home, and she quickly took off her trainers to meet him. They had agreed to go together to Puka to celebrate the New Year with Ardiani and Zana.
 
    "Granit."
 
    She got no answer.
 
    He wasn't in the living room with white walls like the other rooms, light powder brown sofas, a few paintings of kittens behind them, a round maroon table in the centre, and the TV set on the wall above a short and tall mahogany shelf, nor was he in the kitchen with light hazel materials.
 
    The bedroom was left to be checked. She walked slowly on the dark brown laminate and, with the same care, opened the white door.
 
    He was sleeping on the right side of the bed facing the window to the south, the duvet up to his stomach, his arms folded, and his right hand hidden under the white champagne satin pillowcase.
 
    Why had she tolerated the mistakes of Graniti, their father, and Zana towards her but not those of Albioni's and Blerimi's, and they hadn't been given a second chance to have a new life?
 
    The answer was formulated in Leonora's mind, still before that question was finished. Albion and Blerimi had known from the beginning that they had been wrong. They had been taught the rules of living properly for themselves and others, but they had neglected those rules with full awareness, and therefore they had suffered permanently, while no one had taught her family members about love, and they had made wrong decisions, driven by the dull state of living. As soon as they had come out of that manipulative state that had been keeping them slaves, they had tried to fix their mistakes.
 
    Leonora quietly walked over to the end of the bed, looked at a stuffed Pikachu toy that she had bought to play with when she watched TV, probably left by Graniti on the bedside table, and started laughing silently at the newly formulated plan in mind.
 
    She took the phone out of her jeans pocket, took the toy slowly from the bedside table, approached Graniti behind his back, and could barely contain her laughter when she placed the toy very carefully, as if it were a grenade, in his arms, so as not to wake him up. She walked over to the other side of the bed and went to the Camera App on her phone to take a picture of him.
 
    He woke up and realised, by seeing the phone in her hands and the toy on his arm, what Leonora's intention was.
 
    "Don't you dare," he ordered, closed his eyes, and she took a photo.
 
    "I dared, and it turned out great," she said happily, and she sat next to him. "What do you think?"
 
    Graniti opened his eyes and looked at himself in the picture.
 
    "Three billion dollars or this photo ends up on the Internet," Leonora blackmailed him.
 
    "Or I am going to delete it," he took the phone from her hand.
 
    "No, no," she reached over his ribs to get the phone in his outstretched hand. "Granit, I don't have other photos to threaten you," his sister justified at the peak of trouble.
 
    "Ah, OK then. I'm not deleting it," he decided ironically and gave her the phone.
 
    Leonora sat back down at the head of the bed on the left with her brother's gaze upon her.
 
    He had killed people for that woman. Years ago, it wouldn't even have occurred to him to risk losing his freedom because of her. Now he was willing to accept any kind of torture if it meant that she would always be happy. Granit felt the power to destroy without mercy anyone who would dare touch even a single strand of Leonora's hair to hurt her.
 
    He kept his gaze on her smiling face and remembered the version of his sister from years ago when the latter lived in the confined world within some thorny frames, where he had helped the society to imprison her, the downfalls that she had experienced because he, as her older brother, hadn't taught her properly how to avoid them, but had turned his back on her, and when he had changed his mind and decided to help her, she had been very wounded, and he breathed a sigh of relief, that almost everything was in the past. She was safe and sound with her family; he was fine because his little sister felt the same way, and he would always be there for her in any situation. Leonora would no longer be alone.
 
    Only Anila Idrizaj made him a little uncomfortable when he thought that she could meet Leonora and hurt her out of hatred for Blerimi, but he didn't think that she would risk suffering the same fate. If she had searched for Leonora, as he had searched for Anila, and she had discovered his existence, she would have been scared by him, that he would hurt her, and Leonora was safe.
 
    "Nora, have you ever met this Anila Idrizaj?"
 
    "Yeah, we met today," she replied, without taking her eyes off the phone screen.
 
    "When?" Graniti half-stood, worried.
 
    "I met her on my way home."
 
    If she told him that Anila had been waiting for her in front of her workplace, he would suspect that Anila wanted to hurt her and could mess with her.
 
    Leonora didn't want to disturb either of them any more.

    "What did she say?"

    "She asked me how I found out about Blerimi, and I told her. And then we decided to mind our own business."
 
    Graniti pushed the quilt away with his right hand, and Leonora gasped when she saw the bandages around his finger wrists.
 
    "Granit!" She couldn't keep her voice down. "What happened? Did you get into a fight?"
 
    "Not a single word to Mom and Dad. Understood?" He got up from the bed.
 
    "Didn't you have duster knuckles?"
 
    "It was a job for quickly."
 
 
    'You probably aren't aware precisely, but who knows in how much trouble that person has been involved for you.'
 
 
    Blerimi's voice echoed over her other memories with him of the conversation they had had about Graniti before they left for America two years ago.
 
 
    'You're getting on my nerves completely!' She lost what little patience she had left. 'When have you helped me?'
 
    Graniti didn't say anything.
 
 
    Why? Because he had remembered all the times when he had risked his life for her, that's why he hadn't said anything when he had been asked by Leonora three years ago about when he had helped her. Had he been involved this time in a conflict with someone because of her? But she hadn't argued with anyone.
 
    "Denada texted me a little while ago. She said that your work colleagues have invited you to go out and have a drink, and you haven't accepted."
 
    "Ugh!" Leonora complained as she stood up as well. "I thought she didn't mean it when she said that she was going to text you to convince me."
 
    "Why don't you go out?"
 
    "They asked me to go out at 11 at night."
 
    "Because you're going to a party, not at school."
 
    The tension in her face gave him the suspicion that she was afraid.
 
    "Nora, have you argued with anyone?" Graniti approached her.
 
    "No," she answered immediately. "I just don't want to go."
 
    "Are you sure you're not lying to me?" The blue of his eyes started getting darker. "Don't let me find out the opposite from someone else, because woe to both of you, then!" Graniti shook his head menacingly. "To that person, because they have messed with you, and to you, just out of anger for not telling me when I asked you."
 
    "Thank you for the readiness, but no." Leonora calmly insisted. "I have no problem."
 
    "Okay, listen to what we're going to do," he softened the tone of his voice. "You will go out with your friends, and I will come and stay at a nearby bar. For any problem you have, text me, and I'll come directly. OK?"
 
    "Granit, I don't want to cause you trouble," she looked nervously at him.
 
    "What?" Her brother furrowed his eyebrows at the most senseless words that he had ever heard from her, and Leonora lowered her head in stress. "Nora," he gently called her by name. "You cause me trouble only when you don't tell me that you are in trouble. Only then." He felt stronger from the safety he saw in her eyes, thanks to his presence. "Go out with your friends sometimes. The change in the environment will do good to you," he ran his hand through one of her braids on the right. "Or we can go out together, if you want." He turned to the yellow wardrobe. "Do I have any blouses here?" He opened its doors before hearing the answer.
 
    "Yes, there are two white ones at the end from the left side," Leonora answered while looking at how many people had seen her photo posted that morning on her Instagram account.
 
    Graniti pushed the clothes on the hanger to the right and, before reaching the required clothing, stopped in front of a Prussian blue blouse for men.
 
    Was it Blerimi's, and she had kept it as a memory, or had Leonora started dating someone? They had agreed to tell each other if there were such people in their lives, just to be safe. Why had she hidden that? Was it an enemy of his, with whom his sister was hanging out? He was using her?
 
    "If he sees the light tomorrow, it means that I have died!" He almost broke the hanger when he violently took the blouse out of the wardrobe, due to the poisonous hatred spread throughout his body with the speed of light towards the man who had dared to approach Leonora.
 
    "Nora!" He indicated in the harsh tone of his voice that the harmony between them was in the thread of the string, and it depended on her whether it could resist the break. "Whose shirt is this?"
 
    Leonora's blood ran cold from the grip of his very, very dark blue eyes.
 
    "Mine," she came to her senses. "I bought it because of the colour," she left the phone on the bed and went to Graniti. "I couldn't find it for women, so I bought it to wear at home until I find another one for me. It's beautiful, isn't it?"
 
    "You're not secretly dating someone?"
 
    "No. I'm not. I just liked the colour," she repeated. "Granit, of course I'll tell if such a person will exist. I'm not like you in that you haven't introduced me yet to Pavlina," she added ironically afterward.
 
    "So, you have bought this?" he asked once again for safety.
 
    "Yes," Leonora defended the answer given at the beginning.
 
    "OK, since you don't like it, I'm taking it." Graniti threw the blouse on the bed and took one of the two white blouses in the wardrobe.
 
    "Hey," she protested jokingly.