•One day before the prologue•

    Anila turned her house key twice to the right and pushed the black door forward. The fragile feeling of familiarity, which had been created the second she had seen the apartment in the video sent by Sidoreli, became stronger when she crossed the threshold and entered the house.

    The light colours around her made her feel like she was in her comfort zone. She took off the white heels to leave them on the bamboo wooden shoe rack on the right side, then the sky blue jacket that she had combined with the trousers of the same colour tone, along with the white shirt, and walked barefoot on the very open sand-coloured parquet.

    Under the excuse of checking that everything was in order, as she had left it before she left the house two hours ago to buy the dress and the pendant that she had found online, she took a look around the house with the cartoon bag in her left hand, where she had the dress and jewellery.

    First, she walked into the small living room, saw the dusty gold-upholstered sofa, the white round table between it and the television on a white TV stand as well, and the floral paintings hung on the pastel cream-coloured wall.

    Then she walked to the left, towards the hall, where the kitchen and the bedroom were located. She opened the door to the left, looked at the closed rectangular window, the square white dining table on the right with four hazel chairs around it, the cleaned furniture in front of the table, and headed to the bedroom to put the dress in the wardrobe.

    She sat down on the double bed with the dried cinnamon bedspread, left her bag to her right, and looked out the closed south window in front of her, feeling no fear that at any moment she would receive the news of the release of her footage with Blerimi; they were erased, Visara and her parents were safe, and she had only the present on her mind to enjoy. The past was banished by her decision to choose the version of herself that was accompanying her and achieve the best possible version she could be.

    No one was going to attack them, no one was going to kill Sidoreli, and no one was going to rape her. She repeated that sentence over and over again throughout the afternoon to convince herself that everything was going to be okay. They would go out together, have fun, and then return home safe and sound. She deserved to create such memories in her life, and he deserved Anila's effort to spend a normal evening between them.

    Sidoreli managed to save her from the beginning of overthinking with the message he sent her that he was waiting for her in front of the apartment building.

    'I won't be late.'

    He read the answer returned within a minute by Anila as he rolled the keys to his house, his car, and his studio through the fingers of his left hand and repeatedly reminded himself to behave as discreetly as possible so as not to cause her negative feelings.

    He was content that she had thought of him and had taken such a step, knowing how much danger there could be. He had wanted to turn off the phone completely to be totally focused on her, but he had put the phone on vibrate since that was all he could do. Maybe one of his family members needed his help, and he couldn't break away from his responsibilities even for a second.

    The sound of the heels on the entrance stairs of the apartment building caught his attention, and he turned his head towards the doorway.

    His seduced eyes by Anila stared at her with all the possible concentration and admiration. The sweet short pink dress, tight across her chest and stomach, that had a plunging neckline, fell in shallow sides, and was wide from the waist to a palm above her exposed knees, her heels of the same colour as the dress, and her hair with loose waves, parted in the middle, captured his chest, as if he had drunk a vigorous cocktail, and Sidoreli wasn't feeling strong enough to withstand looking at that excessive beauty for a long time.

    Anila's light smile and enticing look, for him to be persuaded into winning her attention because the reward would be well worth it in the end, had succeeded in dazzling him, and, if she wished, she could keep him enthralled for as long as she wanted.

    Anila kept her posture unchanged as she approached him, feeling the peak of beauty in his gaze. The grey jeans, shirt, and white trainers he had chosen made a positive impression on her, and she stood only a few centimetres away from him.

    'So this is your favourite colour?" Sidoreli was able to form only those words without distinguishing himself, that he didn't know what else to say, and he only wanted to look at her without speaking. She affirmed it in silence. "It suits you a lot."

    "Thank you," Anila touched the placed necklace. "I couldn't resist. As soon as I saw it on an Instagram page, I bought it. I adored it."

    He looked at the golden sunflower above her chest and then at Anila, who was clearly showing with her gaze that she intended to make him feel as important as possible and therefore dependent on her. What a beautiful manipulator!

    "And you have taken the 'mermaid' term very seriously," he pointed out. "Or have you always been a mermaid?"

    "No. I have very positive goals in life." Anila widened her eyes as if affected by that accusation, and he laughed at her innocent face. "And I'm a gentle person..." she added with lightly outlined lips and a little shyness, which reddened her cheekbones, and Sidoreli raised his eyebrows as if approvingly. " ... And I don't think at all about private things that shouldn't be thought about." She smiled provocatively at the bright look in his eyes, which was further clouded by her implication.

    "Let's go before I suggest a change of plan," he said seriously, and Anila chuckled.

    "You said it as if I would have objections to that change," she replied, and when Sidoreli wanted to make his suggestion, Anila turned to the passenger seat on the right of the driver. "Let's go."

    He immediately opened the door for her.

    "Thank you." She deliberately didn't look him in the eye to show how shy she was in his presence, and she got into the vehicle.

    Anila left Sidoreli to drive the car, undisturbed on the way to the club, while thinking about all those ideas on how to continue the half-left conversation at the same stage of intimacy.

    He allowed her to take a step forward towards the entrance of the club, and, as if he were approaching a volcano, whose eruption would burn him mercilessly, he took the courage of a crazy man, as he thought he was at that moment, and placed his outstretched left hand between her bare shoulders.

    The touch ignited him and made him quiver; the turning of her head from his side froze him, as if he had been caught in guilt; and the approving look of Anila, who hadn't felt uncomfortable by his touch but had liked it, gave him the ability to breathe freely again.

    After she got comfortable first in the high black chair, he sat across from her.

    Anila glanced around as she danced lightly, matching the rhythm of the background music, and let out a deep sigh of longing for such an environment-crowds of people dancing, their joy that made her happy too-the harmony of the music interspersed with only the bright, colourful lights of the projectors.

    She was in one of the parts of her comfort zone, surrounded by strangers, each with their own life and somehow connected to hers. She, with her presence there, was being marked in the memory of the eyes that would notice her that night. She would take place in the memories of others. Someone would have a happy version of her. She would live. She wouldn't be forgotten, as long as she was in the memory of even one person.

    She smiled nostalgically at the return to her origin and how important it was to her to make other people happy, and she turned her attention to herself, the priceless being who deserved the same amount of love as the man in front of her, who, as it seemed, had taken advantage of the opportunity and was not taking his eyes off her.

    He was so art, Anila thought, as she adorably opposed him-art that shook the foundations of the soul, and, after trying a little of that dose, it was persistently sought to make it an essential part of the reason for living.

    "What's the matter, tattooist?" Anila gave him her classic flirty look. "Are you being inspired for the next masterpiece?"

    "I don't believe that there is a masterpiece that can come close to you," Sidoreli replied. "Even that drawing I made for you on the bus, now I'm thinking that it has all those flaws and I did you an injustice."

    "Thank you," she arched her lips, flattered by his compliments.

    The waiter came to take their orders and didn't delay in bringing them their drinks.

    Anila took the glass delicately, as if it were a victory cup, and drank slowly. With the same care, she placed the glass back on the circular black table and looked at Sidoreli, ready to flirt with him again.

    "When..."

    He looked at her very intently.

    "... People come to the studio to get tattoos done; where do they get them mostly? In which part of their body?" She wanted specifically to know.

    His planning look and the desire in his thoughtful eyes were telling Anila that Sidoreli was drawing up a plan on how to return with the same coin all the feelings that he was barely keeping under control.

    "Arms," he said seriously, as if her question had no implications at all.

    Anila could barely contain herself, not to burst out laughing at his seriousness.

    "What if..." she thought, to heat up the conversation. " ... I came to get a tattoo done; where would you suggest I get it?" The loud laugh was stuck in her throat along with the oxygen.

    "To give the correct answer, first I need to see all the possible parts where I can do the tattoo," Sidorel replied with the same force of feelings, and she looked at him, frozen for a short piece of time.

    Her imagination took advantage of her negligence to go downhill, picturing Sidoreli on top and not at the head of a table, and with her cheeks like embers, she drank from the ordered cocktail.

    "You said it so directly," she smiled shyly, and Sidoreli laughed openly at her reaction.

    "I'm correct, right?" He blew more into the fire.

    Anila saw only for a second his triumphant laugh, which had been able to dominate the emotions in the conversation, and lowered her timid gaze to look at him longer without laughing.

    "I'm considering this question as a rhetorical one, and I'm not saying anything," she decided, without looking him in the eye, and Sidoreli laughed wholeheartedly.

    "Okay, but be careful with the drink," he advised. "It can ruin everything if you get drunk. You won't remember anything that happens to you next," he reminded her, that he was at the head of the conversation and smirked more when he read in her glance that Anila had guessed what Sidoreli was talking about.

    "I..." it seemed to her the right time to tell him the next step that she had planned to continue with the reconstruction of her life and also to take advantage of the opportunity to recover thanks to the change of topic from that conversation with him. "I have thought about getting a Master's degree in English major, like I have wanted."

    Sidoreli smiled happily in abruptness. "So, if I hear that the students at the university where you're going have been manipulated, I shouldn't be surprised, since you're there, and it's understandable why something like this has happened to them, right?"

    His question for confirmation got Sidoreli a smile from Anila.

    "I'm exultant," he said, as if for himself, that Anila was taking such steps and getting better. "Many successes."

    "Thank you, Sidorel. Your support is helping me immensely."

    'I have just begun,' he stopped himself in time before those thoughts revealed their existence through talking, so as not to make her uncomfortable further by exaggerating with implications but to wait for some convenient time later.

    He asked her what plans she had made to enrol in the university, and time passed with his answers to Anila's questions about how his student life had been.

    On their way back home, the two of them didn't talk and tried to figure out how to say, without being misunderstood, that they didn't want the night to end like that.

    Sidoreli thought that it was up to Anila to give him a sign if she wanted them to continue, but maybe she was afraid that he would take her for granted and benefit only in his interest.

    The confusion was reducing the oxygen in the car and raising their body temperatures. The two of them took constant deep breaths, inconspicuously, to pull themselves together.

    She decided to risk it. If things turned out to be unexpected, then she would find a solution to get out of the situation.

    When Sidoreli parked the car in front of her house, Anila took off her seat belt and got out of the vehicle without greeting him.

    He thought it could be what he suspected it was, but he didn't want to be disappointed afterward. Maybe Anila had decided to greet him after they both got out of the car.

    He got out of the vehicle and saw Anila walking towards the apartment building without turning her head to look at him. That was the sign. If he called Anila, then he would leave the impression that he didn't want to go to her house, but if he followed her, then he would let it be understood that he wanted to continue the date longer.

    He walked to the entrance beside her and stopped when she stood motionless in front of the stairs.

    Anila reluctantly turned towards him.

    "Do you mind if I take off my heels?" she felt a little guilty for not being able to take a few more steps to her house, and maybe she was ruining the moment.

    Sidoreli laughed under his nose, shook his head in disbelief that the question was being asked seriously, and knelt in front of her.

    Anila placed her hand on her strengthened chest, as if she wanted to stop her heart from getting out of it, since the latter wanted to look at him on his knees, and Sidoreli began to untie the thin strap of her heels, encircling her right leg above the ankle, fingers burning with heat against her skin, and he raised his deep gaze to Anila, aware of her chagrin at his assessment.

    He had knelt for her.

    So that was what being important to someone looked like. It created a feeling of exaltation in the soul when it received such an assessment from someone who loved that person.

    Anila had always liked to see others on that pedestal and had constantly tried to make them feel that way. Now she was being rewarded in life with a person who had the same goal for her and felt complete when she was appreciated. Anila wanted more of that elixir.

    She agreed, without saying a word, to gradually lift her feet off the ground for him to take off her heels. Sidoreli took them in his hands and stood up in front of her. She had no idea how she was breathing when it looked like her lungs had passed out a long time ago.

    "Shall we?" he asked with the usual seriousness, as if he had not done anything important to be cheered for, and that gesture was his duty to make towards her.

    He would have taken her in his arms if he had not been stopped by the guess that he would have gone too far with such intimacy between them; she would have thought as if he were leading her to bed, and he had been in a relationship with her only to sleep with her. He had indeed said a few words, but an action was considered more weighty in that case and had greater consequences than the words. He couldn't risk destroying everything. Apparently, Anila had enjoyed him taking off her heels, and he had felt ready to always take her shoes off if that meant he got to touch her feet.

    "Yes," she managed to mumble in a daze, and they headed for the stairs.

    Anila unlocked the door of her house, removed the key, and they both went inside. She silently headed for the bedroom, and Sidoreli joined her after leaving her heels on the shoe rack.

    He found her in the centre of her room, next to the bed, waiting for him with the same fiery gaze that he had for her.

    "Can you help you help me with removing my pendant, too?" Anila camouflaged the desire she had for how to continue the evening, and he crossed the threshold of the door, entering the room.

    "Turn around."

    The request that shook her already fragile knees came out more like a command from Sidoreli, and she obeyed.

    She swept her hair over her left shoulder forward, revealing her neck behind, and her breathing slowed to keep pace when his hands touched the skin of her neck.

    Sidoreli removed the pendant slowly, joined the corners of the chain in front of her stomach, and, when Anila thought that he was going to give the pendant to her, he took her in a tight embrace, resting her back against his chest, threw the pendant on the table to their right, and placed his right hand under her breast.

    Anila's breath was cut short for a moment, and she let all her weight fall into his arms.

    "Sidorel!" Her throat was dry from the heat taken from the rest of her body, the fever of which increased more when he kissed her on the right side of her neck, on her bare shoulder, while covering her throat with one hand, lifting her head more, and then he turned her to face him.

    His lips immediately found hers, and they expressed the whole longing he had felt to touch them during that evening by the way they were kissing her deeply.

    Anila easily caught up to the rhythm of his passion, removed his shirt, and stared in awe at his exposed chest and skin without any tattoos.

    "You've told me the truth," she said between irregular breaths.

    "I can turn around if you want," he offered. "So you can look at my back too, just to be sure."

    "No, I want to test myself." Anila came closer to him, passed her hands between his arms and ribs, and placed them on his back. "Whether I can tell by touch if you have a tattoo or not."

    He revealed more veins in his arms by the turning of the hands into fists, from resisting to pushing Anila towards the bed and not removing his hands from her naked body until he made her completely his.

    "I want to give you the same beautiful torture that you're giving me through touch," Sidoreli said his immediate thoughts out loud.

    "Strange," she said, surprised. "You don't look like the torturer type," she teased him, and she gently touched his abdomen on the right side before removing her hands from him.

    He placed his left hand behind her back to join her chest with his and his right hand around her throat, his fingers pulsing with her unusual heartbeat.

    "I've been kind to you until now."

    Emotions seized Anila's body more rapidly from his voice right next to her lips while she placed her hands on his arms, and his deep, domineering gaze on her made her aware that she would willingly do whatever was required of him.

    Anila accepted the long kiss he gave her, kept herself upright with her arms around his neck, and allowed her body to fall-only when Sidoreli pushed her towards the bed and they both laid on it.

    His ragged breathing, easier to hear in those moments, set harmless flames on every part of her skin, along her neck and above her chest where it crashed.

    She ran her hands over his shoulders to run them through his hair, and she froze at the fear suddenly flooding her heart as he took her hands to lock them over her head.

    Blerimi pulled her towards her bedroom, pushed her on the bed, and immediately blocked her body with his so that Anila wouldn't be able to move.

    "Shh! This won't hurt you," was his only reaction to Anila's muffled screams and her pleading, with tears in her eyes from the trauma that he was causing her, for Blerimi to stop.

    Was Sidoreli going to do the same?

    Had she fallen prey to her naivety again, and she was going to suffer the same misfortune as six years ago?

    "I'm sorry." He instantly freed her hands when he saw the plea in Anila's tearful eyes to stop. "I'm sorry." He stroked her hair. "I won't hurt you."

    Anila put her hands on his chest to push him away, but her body immediately recognised the sweet bite on the neck from his teeth and calmed down.

    It was Sidoreli. He had feelings of love for her. He wouldn't hurt her. Her soul trusted him.

    Sidoreli lay down on her right side, facing her, stepping away a little so as not to touch her and frighten her more.

    Anila stood motionless with a frown look towards the ceiling as she waited, angry with herself for giving in to the past and ruining everything. Now he would be convinced to give up on her and leave. Those traumas wouldn't stop until they destroyed Anila's life, and if Sidoreli continued the relationship with her, he would also go down the same path in life.

    "Sidorel," she turned regretfully with her face in front of him. "I have no excuse."

    "Why should you? You didn't do anything wrong," he was surprised.

    "We can't continue like this," Anila put her left palm on the bed and exerted force on her right elbow to get up, but Sidoreli didn't let her.

    "Anila." He combined the harshness of the tone of his voice with the hardening of his facial features. "I'm not in a relationship with you, only to sleep together whenever I want, and I'm not even doing any miracle that I'm being understanding towards you right now. It's my duty."

    His words made her realise that she had been hasty in making such important decisions.

    "I understand why you reacted that way, and I didn't think badly of you at all. I still don't," he explained. "Only how beautiful and a good person you are, these are my thoughts; that is how deeply you have entranced me, so much that it doesn't occur to me to even ask to get out of this state," he ran his hand through her soft hair.

    Anila leaned closer to him with a fragile gaze, and Sidoreli took her in his embrace, driven by the wish to insulate her from anything negative. The protective mode for her appeared instinctively, and he just wanted to keep her safe in his arms.

    He would have to talk to her to get Anila to tell him who had hurt her in the past so that she would also be freed from that knot in her life. Maybe the person who had killed Amarildo had hurt her too?

    Sidoreli didn't want to lose her. He would wait for some time for her to calm down, and then he would ask her. He kissed her on the forehead and stepped away to look at her sweet face. Anila seemed calmer and happier.

    "How come you're such a star?" He accompanied the rhetorical question with a teasing smile, and Anila rested her hands on his chest, happy to be spending such moments with him.

    She had never liked the compliment 'star', because when many people thought of lighting at its peak, she thought of the process afterward, fading and being forgotten by the others.

    But Sidoreli looked at her as if she were only light that never stopped shining. Anila believed him, and that's why she loved the nickname 'star'.

    "How about we go to the sea tomorrow?" He suggested. "We visit the south of Albania."

    "I would love to," she agreed. "Let's go."