CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY TWO - WHAT WAS LEFT UNSAID

Alessandro felt his heart break all over again. He reached out to touch her cheek, but she flinched away. "That's not true," he insisted. "We still have each other. And Leo... he wouldn't want us to live like this." For a moment, a flicker of something – anger, perhaps, or just a spark of life – flashed in Amelia's eyes. But it was gone as quickly as it appeared, replaced by the now-familiar emptiness. "I'm tired, Alessandro," she murmured, turning away from him once more. "Please, just... leave me alone." Alessandro stood, feeling more helpless than ever. As he left the room, he paused in the doorway, looking back at his wife – the woman he loved more than anything in the world, now a shell of her former self. "I love you, Amelia," he whispered. "Always." But there was no response, only the deafening silence that had become the soundtrack of their lives. Days blurred into weeks, and weeks into months. The De Laurentis family business began to suffer as Alessandro's attention wa