THE ALGORITHM OF THE FORBIDDEN HEART

Chapter 7

Donatella POV

I walked away from the gallery, the cool New York night air whipping my face. My mind was a supercomputer processing the data from the last exchange.

I had succeeded in getting her to come, to speak, and above all, to react to my contact—a flinch that cost me a monumental effort not to apologize, followed by a resistance that was, in itself, a victory.

She had held steady, even if the price was the self-inflicted pain, the digging of nails into her palms that I had correctly guessed just before she fled to the restroom.

The conclusion was brutal: Carla's fortress was not a myth. It was a structure built on terror, and she defended it with a discipline that echoed my own.

"The fortress you build must serve you, not imprison you."

My own sentence resonated. I had tried to be gentle—a maneuver that cost me an insane amount of energy—but that softness was actually a knife. It had exposed the paradox of my existence: I advocated for the isolation of control, yet I couldn't stop myself from intruding into this student's chaos.

What gnawed at me was no longer curiosity, but a more insidious feeling: failure. I had sought to show her the truth about her fragility, but I had continued to use threat (the program).

My hand on her shoulder, despite my intention to anchor her, had nearly provoked another panic attack. I was a destructive force in her eyes, and I couldn't manage to reverse the formula.

What I felt was a deep fatigue, the kind that comes when one fights against one's own nature. Carla's existence forced my repressed humanity to the surface. I could no longer see the numbers without seeing the person.

She needed an anchor. My mind replayed the image of her hands. It wasn't weakness; it was a contract of destruction that needed to be voided.

The rest of the weekend was sterile. I tried to work. I reviewed the report I expected on Monday.

But I couldn't focus. I spent hours imagining what she would do. Would she give in to self-destruction to calm herself, or would she rely on discipline to survive the threat I represented?

I caught myself thinking about loneliness. I had been alone my whole life, using money as a wall against the world. She used her pain as a wall. We were distorted mirrors, two geniuses enclosed in fortresses.

I got up several times, going to the window to look at the city lights. I felt an irrational urge to call her, to tell her the appointment was just a trap to test her. But my instinct took over: any form of pity or open solicitude would be interpreted by her as weakness or, worse, as a renewed assault.

My only hope was Monday morning. If her report was perfect, it meant she had succeeded in channeling her chaos into productivity. If she failed, I knew I would have to intervene in a way that would definitively break the rule of professor and student.

I barely slept, my brain obsessed with the most complex puzzle I had ever encountered: how to save a person who actively seeks to destroy herself, and who rejects all forms of help. Absolute control, for the first time, provided me with no solution.

Monday afternoon arrived. I was at the podium, waiting. My gaze, fixed on the door, calculated her probability of presence.

She walked in.

Carla was no longer the woman in armor from Saturday night. She was in her class attire, but her posture was telling. She walked slowly, her back slightly hunched, as if carrying the invisible weight of the week. She had a marked protective reflex: she held her arms, squeezing her elbows against her body, as if trying to contain the injuries or defend against imminent aggression.