I slow my pace, my voice low when I call, “Ciao, principessa.”
She doesn’t answer. She just keeps drawing something into the dirt with a stick, her small shoulders curled inward, her silence as deep as a well I’m scared to look into.
The house is behind her, glowing warm with lights and laughter, but she sits just outside of it—as if peace is something she can see but can’t quite reach.
She hears me before she sees me; her small spine straightens by a hair.
“You’re good at disappearing,” I murmur, stopping a respectful distance away.
She doesn’t turn. Just lifts one shoulder in a shrug. It guts me to see her like this—hollowed out where all that bright innocence used to be. Now she carries a silence too big for her small body.
I easedown into the grass beside her.
“When I was your age,” I say quietly, “I used to think that if I stayed quiet enough, the bad things wouldn’t notice me.”
Her stick never stills. It drags lines, circles, jagged shapes—her turmoil etched into the ground.
“Did it work?” she whispers.
“No,” I admit. “But it helped me think. And sometimes thinking feels safer than facing the monsters head-on.”
A beat. Two.
Then her voice opens, soft as a tremor.
“They made me watch Luca die.”
The world seems to tilt. But I stay still.
“They said I needed to remember what will happen to my dad if he doesn’t stop coming after them.”
She draws another circle.Perfect. Controlled. “Twenty-three punches. Two stabs. One bullet to the head. I counted them all.”
My jaw clenches. I don’t let it show.
“But the thunder helped,”she adds softly. “It made the walls shake so his screams weren’t so loud.”
Her voice doesn’t crack. Not once. It’s wrong—how steady she is. Children aren’t meant to sound like war survivors.
She swallows. “They told me to tell Papa that if he ever comes that close again, they won’t be warning him next time.”
I exhale slowly,forcing the rage down where she can’t see it. She doesn’t need my fury; she needs steadiness. A world that won’t lurch under her feet again.
“I told him everything,” she says. “Everything they said and did. And then…” She draws one last circle, tiny and tight. “…then I went quiet. Very, very quiet.”
I finally look at her. Really look.
“Quiet is okay, little one,” I tell her softly. “Quiet means you survived.”
She doesn’t answer. Doesn’t smile. But she doesn’t stand or run, either.
She just keeps tracing circles in the earth, and I stay there with her as the sky darkens and the first stars appear—two damaged souls sharing a silence that feels heavier than words.
And long after we’ve driven away, that silence stays with me.
That night, when Beatrice falls asleep against my shoulder and Daniele curls into her side, I lie awake staring at the ceiling, thinking of Maria.
Of Luca.Of every man who ever bled for me. Of every child who has had to pay for the sins of our world.
