“I killed all those men—with just a thought. I wanted to hurt them like they hurt my mother. Like they wanted to hurt me,” she whispered, her eyes dazed and unfocused.
He sat across from her, his elbows resting on his knees, his eyes steady. “What happened next?”
Kiki’s lips wobbled. She lowered the cup.
“I went to the orphanage,” she said. “The one where Father Bishop was. Mama had been taking me there for a while. She said it was a safe place. She’d talk with him while I played with the other kids in the courtyard.”
Nikos’s brow furrowed gently. “What about your father?”
She shook her head. “Mama didn’t talk about him. Just that he was an American soldier. He went back to the States before I was born. I don’t even know his name.”
Nikos nodded slowly, as if tucking that piece away without judgment. “And Father Bishop? What was he like?”
Kiki’s eyes drifted closed. She bowed her head. The comfort of the peppermint scent still lingered—but it was fading.
She murmured, “He was… different.”
“How was he different?”
Kiki looked up at Nikos with a far-away look in her eyes. “He was former military. I overheard him and Mama talking about that. He was like the men who came for me—only he wanted to protect me.”
Talenta Kasih Orphanage, Jakarta
Sixteen yearsearlier
The bell over the front gate jangled when she pushed through it, the sound far too cheerful for a world that had just fallen apart.
Her legs were shaking. Her arms were scraped from climbing. Her clothes clung to her skin, streaked with her mother’s blood.
Children were laughing somewhere inside—shouts and the thump of a ball echoed from the courtyard.
Kiki stumbled forward.
She slipped through the arched doorway into a shaded hall. The painted walls were covered in bright murals—smiling suns, open books, birds in flight. The contrast with what she had just left behind made her chest ache.
“Child? Are you lost?”
She looked up. A nun stood at the far end of the corridor, her voice soft but concerned.
Kiki’s throat worked up and down. She couldn’t speak at first.
“Father Bishop,” she choked out hoarsely.
The nun’s face softened. “He’s in his study. Come with me.”
Her feet felt like they didn’t belong to her as she followed the swaying shape of the nun’s robes.
The office door creaked open. Warm sunlight spilled across dark wooden floors.
Father Bishop sat at his desk by the window, his white collar stark against his sun-dark skin. He looked up—then froze.
“Kiki?”
At the sound of her name, her legs gave out.
She fell to her knees. Drawing her legs up, she wrapped her thin arms around them, buried her face against her scraped flesh, and started crying.
He was there in an instant, his arms strong, yet gentle, as he cradled her.
