When I reached the house, only the kitchen light was on. Even though it was still a day, the rain outside made everything dark. I rushed inside, and as I opened the door, a familiar scent touched my nose. It’s true that smell can trigger memories, and this one pulled out the trauma I had been trying to bury.
I looked around. Something was wrong. Christian and Carlo weren’t home, but when I walked to the counter, I saw a small note.
Please call when you get home, Sophie.
The paper was crumpled, like someone had squeezed it tight, and the edges were stained, as if it had been sitting there for days.
Still, I picked up the phone. My fingers shook as I dialed Sophie’s number. It rang a couple of times before she finally answered.
“Hey,” I whispered. “It’s me.”
There was a sharp breath on the other end. “Oh my God, Chiara. You’re alive.”
“Yeah,” I said softly. “There’s so much to tell you. Wanna come over?”
She sighed. “I had to go back to Chicago,” she said. “Tristan got this new job and I had to go with him.”
My chest tightened. “When are you coming back?”
She sighed. “I don’t know,” her voice started to break. “I hate it here.” I heard her sniff before she tried to speak again. “I wanted to tell you...”
But I cut her off. “Do you know where Carlo is?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” she said, her voice shaking. “Your father,” she whispered, “he’s out.”
My heart started pounding so fast that I could hear the ringing in my ears. She only knew about one of my fathers, and it wasn’t Rocco. It was the same man my mother had tried to escape from. The same man who used to beat me and Carlo. And now he was free.
“Christian took Carlo, and they went to Rome after he beat Carlo with a stick,” she said.
My throat tightened. “Is he...” I could barely breathe. “Is he okay?”
“Yeah,” she said, her voice low. “But Christian finally realized how stupid he was and ran with him to Rome. His old friend helped them out.”
I nodded, exhaling as if that could steady me.
“Wherever you were, just go back,” she said quickly. “You’re not safe.”
In the background, I heard Tristan calling her name.
“I gotta go,” she said. “But promise me you’ll be safe.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, my voice cracking. “I promise.”
She was about to say something else, but the line went dead.
I turned around slowly, my stomach twisting. My father was standing there with a length of cord hanging from his hand. He smiled as he raised the knife and sliced the cord in half.
“Well, well, well,” he shouted. “Who do we have here?”
Nico Serra. The man who raised me. The man I thought for a long time was my dad. Every time he hit me, I told myself he didn’t know better, that it was the alcohol talking. But when I escaped, when he went to jail for domestic abuse, and when I found out he wasn’t even my biological father, there was nothing left to stop me from hitting back.
Carlo and Christian were his. I never was. He knew that deep down, and that’s why the beatings I got were worse. That never changed the truth of what he was. A monster raised me, and I called him Dad.
His words always made me weak, and for years, I thought it was tough love. But that’s what happens when you grow up in an abusive home. You don’t know any different. You either survive or you sink deeper.
Blood or not, a parent should never hit a child. A parent isn’t a parent when they decide that blows and pain can teach a lesson, when the only lesson you ever needed was love.
People like that don’t deserve children. They don’t deserve anyone. But life isn’t fair. We learn to live with it, but we never forget. It cuts into old scars until it becomes a wound that may never heal.
