“Full of nightmares. Of what your father did to me. Of the blood. The screams. The way he laughed while he destroyed me.”
A bitter exhale escaped him.
“Torture,” he muttered. “Pain.”
“I missed you—your presence, your warmth, your breathing beside me—were the only things keeping me sane.”
His hand dragged down his face again, this time slower, more deliberate, as if he were trying to physically ground himself.
“You’re not your father,” he whispered.
The admission sounded like something he’d fought to say.
Like something that cost him.
“Why can’t I just see that?” he murmured to himself, as if wrestling with a part of him he could not control.
I wrapped my arms around my knees, pulling myself inward as much as the restraints of my own body allowed.
Cold seeped into my bones.
Not just from the room—but from everything.
The weight of everything that had just happened.
Every movement hurt.
Every breath scraped against my ribs.
Vincenzo stood, pushing himself away from the table with a sharp motion, like he couldn’t stand still any longer.
He walked around to my side, his footsteps measured but tense, each one echoing faintly in the room.
He stopped in front of me and looked—really looked—at the blood matting my hair, the swelling along my jaw.
The bruises darkening across my skin.
The torn fabric.
The way I held myself—curled inward, protecting what little I could.
Something shifted in his expression.
“I can never truly earn your forgiveness,” he said softly.
“I’ve done too much... too much to break you.”
Almost like he was speaking to himself.
Almost like he couldn’t fully believe it.
“Violet saved me once—literally put her body between me and a bullet when I was sixteen.”
His jaw tightened.
“I remember screaming for help, crouched by her barely conscious body in the alley. That kind of sacrifice... it stays with you.”
The words settled in the space between us.
