Too real.
It hurt.
My own father—alive.
After all these years.
After everything I had believed.
He had stood there. Looked at me. And treated me like I was nothing.
An object.
Something to be used.
Matteo’s words echoed in my mind.
He wants you to satisfy his needs from time to time...
My stomach twisted violently.
My own father wants to violate me.
After years of believing he was rotting in the ground... my skull’s pounding too hard to wrap my mind around it.
To even believe he had been alive all this time—secretly living here in Italy while I suffered...
While I lived like I had no family.
No one to call home.
No one to cry to.
I was drowning in it.
And all along, he had been alive.
Watching.
Hating me from a distance.
The realization settled deep into my bones, cold and suffocating.
I didn’t realize I had stopped breathing until air finally rushed back into my lungs in a sharp, painful gasp.
The four men dragged me across the compound without a word.
Their boots scraped against dirt and stone, the sound grinding into my ears with every step.
My feet barely touched the ground.
They carried me more than I walked.
Like something that didn’t need to be handled carefully.
Like something that didn’t matter if it broke.
I didn’t resist.
