They shaved my head.
Gave me the uniform. And took me to a different facility.
And throughout my stay there, I received very special treatment.
A year later, my father came to take me home. He was impressed by my progress. He gave me a hug that I didn’t return. I didn’t even look him in the eye once. The horrors I’d gone through, the things they’d done to me, the dark thoughts multiplying in my head with every second that passed.
The numbness churning in my gut.
I had been right. He’d made me worse.
But I knew my anchor was back home. Back at the compound, my family.
They were the only reason I was even remotely eager to return to that compound.
My father had taken me straight to the meeting house. We were there for about three hours before I was free, and I racedto my room to change out of the uniform my father had forced me to wear to the meeting with his capos.
But the moment I walked out of the room, and the building, all I saw was chaos, soldiers running helter-skelter—barking orders.
“Water… hurry up… they’re inside… fire… church… burning… stop the fire… quick!”
The voices filtered in and out of my head.
I will never forget the rage of the massive plumes of smoke erupting from the building, the overwhelming smell of gasoline that clogged my throat, the smell of burning wood, and the heat of the fire warming my skin from where I stood. For a second, I couldn’t make sense of it. Then the screams started, and my mind caught up. My heart tightening and dropping.
I ran—God—I’d never run as fast as I did in that moment, my aim was to burst through the flames as though that were possible. At that moment it felt possible, at that moment I wanted to cut off the hands clawing at my skin, holding me back from reaching them, saving them.
I watched the fire claim everything. My mother. My siblings. The church.
And I was too late.
I hadn’t been there.
I watched the footage from the church multiple times right after my father had gotten rid of everyone who’d witnessed or seen what had really happened so that he could create a narrative in his favor.
I watched and watched repeatedly—my mother bathing the church in gasoline, tying my siblings up. My mother’s delusion as she kissed each of their foreheads while they cried, the flick of a lighter, and then, nothing. I let every single detail of that video sew itself into my head.
Because I would need it.
I would need it for when I burned it all down, with my father and me as the victims of our own demise.
CHAPTER ONE
Elio
“There you are.” Casmiro’s gruff voice cut through the quiet hum of the afternoon. I hesitantly tore my eyes from the page in thePolitics Todaymagazine I was reading, raising my head to find him walking toward the gazebo. The air smelled faintly of chlorine, courtesy of the pool beside me which had just been cleaned, its surface still rippling under the sunlight. Casmiro’s steps were careful, hand pressed against his torso, while he climbed the two steps before settling into the chair opposite me. “I went to your house to find you.”
I looked down at the magazine, not deeming his state severe enough to check for complications. “You should not be out. You need to heal properly.”
“I’m fine,” the man offered with a grunt as he relaxed back into the chair. I could feel his stare, but I didn’t want to talk, nor did I want to entertain any human company. His presence irritated me, and indulging him was not advisable, seeing as I didn’t want to say something he wouldn’t like to hear. “It’s awfully quiet lately,” he said.
I didn’t respond as I reread a line for the third time.
He cleared his throat. “You never got back to me on how your interrogation went with the man you caught from the gang that attacked me at Turin—”
“He is dead.”
There were a few seconds of silence before he spoke again. “How did it go?”
