I inhale once. Controlled. “Yes,” I say. “I’m scared of people hurting you.”
Nico’s grip tightens on the car. He doesn’t look away. “I don’t like yelling.”
I nod again. “I don’t like it, either.”
It isn’t a lie. Not anymore.
I reach out, slow enough that he can choose to flinch or stay. He stays. I don’t touch him yet. I stop a few inches short, hand hovering like a question.
“No one yells at you in this house,” I say. “Okay?”
His eyes narrow, assessing. A little man in a small body.
“A promise?” he asks.
The word tastes different when it’s demanded by a child. It tastes like something you can’t excuse later. I feel the familiar weight of instinct in my bones. Intimidation, volume, fear. Tools that have kept me alive. Tools that have made me my father.
I look at Nico. His ear. His stillness. His eyes. And something in me shifts, quiet and irreversible.
“Yes,” I say. “That’s a promise.”
He watches me a beat longer, like he’s measuring whether I believe my own words. Then his shoulders lower just a fraction. A release. Not full trust. But enough.
He lifts his toy car, offers it to me like a treaty. “This one is fast,” he says solemnly. “It goes here.”
He walks to the edge of the war room table and sets it down with precise care. Straight. Aligned. He glances back at me, checking if I’m watching properly.
I don’t move. I don’t speak. I let him have the moment.
He arranges it again, nudging it until it’s perfect. My hand wants to go to my ear. It burns. I keep it down. Instead, I exhale. Slow.
Nico looks satisfied. He turns his head toward the doorway. “Mama?” he calls. “I’m here!”
Lucia appears a second later, her face tight with that panic she wears like a second skin. Her gaze hits the room. The empty chairs. The abandoned tablets. The quiet. Then it finds me. Kneeling. At her son’s level.
Her expression flickers. Confusion first, then something sharper beneath it. She steps in fast, crossing to Nico as if the air might steal him. He goes to her willingly, tugging her hand like nothing happened.
“Mama, he promised,” Nico announces.
Lucia freezes mid-step. “He… what?”
Nico points at me with the solemn authority of a judge. “No yelling at me.”
Lucia’s eyes lift to mine. There’s fight in them. Suspicion. The constant readiness to run. But there’s something else, too. Something wary. As if she expected me to be my father and found a different animal instead.
I stand. Slowly. Lucia’s body still tenses, protective instincts flaring even though I’ve done nothing.
I hate that my presence does that to her.
I hate that I earned it by association.
Nico tugs her toward the door. “Come. I show you cars.”
Lucia lets him pull her, because she’s always choosing him over fear even when fear is screaming at her.
At the threshold, she pauses and looks back at me once more. My name isn’t in her mouth. But the question is.
I hold her gaze without trying to soften it. Without trying to win.
