Chapter Seven – Mico
Nicola’s Apartment – Western Suburbs, Victoria
I knock .
The hallway is musty, thick with the smell of mildew and boiled rice. The paint is chipped, the air dense. I hear shuffling behind the door, the scrape of a chain unlatched, and then it swings open.
She stares at me.
And without a word, she slaps me hard across the face. Then she spits, her eyes blazing with something brittle and burning.
I don’t move. I wipe my cheek slowly. Her spit is warm, bitter with salt and fury. Her eyes are red, swollen at the rims, face pale like she hasn’t seen daylight in days. She doesn’t say anything—just turns around and walks in.
I follow.
The apartment is small, the floor covered in cheap linoleum.
A noisy AC unit rattles from the window, pushing out just enough cool to fight the heat.
There's a patchy sofa, a standing fan stuck on oscillate, and a stack of dishes drying in the sink.
The place smells faintly of lemon cleaner and stale tears.
She spins around before I’ve shut the door.
“You left her all on her own,” she says, voice cracking as she points a finger at me. “You left her and now she’s gone.”
Her mouth trembles. She looks like she’s about to collapse in on herself.
“You don’t get to come back now. Not now.”
I don’t say anything.
She wipes her face with the back of her wrist, struggling to breathe through the sobs that are threatening to rise.
“I sent that mail,” she chokes out. “And you came running. Where was this when she needed you?”
I left the island the same day. First boat. First plane. No sleep.
This is the first time I’m seeing Nicola in person. But she knows me. She knows Lira. She’s a friend.
And she’s right.
I sit down on the edge of the sofa, the springs creaking beneath me. Nicola stays standing, shoulders trembling, red blotches blooming down her neck like heat rash. Her palms are pressed flat against her eyes, trying to push back the tears still falling in hot, angry drops.
“I—I’m sorry,” I say quietly. The words scrape my throat raw. “I’ll find her. I promise.”
She lowers her hands slowly. Her face is red, blotchy, her nose glistening from her crying. She looks like someone who hasn’t slept in days, like the exhaustion has carved hollows under her eyes. Her mascara’s smudged down one cheek.
“You should be,” she mutters, voice hoarse, “I have been going to the police every damn day. Every day. And they keep saying the same thing—they’re working on it. They say the letter she left is enough to prove she wasn’t taken. That she just… left.”
Her voice breaks on the last word.
“But Lira wouldn’t just leave. She has too many bills. She never misses work. Not even when she’s sick.”
I swallow hard, jaw tightening. That’s what’s been bothering me.
The account.
The one I’ve wired five thousand to, month after month—quietly, secretly. It’s not a normal checking account. It’s under both our names. A vault-style account, the kind you use to keep family heirlooms and sensitive documents. And I always check it. Every week.
She hasn’t touched a cent.
Not a single withdrawal.
I thought she was ignoring me. I thought she was doing it on purpose, punishing me with silence. But now—
Now I’m not so sure.
I clear my throat. “Can I see the letter?”
Nicola blinks at me, sniffles, then walks across the living room to the small table beneath the wall calendar. She grabs her phone, unlocks it, and passes it to me without a word.
The screen is already pulled up to the image.
I look down.
It’s neat. A few lines scribbled across lined paper. "I’ve gone back to Italy. I need time away. Don’t worry."
I stare at it. My grip tightens on the phone.
It’s almost perfect. Whoever wrote this took great care—angled the loops just right, slanted the letters like she would.
But it isn’t her.
I know her handwriting. I read enough of her letters back when she still believed in writing to me. Her capital Ls were always a little exaggerated, a leftover habit from childhood calligraphy class. Her lowercase t's—she never crossed them all the way. This note has crisp lines.
She didn’t write this.
“Not her,” I murmur, eyes still on the screen. “This… isn’t her hand.”
She didn’t have anyone in Italy.
No extended family. No distant aunt or cousin to crash with. Her entire bloodline had been cut down piece by piece. First her mother. Then Marco. Italy was a graveyard, not a destination. No way in hell she would’ve gone back.
So, whoever wrote that letter was counting on no one looking deeper.
I promised Nicola I’d find her. I meant every word of it.
But I can’t leave Nicola here.
This place isn’t secure. It's loud, poorly insulated. Neighbors close, walls thin, no real locks. Anyone with enough intent could force their way in before she ever had time to scream. And now that she’s asking questions, the wrong people might be watching.
“I need you to leave this apartment,” I say quietly.
She turns, red-eyed and sharp-tongued, her voice already rising.
“Are you out of your goddamn mind? Where do you expect me to go? I just renewed rent! You think I have money sitting around?”
I reach into my coat and pull out my checkbook. I flip it open against my knee and scrawl the numbers cleanly, with precision. I tear the slip, lean forward, and place it on the small, wobbly table between us.
She looks down.
“Five grand,” I say. “An agent I trust will come by tomorrow. He’ll show you some options. Pick whichever one you want. I’ll cover the rest.”
Nicola stares at me, her breath unsteady, fingers twitching at her sides. “Why are you doing this, I just want Lira back?”
I watch her. Red eyes. Hair frizzed from the humidity. Fingers trembling around paper.
“And I want you to be here when she is.”
She stares at me. Searching for something in my face. A reason to trust. Or a reason not to.
“You don’t have to trust me,” I say. “But there’s so much more going on here than you know. I need you safe.”
Her face goes pale. She leans forward like the air just left her lungs. Her mouth opens but nothing comes out.
“Do as I say,” I tell her, “and you’ll be safe.”
She starts sobbing again. Not the kind that chokes or gasps—just raw. Her shoulders fold in on themselves like she’s collapsing inward.
I move. One step. Then another. I kneel down beside her couch, my boots pressing into the threadbare rug.
I reach out, careful, and pat her back. Once. Twice. My hand stays there.
She tilts her face to me, wet cheeks and all.
“Please... bring her back to me.”
My jaw locks. But in my chest, something final settles.
I will.
****
Western Suburbs, Victoria — To Dyer Hotel, Carlton
The streetlights throw long, thin shadows across the windshield as I ease the car into gear and pull away from Nicola’s complex. The building shrinks in the rearview mirror—dim-lit, hunched in its own peeling paint and rusted gates, a place that always feels too tired to fight the dark.
The drive back is quiet. Victoria’s night traffic is sparse this far out, and the only sound is the low hum of the engine and the occasional whisper of tires against uneven asphalt.
I keep one hand on the wheel, the other curled loose against my thigh. My chest is tight, but not from the cold. It’s the kind of weight that settles behind your ribs and doesn’t move. I’ve carried it a long time.
Lira.
She was the only part of that house that ever felt untouched.
Still soft, still golden. I’d known Marco first—we met back in secondary school, both of us new in town, both of us with something to prove.
We bonded the way teenage boys do—fists first, then loyalty.
The day he brought me home, I didn’t know what to expect.
But I remember walking into that house and seeing her.
Eleven years old. Barefoot in the hallway with ink-stained fingers and a ribbon falling from her hair. She squinted at me like she already knew me and asked if I liked lemon cake.
I remember the smell. Vanilla. Floor polish.
A touch of dried herbs from the kitchen.
It was the first time I felt warmth in someone else’s home.
My own house had noise, yes, and dinners on the table sometimes—but not warmth.
Not peace. My mother’s anger took up all the space. And my father… he just watched.
But Lira’s mother tucked my hair behind my ear without asking, the first week I came around. Marco started calling me his brother. And Lira… well, Lira adored me.
She didn’t hide it.
It started with notes. Anonymous, at first. Folded triangles slipped into my hoodie pocket or the back of my textbooks.
You’re really tall, like a tree. I like trees.
Do you think it’s weird to like someone older than you? I don’t.
Your eyes are always sad. But I like them that way. They look honest.
I kept them. Every one.
Even after she stopped writing. Even after she grew too old to pretend she wasn’t the one leaving them. I still kept them.
Marco found them once in my gym bag. Grinned. “Better you than some rando.”
I wanted to tell him the truth then. That I didn’t deserve her. That I knew what my blood carried. That even the kindest version of me had rot in the roots.
But I didn’t.
Because some part of me—maybe the part that still believed in something close to love—hoped I could change.
I never touched her. Never crossed that line. Not when she turned sixteen. Not when she turned eighteen. Not even when her voice started to sound like silk and her hips filled out the edge of summer dresses.
But I watched. And I loved. Quietly. Carefully. From a distance that was always one step farther than I wanted it to be.
The city flickers past me in orange and blue. Billboards blur. I pass the edge of Carlton, close to the university where she should have been. Where she dreamed of finishing her music degree. Where everything went to hell instead.
I tighten my grip on the wheel.