Chapter 12 Neve
Neve
I took the long way home after the markets, cutting through the quieter streets like I always did. It added ten minutes to the walk, but it saved me two buses and a few coins—and every coin mattered when my rent drained me dry and my pay barely covered what I needed to keep breathing.
Tuscany was never supposed to be a permanent stop.
Just a break. A month, maybe two. Time to get my bearings before moving on to the next place.
Venice, maybe Rome, maybe even across the border to France for a while.
I’d made a list once, but crumpled it up when it felt too hopeful, too much like planning for a life I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to live.
Then I met Zelda.
She had barreled into my life like it was her right to do so.
Loud when she felt like it, quiet when she sensed I needed space, and never once looking at me like I was too damaged or too strange to deal with.
She spoke to me like I was someone worth her time, with real patience and interest instead of rushed, polite curiosity.
She became the closest thing I’d had to a friend in a very long time.
And for the first time in years, I’d felt like I wasn’t drifting. I’d had something that resembled steady ground.
And then there was Paolo. Loud, ridiculous, dramatic Paolo.
He acted like the sun itself owed him a debt, but beneath all that noise was someone who genuinely tried.
Someone who showed up every day, who flirted with Zelda because it was the only language he knew how to speak, who looked at her like she was the best thing that had ever happened to him.
I pretended he annoyed me, but watching him and Zelda dance around each other felt like witnessing a tiny miracle. A reminder that some people still got soft endings. I wanted to see theirs. I wanted to stay long enough to watch it unfold. Even if I knew soft endings weren’t for people like me.
But I couldn’t stay forever. I’d move on eventually.
I wanted to see the world—really see it.
Cities crowded enough to swallow me whole.
Beaches warm enough to make me forget winter existed.
Mountains high enough that the air felt new in my lungs.
All the pieces of life I’d missed. All the things I’d never gotten to try.
It was just… hard to leave the few people who finally made a place feel less empty.
I tightened my grip on the small bag swinging at my side as I turned down another narrow street. The sky had dimmed into late afternoon, that strange in-between light where the day wasn’t gone yet, but shadows started acting like they had rights over what was left.
The buildings shifted as I walked. The tourist areas faded behind me. The colors dulled. The air cooled. Laundry lines hung low enough that I had to duck under them. Stray cats napped on broken crates. A door slammed somewhere in the distance.
This was the part of the city most people didn’t wander through, but I knew it well. You learned the cheapest routes first when your life depended on it.
My steps fell into their usual rhythm—light, quick, always ready to pivot. I scanned corners and doorways without thinking. It was instinct now, etched into memory. I’d lived this way too long to unlearn it.
And just as I was debating whether I could stretch my groceries into three meals instead of two, something shifted around me.
My neck prickled. My arms tensed on their own. It felt like eyes on my back—steady, deliberate. Someone was watching me.
I didn’t stop walking. I didn’t turn around. I wasn’t giving whoever it was any reaction to feed off. I tightened my grip on my bag and kept moving, keeping my pace natural.
But the longer I walked, the more the feeling pressed in.
The street noise thinned out behind me. No footsteps followed. No voices bled in from the main road. The only sound left was the scrape of my shoes on the uneven cobblestones.
It was wrong. All of it. The air was too still, a controlled emptiness that sent a cold rush crawling up my arms. My stomach knotted the same way it had the night the world collapsed around me when I was seven years old. My instincts flared instantly. I wasn’t just nervous. I sensed real danger.
I didn’t break stride, but I pushed my pace just enough to see if anything matched it. The alley stretched out ahead of me—narrow, boxed in by crumbling walls that swallowed sound. I scanned each doorway and corner without ever tilting my head.
Halfway through, a shadow peeled itself from the wall, and a man stepped into my path.
Tall. Broad. Hood pulled low. A scarf covering everything below his eyes. His posture was all wrong. His stance told me everything before he even spoke.
I froze for one second. One stupid, precious second.
His hand shot out and clamped around my arm, fingers digging into muscle hard enough to bruise. He yanked me sideways, dragging me off the main path and into a concrete recess cut into the alley wall.
“Shh,” he hissed, breath sour and warm against my cheek. “Come quietly.”
No. Absolutely not.
I smacked my heel down onto his foot, grinding bone under my shoe. He grunted, his grip loosening just enough for me to break free.
I twisted away, but he was fast. His other hand snatched my wrist, jerking me back toward him. I turned with the pull, bringing my elbow up and driving it straight into the bridge of his nose. The crack was loud. Wet and satisfying.
He reeled back with a snarl, blood staining the scarf.
“You little—”
He slapped me across the face. Hard. My head snapped sideways. My vision flared white at the edges, but pain only woke something in me. Something old and learned.
I hit him back. My fist drove into his throat, right where the cartilage dipped. He choked, gagging, stumbling back into the wall. I shoved forward, using my momentum to knock us both off balance. We crashed to the ground. My knees scraped concrete, and his skull hit stone with a dull thud.
I was on top of him before he could even think about recovering. My breath was rough, but my hands were steady. Every move I made was intentional. Controlled. Necessary.
Old lessons fired through my mind, quick and precise, the way they’d been drilled into me over and over again:
Don’t wait for mercy.
Stay focused, Neve.
Protect yourself.
Kill or be killed.
Adrenaline crashed through my veins, hot and overwhelming, causing my mind to focus. I refused to die in a filthy alley at the hands of another man who thought he was entitled to my fear. I would not die helpless.
The convent hadn’t turned me soft. While the rest of the world thought I’d been praying and sewing and learning how to be a quiet little survivor, I’d been learning something else entirely: how to stay alive.
I’d learned how to strike hard and fast. How to end a fight before it started.
How to be the last one standing. But I’d never had to use those skills outside the quiet safety of the convent gardens.
Even knowing how cruel the world could be, I hadn’t thought the day would actually come when I’d be forced to put them into practice and face another human being for my life.
So when this man dragged me into a culvert and tried to take control of my body, my arms, my life, every instinct I’d honed snapped into place.
Fifteen years of discipline. Fifteen years of hoping this moment would never come. Fifteen years of preparing so I would never be powerless a second time.
I leaned my weight into him, my knees digging into his ribs, my grip unwavering even as he thrashed beneath me.
He thought brute strength was enough. He thought fear would freeze me.
But he was wrong. The losses I’d survived were so much worse than this man.
I’d survived the night my world ended, and I would survive him.
Because I hadn’t spent a decade rebuilding myself only to let someone take it all away.
I lifted my shirt just enough to reach the knife tucked against my hip. The moment he saw it, everything in his body changed. His eyes widened, real fear slicing through whatever plan he thought he had.
“How many of you are there?” My voice was low, flat.
He tried to grab my arm. I twisted away. He tried to buck his hips to throw me off. I shoved my knee into his ribs and ground down, pinning him in place.
“How many?” I demanded.
He threw a punch. I blocked it with my forearm and brought the knife down in a clean arc, slicing his palm as he reached for the blade. He screamed, high and raw. His blood splattered across my wrist, warm and slick.
“Answer me.”
“Just—just me—”
Liar.
He surged. I struck the butt of the knife into his temple. His head whipped to the side. He blinked, dazed, limbs momentarily heavy.
That was my opening.
I grabbed his collar with one hand, pulled his head up, and dragged the blade across his throat in one practiced stroke.
The cut was quick, straight, deep enough to end his life.
Blood burst across my hands, hot and bright. He gurgled, choking on it, fingers clawing at the wound like he could tuck it closed. I didn’t speak as I watched him bleed out.
His body jerked once. Twice. Then it went still, eyes glassy and unfocused as he slipped away.
Only when I was sure he wasn’t getting up again did I push off him and rise to my feet. My legs shook, but I forced them steady. I wiped blood from my cheek with the back of my hand.
I checked the alley. It was still silently empty. Where the fuck was everyone?
I slid the knife back under my shirt, tightened my grip on my bag, and stepped out of the culvert without looking back.
Because there was one truth I’d learned a long time ago: the first rule of survival was you don’t wait for rescue. You fought, and you bled, until you became the monster they were afraid of… before they became the monster that ended you.