Chapter 32
ISABELLA
Silence over the compound in a way I’m still learning to trust. No footsteps overhead. No doors. Just insects beyond the window and the ghost of Nonna Rosa’s coffee drifting up through the old house.
Sofia is sleeping. I checked an hour ago.
Slipped into the medical wing and stood in the doorway until my eyes adjusted.
She was curled on her side, one hand tucked beneath her chin.
Giada dozing in the chair beside the bed with a journal open across her chest. My sister’s face, smoothed by sleep, looked younger than eighteen.
“Still here, Sof,” I whispered. “I’ve got you.”
She didn’t stir. But I needed to say it. Needed the words in the room even if she couldn’t hear them.
She’s safe. That sentence used to be a prayer. Now it’s a fact, and I don’t know what to do with its echo in my brain.
I pull my knees up against my chest. Lorenzo’s room is spare.
Dark curtains blocking the predawn glow.
A single chair at the window overlooking the front gates.
Nothing on the walls. But the rosary sits on the nightstand where I placed it two nights ago.
My hoodie is draped over the chair’s arm.
These small invasions are reshaping the territory without his permission or mine.
Three months ago I was eating cold pizza over a keyboard at 2 a.m. and hunting names through databases that didn’t exist. Now I’m rearranging a man’s nightstand and worrying about whether my hoodie clashes with his curtains.
I should sleep. I can’t. So I do what I always do when the quiet gets too loud. I get up. I go check on people.
The medical wing at four in the morning is a different world.
Giada is awake. She’s always awake. She’s standing at the supply cabinet restocking gauze rolls, her dark hair pulled back, circles under her eyes that could pass for bruises.
She’s wearing scrubs and a cardigan she stole from Cassia, and she moves with the precision of someone who could do this in her sleep and probably has.
“Isabella.” She doesn’t look surprised. “Couldn’t sleep either?”
“Sleep is overrated.”
“Sleep is how your body repairs cellular damage and consolidates memory.” She slides the last gauze roll into place. “But I’m not going to lecture you at 4 a.m.”
“You literally just did.”
Her expression warms. “Force of habit.”
I lean against the door frame and watch her work. Gia moves through this space the way Lorenzo moves through the compound. Territorial. Sure. This is hers.
“How are they?” I ask.
She pauses. Turns to face me. Her doctor voice settles over her, but underneath it is the woman who’s been awake for twenty hours, running on whatever fuel doctors use when coffee stops working.
“Sofia first.” Gia crosses to the counter and pulls a file.
She doesn’t need the file. She knows it all.
But she opens it because I think the structure steadies her enough to relay the difficult parts.
“Physically, she’s recovering. Malnourished.
Vitamin deficiencies across the board. Muscle atrophy from prolonged confinement.
I’ve started her on supplements and a meal plan Rosa’s helping with. The body heals. That’s what bodies do.”
Gia pauses. Her fingers press the edge of the file. “There’s evidence of repeated sexual trauma. Older injuries and newer ones. I’ve treated what I can. The rest is time.”
My hand finds the counter behind me. Grips it. My knuckles go white and I can’t make them stop.
Gia sets the file down. Crosses to me. Not the doctor now. She takes my face in both hands the way Nonna Rosa does, the way family does, and holds me there.
“We have her, Isabella. She’s here. She’s safe. And she has you.”
I nod against her palms. My jaw is shaking. She doesn’t let go until it stops.
She closes the file. “Psychologically, she’s in acute trauma response. The silence isn’t defiance. It’s protective. Her nervous system shut down the parts of her that could be hurt, and speaking is a part of that. She’ll talk when her brain decides it’s safe to. Could be weeks. Could be months.”
My thumbnail finds my teeth. The nail is raw but the habit doesn’t care.
“She doesn’t tense up when I examine her anymore,” Gia says. Quieter now. “That’s new. Three days ago she couldn’t tolerate being touched by anyone except you. Yesterday she let me check her blood pressure without pulling away.”
Three days. That’s the scale we’re measuring in. Three days to tolerate a blood pressure cuff.
The breath I’m holding comes out wrong.
“That’s good,” I say.
Gia nods. “I want to introduce her to a trauma counselor I trust. Dr. Amara Thibodeaux. She works with survivors in situations like ours. She won’t push. She’ll sit with Sofia and let Sofia decide what happens in the room.”
“When?”
“When Sofia’s ready. I’ll know.”
From the corridor, a sound. Not a scream. Something between a whimper and a snarl, animal and small, the noise of a creature startled awake by a dream only she can see.
Gia’s spine straightens. “That’s Mila.”
I follow her down the corridor. Gia moves fast but not running. Measured. Urgent but not emergency. She’s done this before.
The door to the room at the end is open.
Nico is already inside. Lorenzo’s brother, who should be asleep two floors up, is sitting on the edge of the chair beside the bed.
Elbows on his knees. Hands open, palms up.
Not touching. Not reaching. Just present.
His hair is messy from sleep. T-shirt and sweatpants, bare feet on the cold tile.
His face holds none of the easy charm I’ve come to expect from him.
The girl in the bed is pressed against the wall.
Knees drawn up, arms wrapped around her shins, eyes wild and fixed on Nico’s face.
She’s small. Younger than Sofia, maybe, or just smaller from years of not being fed enough.
Her hair is dark and matted and her skin is too pale for anyone who’s seen sunlight in this decade.
Nico is speaking to her. Low. Steady. In Russian. I don’t speak Russian. But I recognize the rhythm. Patient. Repetitive. The same phrases looped like a lullaby. Each one in a voice so gentle it doesn’t sound like the man who makes everyone laugh at Sunday dinner.
Mila. That’s the name Gia uses. We don’t know her surname. She won’t give it. She won’t give anything except aggression to anyone who gets close. Anyone except Nico.
I watch from the hall. Gia stands beside me, arms crossed, gaze tracking Mila’s vitals from across the room. Heart rate by the pulse in her throat. Respiratory rate by the rise and fall of her shoulders. Gia doesn’t need machines when she can read a body like code.
“She’s Eastern European,” Gia murmurs. “I think Ukrainian, maybe Moldovan. She won’t confirm. Nico’s Russian is the only language she responds to.”
“When did he learn Russian?”
Gia’s mouth presses flat. Her expression tightens. Releases. “I’ve been asking him that since he was sixteen.”
Nico’s voice continues. The same low cadence. Mila’s grip on her own arms loosens by a fraction. Her breathing slows from gasps to a cadence that almost resembles normalcy. Her eyes never leave his face.
“She only speaks to him?” I ask.
“She doesn’t speak to anyone. But she tolerates him. That’s more than she’ll give to anyone else. Yesterday Marco walked past her door and she threw a water glass. Caught him above the ear.”
“Is Marco okay?”
“Four stitches. He’ll survive. He’s more embarrassed than hurt.”
In the room, Nico shifts. He starts to stand.
Mila screams. The sound tears through the medical wing like a blade.
Not a word. Not a plea. Pure terror compressed into a frequency that makes my teeth ache and my vision blur.
She launches off the bed toward Nico, not attacking but grabbing, her fists closing on his shirt with a grip that turns her knuckles white.
Nico freezes. His arms hover at his sides. Not wrapping around her. Not pushing her away.
He changes. Not the charming brother. Not the diplomat. A man who looks like he’s been hit in the chest.
He sits back down. Mila doesn’t let go of his shirt. She presses her forehead against his shoulder, still gripping the fabric, and the screaming subsides into hard, ragged breathing. Nico’s hand lifts. Stops. His fingers hover over her hair without touching.
He looks at Gia.
“You can stay,” Gia says. Professional. Gentle. The doctor and the twin speaking at once. “Just sit with her. Don’t push.”
He nods. Settles back into the chair. Mila doesn’t release his shirt. Her breathing evens out. Her body goes heavy against his side, exhaustion winning the fight that terror started.
Gia pulls me back into the hallway and closes the door to a crack.
“She hasn’t let anyone that close since the rescue,” Gia says. “Nico’s the only one she doesn’t attack on sight. I don’t know why. Something happened during the raid that made her trust him, and he won’t tell me.”
“Does she sleep?”
“In stretches. Two, three hours. She wakes up fighting. The staff knows to give her space and let her come down on her own. Nico started sitting outside her door at night. She screams less when she knows he’s there.”
I look at the crack of light from Mila’s room. At the shadow of Nico’s shoulder, motionless, holding the position for a girl who has her fists wound into his shirt.
Gia presses her thumbs against her temples. The gesture is too tired for someone her age. She’s twenty-eight and she moves like she’s been doing this for decades.
“The other girls from the rescue are at the Casa Lucia clinic in Treme,” she says, switching back to her clinical mode. “Better equipped for long-term care. Counseling staff on rotation. Sofia and Mila are here because they need closer monitoring.”
“And you?” I ask. “Who’s monitoring you?”
She blinks. The question catches her off guard, which tells me everything.
“I’m fine.”
“You haven’t slept.”
“I slept.”
“When?”
A pause. “Tuesday.”
“Gia, it’s Friday.”
She squares her shoulders. The doctor in her takes over again, smooth and practiced. “I have patients.”
“You have people who care about you.”
Her mouth opens. Closes. Something crosses her features, quick, before she shuts it down. She pats my arm.
“Go sleep, Isabella. Doctor’s orders.”
She walks back toward the supply room. Her steps don’t drag. Her spine doesn’t curve.
I go back upstairs. The hallway is quiet except for the hum of the air conditioning.
Lorenzo’s door is open. The hallway light catches his silhouette.
He’s back. Standing by the window, shirt changed, cleaned up, looking out at the front gates with that particular stillness of his.
There’s a fresh bruise darkening along his jaw.
I don’t ask.
He turns when I enter. “Sofia?” he asks.
“Sleeping. Healing. Slowly.”
He nods. Studies me. His knuckles are red. I take his hand and press my thumb across them, gentle over the damage.
I press my face against his chest. He pulls me in without hesitation. Automatic. Like muscle memory he didn’t have six weeks ago.
“I watched Mila grab onto Nico like he was the last solid thing in the world,” I say into his shirt. “And I watched your sister pretend she’s not falling apart. And Sofia let Gia take her blood pressure without pulling away.”
His fingers find the back of my head. Fingers in my hair. Not pulling. Just there.
“Small things,” I say.
“Small things.”
He holds me. The predawn light starts to seep through the curtains. The compound settles into the hour before the house wakes and Nonna Rosa starts the coffee and another day of slow, patient, impossible healing begins.
Small things. That’s all we have.
It’s enough.