Prologue #2
Mia stared, wide-eyed. “What’s happening?”
“Don’t ask questions,” Donata snapped, her voice harsher than Mia had ever heard. “Go. Now!”
Mia scrambled out of bed as Donata yanked open the wardrobe and slid the hidden panel aside. She pushed Mia inside with trembling hands.
“Stay here,” Donata said, crouching to look Mia in the eye. “No matter what you hear, you stay put. Do you understand?”
Mia nodded, tears stinging her eyes.
“Not a sound, Mia. Promise me.”
“I promise,” she whispered.
Donata hesitated, brushing a quick kiss on Mia’s forehead, before sliding the panel shut.
In the darkness, Mia hugged her knees to her chest. She heard muffled voices, heavy footsteps, and another crash.
Each sound made her flinch. Through the crack, she saw Donata pretending to tidy the room, her hands trembling.
Then the door burst open. Heavy footsteps thundered in, followed by deep, menacing voices.
“Where is she?” one demanded.
Donata dropped to her knees, her voice shaking. “She’s not here. She’s at her aunt’s house.”
A heavy silence followed.
Then a cold, measured voice: “I won’t ask again.”
“She really is not here, sir, I—”
Pop!
The gunshot made Mia flinch so hard she slammed her head against the wood above her.
Through the crack in the crawl space door, she saw Donata collapse onto her knees.
Mia bit down on her knuckles, muffling the scream clawing its way out.
Donata’s hands clutched her side, blood pooling fast beneath her.
She gasped, a soft sound torn from her throat, but no cry escaped.
She did not fall. She stayed on her knees, trembling yet unbroken, her expression resolute.
She didn’t look toward the crawl space. She wouldn’t give them a reason to check.
“Search the house,” the voice barked.
Footsteps thundered through the rooms, distant at first, then growing louder, closer, as they swept every corner.
Mia stayed perfectly still. Her heart pounded so violently it hurt. She was sure they’d hear it, sure they’d find her. She didn’t dare breathe. Her lungs screamed for air.
“All clear,” someone finally said.
“Did we miss her?”
“Maybe she is at the aunt’s,” another muttered, though the tone said he didn’t believe it.
A pause.
Then the same cold voice said, “We’re done here.”
Pop! Another shot. Mia flinched again, biting down hard. She heard something heavy hit the floor—Donata’s body. She didn’t move again.
Silence settled like a fog. No more footsteps. No more voices.
Mia stayed hidden, trembling, the taste of blood in her mouth.
She waited until long after the front door slammed and the engine of the car faded down the street.
Her limbs refused to work. Everything inside her screamed to crawl out, to check on Donata and find her father.
But her body wouldn’t listen. When she finally inched out, her legs buckled beneath her.
Donata was facedown. Blood soaked the floor. Her hand was still outstretched, as if reaching for her. Mia collapsed beside her, hands trembling as she shook Donata’s shoulder.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please wake up.”
But there was no response. No breath. Just the fading warmth beneath her fingers, the stillness settling in. She kept whispering her name, over and over, until the words broke apart in her throat.
And then—nothing. She didn’t remember passing out.
Only the sound of her own sobs swallowing her whole, and the cold.
When Mia woke, her head was heavy, and the room around her was eerily quiet.
For a moment, she thought it had all been a dream.
Then her father entered, followed by a doctor.
The doctor checked her pulse, his voice soft.
“How are you feeling?”
Mia tried to answer, but nothing came out. Her throat burned. Her body wouldn’t move. Her father stood silently at the foot of the hospital bed, expression blank, eyes hard. Not grief. Not worry. Just distance.
The doctor approached with a syringe.
“There’s no need to be afraid,” he said soothingly. “I won’t stick you with this needle. The contents will go into your IV—see, into this bag here.”
Mia swallowed, her eyes tracking his every movement.
She watched intently as he tapped the syringe once, then pushed the liquid into the IV line.
A wave of warmth spread through her veins, then heaviness.
Her limbs slackened. Panic rose in her chest, but her body was no longer hers.
She tried to hold her father’s gaze, to ask the questions swirling inside her.
Why was he doing this? Why wouldn’t he speak to her?
Was Donata gone forever? But her eyelids were already fluttering shut, the drug pulling her under like dark water.
The next few days were fractured snapshots—white walls, whispered voices, the low hum of wheels on tile.
Faces passed in and out of view. None familiar.
She was moved, cleaned up, and packed. Her clothes were replaced with plain, pressed uniforms she didn’t recognize.
When she finally resurfaced enough to push through the drug-induced fog, she was strapped into a seat on a private jet.
The stewardess gave her a tight-lipped smile as she handed Mia a bottle of water and a rosary.
“Where am I going?” Mia asked hoarsely.
Her father, seated across from her, didn’t look up from the file in his hands. “St. Mary’s,” he said. “It’s a convent boarding school. You’ll be safe there.”
“Why?” she croaked.
He didn’t meet her eyes. “It’s for the best,” he said flatly. “I’ll visit when I can.”
The words felt final. She tried for several minutes to recall anything that had happened over the past few days, but nothing came to mind.
She blew out a defeated breath and glanced at her father, still browsing through his files, and the fragment of his voice—low, edged in warning, and a raised voice filled her mind.
The other—unfamiliar, angrier—had cut through the air like a blade.
“She’s only what… six or seven years old and already a target, Ettore. They know she exists. You should’ve moved her years ago.”
“I did what I had to. She was innocent.”
“Innocent won’t matter if they come for her.”
Mia didn’t understand the full truth yet, but she knew one thing for certain.
She wasn’t being sent away for school. She was being hidden.
And Donata was dead. Grief followed Mia like a shadow.
She didn’t speak or ask her father any more questions.
On the plane, a stewardess offered tea. Mia watched the liquid tremble in its cup, her reflection warping in the surface.
Somewhere below, the mountains rose like broken teeth.
She imagined opening the emergency door and stepping into that white silence.
The stewardess took the untouched tea away. No one came back.
At St. Mary’s, she never told the nuns the truth about what really happened.
Mia found she could not bring herself to talk to them either.
They chalked her silence up to nerves, to a difficult childhood, to “adjusting.” But it was grief—grief with sharp, jagged teeth.
Donata had been more than a housekeeper.
She’d raised Mia. She was the only softness in a house full of secrets.
And now she was gone. Because of her.
Six months later...
Mia hated everything about her new life.
The cold, unfamiliar walls of St. Mary’s were nothing like home.
The stone floors echoed with the clipped footsteps of nuns and the occasional wail of a homesick child.
At seven years old, Mia felt like a shadow—meant to stay quiet and unnoticed.
Every second of her day was tightly controlled: meals, chores, lessons, and even prayer.
Her favorite toys were gone. So was her soft blanket—Donata’s blanket.
In its place: a thin cot, scratchy wool sheets, and a plain wooden rosary.
She no longer asked for things. No one cared what she wanted.
Missteps earned punishment: a cuff on the ear, a snapped ruler across the knuckles.
Some of the sisters were kind, but even they seemed burdened by the dozens of little souls in their care.
Before being dropped at St. Mary’s, her father had spoken just once.
“You’ll be safe here. That’s all that matters.”
She had tried to ask why she couldn’t stay with her aunt, why she couldn’t go home—but he didn’t answer.
His eyes were hard. Distant. His cufflink—a tiny, silver snake eating its own tail—caught on her sleeve as he pulled away.
She clutched at it instinctively, but he pried her fingers open with clinical precision.
The metal left crescent moons in her palm. He kissed her forehead and walked away.
She waited for someone, anyone, to come back for her. But no one did. That’s when it hit her. She was truly alone.
At first, she tried to be perfect. She thought that if she prayed hard enough, obeyed every rule, her father would return. She knelt through every Mass with clasped hands and dry eyes, mouthing prayers she no longer believed. But God stayed silent. So did her father.
His visits became less frequent, first every few months, then once a year. Each time, he seemed colder. Distracted. She stopped asking when he’d be back. Eventually, he stopped coming altogether.
The years passed in a slow, gray blur. Her cousins and aunt became ghosts.
The night Donata died was locked inside her—untouchable.
She never spoke of it. Not to the nuns, not in confession.
Even during prayer, her mind wandered, blank and unreachable.
She was a quiet ghost in the halls, withdrawn and obedient.
The sisters called her a model student, but behind the praise was pity.
Everyone knew something had broken inside her. They just didn’t ask what.