Prologue #3
Mia kept a calendar tucked under her mattress. Every night before bed, she’d cross off a day, counting—not toward anything, just away from the past. Five years of marks covered those pages before something changed.
Then Bianca arrived.
She came at twelve, the same age as Mia.
Though they shared Italian roots, they were nothing alike.
Mia was cautious and quiet. Bianca was loud, opinionated, and impossible to ignore.
With short blonde hair, fierce hazel eyes, and a defiant mouth, she looked like a wild creature dropped into the middle of the convent.
Her socialite parents sent her to St. Mary’s to “straighten her out,” dragging her back home on holidays for show.
At first, Mia avoided her. But Bianca didn’t let her.
One evening, Bianca burst into the chapel in the middle of Mia’s silent penance.
“Christ, it reeks of guilt in here,” she announced, plopping onto the pew beside her. The scent of stolen cigarettes cut through the incense.
Mia kept her eyes lowered. The nun’s ruler had left a fresh weal across her knuckles that morning.
Silence.
“Couldn’t sleep?” she pressed again.
More silence.
“I get it,” she said. “This place is a prison wrapped in a rosary.” Bianca shifted, tone softer. “You don’t belong here.”
Mia finally looked at her. “Neither do you.”
Bianca snorted. “You’re really just going to kneel here all day?” She flicked a piece of lint at the crucifix. “He’s not listening.”
When Mia finally looked up, Bianca was grinning like she’d already won. A smudge of lipstick bled outside her mouth. Rebellious. Alive.
Mia sniffed. “Sacrilege.”
Bianca’s laughter echoed through the vaulted ceiling like a struck bell.
That was the beginning. Their bond grew in stolen moments—contraband candy, whispered jokes, hiding from Sister Agnes.
Bianca teased Mia into smiling again. She never pressed when Mia shut down, but never disappeared either.
One night, sitting beneath the stars behind the chapel, Mia finally whispered the truth:
“I saw her die.”
Bianca didn’t flinch. She took Mia’s hand and said nothing, but she stayed.
After that, they were inseparable. Together they grew, surviving scrapes, punishments, and years of numbing routine.
Bianca lit up the cracks in Mia’s shell, and Mia, in turn, gave Bianca something to protect.
They marked time in stolen chapel snacks, shared secrets behind laundry lines, and penciled their dreams into the margins of old textbooks.
Mia kept a battered journal under her mattress.
On the inside cover, in Bianca’s looping scrawl, was written: We’ll leave here one day. You’ll see.
Another six years passed before those words came true.
At eighteen, life split them apart. Bianca, armed with her inheritance and a taste for chaos, fled to Europe—Lisbon, Milan, Paris.
Her letters crackled with life:
“Stole champagne at a yacht party. Don’t ask.”
“Might join a traveling circus. Again, don’t ask.”
No one was coming for Mia. There was no home, no inheritance, nothing waiting beyond the convent walls.
So, she stayed—what else could she do? She applied to stay on as a junior teacher at St. Mary’s.
The convent, rigid as it was, had become her world.
The sisters were the only family she had, and while others her age chased freedom, Mia clung to routine. Stability. Safety.
Mia found purpose in helping the younger girls, the ones who cried at night or flinched at raised voices. She didn’t talk much about herself, but the girls loved her gentle presence. Her life was small, but steady.
Still, she kept every postcard Bianca sent. Folded them neatly. Reread them on hard days. Proof that somewhere, something still shimmered.
Another five years passed, and Mia lived in relative comfort.
Then came the letter. Hand-delivered. Thick ivory paper.
Her name, written in dark, elegant script, one she didn’t recognize.
The envelope smelled of amaretto and gun oil.
Mia’s fingers remembered before her mind did—the same cloying sweetness that clung to her father’s study.
The paper slithered open like it had been waiting.
Somewhere in the garden, a nun called for vespers. The sound curved around her like a noose. Mia realized she’d stopped breathing when the edges of the letter began to tremble. Or maybe that was her hands. It was an official contract.
Bound in blood and duty.
Her father’s name signed at the bottom. Her thumbnail caught on the wax seal—a familiar crest: the silver snake from her father’s cufflink, now coiled around a dagger.
A marriage agreement. To a man she’d never met. A name she didn’t know.
Her heart slammed against her ribs so hard she thought she might faint. The last line chilled her more than all the rest: “You were promised, Mia. And now, it’s time to honor that promise.”
Mia stared at the words, her pulse drumming in her ears.
The paper in her hands felt suddenly heavy, as if it carried the weight of chains.
For years, she’d built a quiet life behind convent walls.
A life she had earned through silence and obedience.
But this—this was theft. A decision made without her voice, her consent, her future considered.
She folded the letter slowly, deliberately, as if refusing to flinch gave her back some measure of control.
Promised.
She almost laughed. She had been many things in this life—forgotten, obedient, invisible—but she was not his to give. Not anymore.
The past hadn’t forgotten her. But it was about to find she wasn’t the same girl it had left behind.