Love is a luxury I can’t afford. A weakness I can’t survive.
I will not break.
I buried that possibility with him.
1
CASSIA
My mother’s sobs wake me before the sun does.
My body registers the sound before my feet touch the floor. Before the humid July air presses against my skin. Before I count the seconds between her ragged breaths.
Three seconds apart. Getting worse.
Elena is gone.
I sit on the edge of my bed and listen to the house fall apart.
Papa’s footsteps pound the hallway. Back and forth. Back and forth. The rhythm of a man watching everything he built turn to ash. Fourteen steps. Pause. Fourteen steps back. Twenty-three minutes of pacing. I’ve counted.
The wedding was two days ago. Three generations of Neri survival, shattered because my sister couldn’t walk down an aisle she’d been groomed for since she was twelve.
My hand goes flat against my chest.
Five beats. Still here.
The hallway smells like cold coffee and my mother’s perfume when I slip out of my room. Something floral and expensive. Elena bought it for her last Christmas. I gave her a gift card to The Container Store. For the pantry she’d been meaningto reorganize. Mama thanked me. Used Elena’s perfume. The pantry still looks the same.
That’s how it’s always been. Elena gives the beautiful things. I give the functional ones. And functional things don’t get displayed on the dresser.
Papa stands in the living room with his back to me, phone pressed to his ear, shoulders hunched like he’s bracing for a blow. Gray hair that wasn’t gray five years ago. His hand trembles against the phone case.
The collar of his shirt is crooked, buttons misaligned, and Mama didn’t fix it for him. She always fixes it for him. Has for thirty years.
Not today.
He doesn’t notice me standing there. Nobody ever does.
“Three generations,” he says, and his voice cracks on the word. “Three generations of service, and this is how it ends. My daughter made fools of us all.”
My daughter. There’s only ever one face in his mind when he says that.
I got my first calculator when I was eight. Elena got etiquette lessons twice a week and dresses for family events. I got sensible clothes that wouldn’t show stains and Cassia, have you finished the quarterly reconciliation?
I finished it. I always finish it. I’ve been finding their errors, covering their gaps, holding the quiet parts of this family together since I was sixteen years old.
If I’m invisible, I’m safe. If I’m useful, I survive.
That’s the math, anyway. The equation I’ve balanced my whole life.
Papa’s voice rises. “I don’t know where she went. I don’t know why. She left a note. Said she couldn’t do it, couldn’t be trapped.”
His voice catches. Breaks. A sound I’ve never heard from him before, thin and splintering, like a man who just ran out of people to call.
Because he knows what I know. What anyone who’s spent time in that compound knows.
Dante Santoro doesn’t forget. He maintains ledgers in his head the way I maintain them on paper, and every debt gets paid. One way or another.
