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 smallinvasions 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 fortwenty 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.
