She doesn’t speak. But she tracks Isabella through every room now with an attention that borders on surveillance.
Sofia accepts food from Nonna Rosa. This started five days ago. Rosa didn’t offer, didn’t coax, didn’t make it an event. She set a plate of biscuits on the counter while Sofia was with Isabella and went back to her stove without a word. When Rosa turned around ten minutes later, two biscuits were gone and Sofia’s cheeks were still moving. Rosa caught my eye across the room. Didn’t smile, didn’t nod. Just held my gaze with the steadiness of a woman who has been feeding traumatized people for longer than I’ve been alive.
Sofia lets Giada check her bandages now. Sits still while my sister’s careful hands peel back gauze and examine what’s healing and what isn’t. Gia talks while she works, a constant low narration of what she’s doing and why, and Sofia doesn’t respond but she doesn’t pull away either.
“Iron’s up,” Gia told me yesterday, pulling her stethoscope off her neck. “Muscle’s rebuilding. The body does what it does when you give it the right tools.”
“And the rest?”
She paused. Rolled the stethoscope between her fingers. “One thing at a time, Renzo.” Quiet. Measured. “She’ll get there.”
“I’m asking about you.”
That stopped her. The stethoscope froze between her fingers. She looked at me like I’d said something in a language she didn’t know I spoke.
“I’m fine.” The pause told me everything the words didn’t.
Damnit. She looks tired. A slight drag in her step, the third coffee before noon. She’s carrying Sofia. Mila. The aftermath of the raid. Whatever her clinic needs, whatever Dante needs, all five of us. The way she’s always carried all five of us. And nobody has asked her if she’s all right.
The back stairs creak. Nico, taking them two at a time, a slim book tucked under his arm. He stops when he sees me on the landing.
“Renzo.”
“Where’d you get the book?”
He glances at it. The cover is Cyrillic. “Ordered it.”
“When?”
“Before.” He doesn’t elaborate. Before the raid. Before Mila. Before whatever happened in Moscow that taught my brother a language none of us knew he spoke.
“How’s she doing?” I ask.
“She threw a cup at the wall this morning. Good arm.” He’s past me and along the hall before I can respond. The book disappears with him.
Downstairs, a door opens and closes.
Mila. I don’t know her surname. Gia estimates early twenties based on bone structure and dental records. Nico found her during the raid. She came at him with a piece of rebar she’d sharpened against the concrete floor, and he caught her wrists without hurting her and spoke to her in Russian. She has her own room now. First floor, east corridor, with a lock thatworks from the inside and windows that open onto the garden. Gia chose it. Good light in the mornings. A hallway door wide enough that Mila can see anyone approaching before they get close.
Small considerations that matter to someone whose survival depended on reading a room before the room could read her.
She threw a ceramic lamp at one of the security detail on the second day and caught him above the eye. Eight stitches. Gia was furious, not at Mila but at the guard for getting too close when he’d been briefed on her triggers.
“I gave you one instruction. One. Give her space.”
The guard had the sense to look ashamed.
Today she’s outside the room. I lean against the railing and watch. She’s standing just beyond her doorframe, bare feet on the marble, her body positioned so she can retreat in one step. Her eyes scan the front door, the kitchen entrance, the staircase.
I know what that looks like. She’s counting. That’s not damaged. That’s adapted.
And then I see Sofia.
Isabella has gone into the library, and Sofia, for the first time since the rescue, hasn’t followed. She’s standing at the end of the hallway near the kitchen. Mila is at the opposite end, near her room. Maybe thirty feet between them. Neither moves toward the other. Neither leaves.
I set my espresso on the railing and watch.
It’s not dramatic. Nobody speaks. Nobody gestures. Sofia stands where she is and Mila stands where she is and they exist in the same corridor the way two feral cats might share a patch of sunlight. Each aware of the other. Each maintaining the distance that keeps them breathing. Neither threatening. Neither trusting. But neither walking away.
