The Savage, page 3
‘About fucking time,’ Dante mutters.
I blink, my throat dry as sandpaper. ‘You look like shit,’ I rasp.
His mouth twitches with half amusement, half relief. ‘You should see yourself.’
Then another voice. Older. Harder. ‘Agreed.’
Orazio.
Shit.
The old man fills the doorway like a storm cloud in an Armani suit, his silver hair slicked back, his black cane tapping once against the floor. Even at eighty-three, my grandfather looks ready to gut anyone who crosses him.
‘You were reckless,’ he says flatly. ‘I told you – the British are lucky, not blessed. They build engines like they build their weather – predictable, miserable but stoic. Go at it at your peril.’
I manage a weak laugh that makes my ribs ache. ‘Nice to see you too, Nonno.’
His eyes narrow. ‘You think this is funny? You nearly died. The team could’ve lost millions. The family—’
‘—would’ve survived,’ I croak.
He stares at me a long moment, then sighs through his nose. ‘It is not a theory I’m in the mood to test, stronzo. But I should’ve known better than to doubt. You’re my grandson. Too stubborn to die, too foolish to live quietly.’
That’s the closest thing to affection I’ll ever get from him.
He squeezes my shoulder once – his version of I’m glad you’re alive – then turns to leave. ‘Get well, nupito. You have debts to collect and pay.’
He narrows his eyes at Dante in a look I can’t decipher.
When the door closes behind him, the room exhales. Then one by one my siblings deliver their version of Orazio’s parting words, until only my twin remains.
Dante’s still watching me, a strange look in his eyes.
‘What?’ I ask.
‘You kept saying her name, frate.’
My pulse skips.
I don’t need to ask which name he means. I know. ‘What else did I say?’
Eyebrows so identical to mine they probably contain the exact number of strands arch upwards. ‘Saying the name of the woman who—’ He pauses, his jaw iron-tight. ‘Reciting her name like some fucking prayer, over and over, like she’s your personal saint instead of the woman who put a bullet in our mother isn’t enough? You want to have said more?’ he barks harshly, unlike the laid-back brother I know.
I swallow hard, staring at the ceiling, listening to the heart monitor click back to its steady rhythm. ‘Nah… guess not.’
‘You’re lucky you knew better than to do it when Rafa visited you. He’d be even more pissed than he already is.’
‘Why is it that I’m the one lying in a hospital bed and he’s the one pissed off?’ I croak.
Dante shrugs. ‘Cesare and Sofiya told him he wasn’t allowed to kill Sebastian for T-boning you on the track. He’s not taking it well.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Yeah.’
Rafaelle, the enforcer for our family, is unhinged at the best of times. When one of us is threatened, he goes extra mental. I probably need to add my voice to the petition to save Sebastian’s life before things get out of hand. The British kid is a rookie, stupid-eager to please. As bloodthirsty as every single Salvatore is, he doesn’t deserve to die for his mistake.
But I can’t think past the throbbing in my head. Past the flashes of ghostly white that won’t leave me alone.
She’s haunted every inch of my dreams, and now she’s crept into the waking world too.
I need to do something about that.
Before I lose my fucking mind.
Nightowl
The feed has been looping for thirty-two hours.
Four different camera angles. Three audio inputs. One fading heartbeat.
Renzo Salvatore – twenty-seven years old, professional Formula One driver, registered capo in a criminal organisation that still believes it can outrun its own ghosts and be born anew. Except ghosts have the habit of hanging around.
And right now, a host of them are gathered around Renzo Salvatore.
Ten hours ago, he was up and talking.
Now, he’s losing the battle.
Lines of code crawl across my secondary screen, each one a lifeline: heart rate, oxygen saturation, neural response. I’ve patched into the hospital’s private network through a satellite bounce off Reykjavik, because the UK’s firewalls are laughable if you know where to dig. The doctors are too fucking terrified to tell the Salvatores that one of their own is hanging by a thread. They, probably rightly, fear the wrath of the Cosa Nostra.
Cesare’s been pacing for hours.
The rest keep glancing at the monitors like they can intimidate them into behaving. They don’t know I’m watching everything. They never do.
At the start of my fascination with them, I told myself I was doing it for the data, for possible leverage down the line, because nothing sells better than a juicy secret, right?
But that’s a lie.
I’m fascinated. By this family. By their story. By the unhinged carnage permanently waiting in the wings to unravel. By how so many catastrophes hinge on a name.
Two families, bloodily, fatally and inextricably intertwined. Morbidly fascinated with one another. They’re the epitome of the tired cliché of love and hate being two sides of the same coin.
On the monitor I watch his lips move. I don’t even need my special lip-reading programme to translate the silent words.
Giada Mancinelli.
At this point, I’m convinced she’s the only thing connecting him to life.
He whispers her name repeatedly, voice raw, and I feel the barest hint of something sharp and searing twist deep in my chest.
Interesting.
My fingers hover above the keyboard as a dozen possible responses queue in my mind.
Alert Rafa.
Scrub the feed, shut it all down, resist the urge to pull this particular thread.
But even as the thought hits, I pull up another window, my fingers flying.
I’ve played puppet master for too long, fingered too many pies, to turn back now.
Some would call it interference.
I call it correction.
The world is full of men who believe they’re untouchable: dons, politicians, CEOs, each convinced the rules don’t apply to them. I just happen to be the ghost in their machines, the invisible accountant making sure debts are paid. A few keystrokes and empires fall, accounts vanish, entire bloodlines are stripped bare of the power they stole. Not for justice. Never justice. For balance.
Over the years, I’ve crashed bank servers for fun, exposed corrupt judges for sport, and delivered more secrets to both sides of a war than either realise. But the Salvatores… they’re different.
They’re my favourite equation, chaos dressed in couture. I didn’t plan to become their unseen hand, but every time I meddle, the world sharpens. Patterns align. The numbers hum the way they should.
I don’t interfere.
I curate.
I’m pondering my next move when the screen beside his bed flashes red and Renzo’s vitals spike again, then drops.
Nurses rush in, blocking the camera view.
Cesare’s mouth moves and my green code captures the movements and translate.
He’s praying and cursing and praying.
They grow from a whisper to a roar when the flat line echoes through the hospital speakers.
No.
I lean closer, pulse hammering, ignoring the sweat collecting on my upper lip. Come on, you reckless bastard. Breathe. We’re not done tussling yet.
Another second. Then another.
A blip. Two.
He’s alive. Barely.
I close my eyes and let out a long, unsteady breath.
Ten minutes later, after the doctors wheel him away to place him in his second induced coma, I sit back in my seat, my fingers steepled against my lips.
That was close.
Too fucking close.
I have the solution. The last card. I hadn’t wanted to play it just yet.
But… needs must, apparently.
I drag the cursor to the top of the screen, type a new command into the encrypted server. The system blinks once, then green-lights the operation.
Nightowl
Airlift to Italy. Standby for logistics.
I watch Cesare’s phone activate and my message appear. He immediately frowns.
Cesare
Airlift? What the fuck for? He has a severe concussion. Enough to be put in an enforced coma.
Nightowl
ECMO-capable med team on the jet, portable vent, pressor drips, inline monitors. Flight plan filed under diplomatic cover. Ground ambulance door-to-door. Customs pre-clearance already greased. Wheels up in ninety.
The typing dots stall. Then:
Cesare
You still didn’t answer me. Why the fuck should I jeopardise my brother’s life for some faceless schmuck hiding behind a screen?
I don’t answer.
Cesare paces the private waiting room, jacket off, sleeves shoved up and his jaw grinding. He stops where Renzo’s empty bed was, stares where the screen that bleeped with his life is now blank, and I watch a shiver course through him.
Then he glances down at his phone and I watch his chest rise. And fall.
Cesare
Where will you take him?
Nightowl
Istituto San Cristoforo, Modena.
Cesare curses under his breath and starts to prowl, cutting tight, precise laps like a caged panther.
Cesare
Is it worth me asking why there?
When I don’t answer he swears again, invoking a string of saints and devils. Then resumes pacing.
Fucking idiot.
Nightowl
Pacing won’t help. Do you want him to live?
He freezes. Mercurial-grey Salvatore eyes sweep the corners, the vent grilles, lingers on the smoke detector. Smart boy. He turns his head and says it out loud, voice low and lethal. ‘Can you hear me too, you fucker?’
My keys click.
Nightowl
Yes.
Louder, still with his eyes on the smoke alarm, he speaks. ‘Then listen closely. He dies, there’s nowhere you can hide that I won’t find you, motherfucker. You hear me?’
I let him have the silence for one heartbeat. Two. Then I tap.
Nightowl
Save the theatre for funerals. You’ll have fewer if you follow directions. Get. Fucking. Moving. And Cesare… if I wanted him dead, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Rage mottles his face as his hand clenches his phone tight, knuckles white. But after a moment, he calms down enough to function. Good.
Cesare exhales like he’s swallowing fire, then pivots towards the door, every inch the underboss stepping into his war.
‘Doctor!’ His voice rips through the corridor like a commandment. ‘We’re transferring Renzo, now. I want an ECMO-ready team, full transport kit, intubation secured, pressors titrated, all lines taped and labelled. Get admin on the phone and clear the transfer; anyone who slows this down answers to me.’
He jabs a finger towards the nurses’ station. ‘Call operations. There’s an air ambulance incoming. We’re wheels up in ten.’ He unfurls his sleeves and slides in his cuffs, a blade being sheathed.
Then glances around the startled, frozen faces.
‘I. Said. Move!’
One last thing.
Putting this genie back in the bottle might be a problem for most. Not for me. At the very least, it might prove a worthy challenge.
As doctors and nurses scramble to relocate Renzo Mancinelli, I pull the keyboard closer.
New Instruction: Asset Retrieval.
Location: Santa Maria delle Nevi, Sicilian Alps.
Status: Protected. Hidden. Undisturbed.
Undisturbed. The word makes a single pulse of electricity zip through my system.
Because I have a feeling that status won’t remain that way for very long.
3
SISTER BENEDETTA
Three Days Later
The convent settles into its nightly silence like a great stone heart slowing after poignant and meaningful prayer.
The dinner bell has long since faded, leaving the scent of lentil stew and baked bread lingering faintly in the air. We eat in silence, as always, the scrape of spoons against bowls the only conversation allowed.
Afterwards, we wash the dishes in the communal scullery, Sister Alba humming beneath her breath and Sister Teresa chiding her for it, then file one by one through the dim cloister, heads bowed, the soft and reassuring slap of sandals echoing between the arches.
I pause before the statue of the Virgin at the end of the corridor, the one that survived the fire. Her marble skin is still blackened at the hem where the flames licked her robes, a relic of the other convent. The one we lost after hastily abandoning it to an unquenchable blaze. I carry the memory of smoke in my lungs even now, though I hardly remember that night.
Only heat and confusion, the sound of shouting, and hands pulling me through darkness.
We were told it was a miracle that any of us survived.
The fire began in the laundry, spreading faster than any of us could react. They moved the remaining sisters here, to Santa Maria delle Nevi, a little over a year ago. Everything that burned was declared lost, including the precious archives.
I tell myself that maybe it’s for the best. That all that matters is that we all made it out alive.
But in my quieter moments, I can’t help but wonder, even while I chastise myself for it, if it was far too convenient.
Or if the Lord, in His infinite wisdom, means to keep anyone from telling me where I came from.
How I ended up in a convent for the last six years.
After Compline, I retreat to my cell, a narrow room with whitewashed walls and a simple crucifix above the bed.
It’s colder here than at the old convent; the wind seeps through the shutters in an insistent whisper. I light a stub of candle, kneel by the little table that serves as my desk, and begin my nightly ritual.
Brush hair. Fold veil. Check the hem of my habit for loose threads. Say a prayer for humility. Another for forgiveness. And one more – for memory.
That last one feels like blasphemy.
The doctors said the fire damaged my hearing and stalled my healing for a while; the heat concussed me. But that’s not why I lost pieces of myself. That was before. But the nuns insist it’s all divine will. That God took what He deemed unnecessary, and in His mercy, left me enough to serve Him.
I believed them. At first.
But lately, I’m not so sure.
There are moments, small but with sudden, blinding flashes that make me doubt. A smell, a word, a sound. Sometimes when one of the younger sisters laughs, I see light through stained glass and someone turning towards me.
Or when the gardener’s son laughs and I see a figure, a man’s outline maybe, wild dark hair, blurred by the sun’s shadow.
My stomach twists when it happens, a rush of something that feels like joy and pain tangled together.
I try to ask questions, careful ones. ‘Did I have family before the convent?’ ‘Where was I found? Is Benedetta my real name?’ But the answers are always the same.
‘Be patient, Sister Benedetta. The Lord only reveals what we’re ready to bear.’
Patience, they say, is the virtue of saints.
But saints don’t wake in the night trembling from dreams of faceless strangers. Saints don’t feel the sharp stab of wanting to know who they were before God remade them.
I hate myself for doubting. I hate the small, bitter corner of my soul that wonders if faith alone will ever be enough. So I pray harder. Louder. Longer. Until the words blister my lips and the stone floor numbs my knees.
Tonight, I polish the small wooden cross that hangs at my bedside, praying the repetitive motion will sooth and ground me.
It’s cracked from years of devotion, the grain darkened by the oils of my fingers. My throat clogs and tears film my eyes as I whisper over it like an apology.
‘Forgive me, Father. For thinking I might have been someone else.’
Silence deepens and the wind rattles the shutters in answer.
Across the corridor, the bell in the chapel tolls once – a soft, hollow note. The last of the sisters shuffle to their rooms. I blow out the candle and crawl into bed, pulling the blanket to my chin. The sheets smell faintly of lavender and smoke. I stare up at the shadow of the crucifix, trying not to think about the world beyond these walls.
In two days, I’m meant to meet with the Madre Superiora.
She’ll explain the next stage of my noviciate, the one I’ve dreaded since I first heard of it. Every novice, before taking her final vows, must spend six months living beyond the convent. A trial of faith. To test one’s strength against faith and temptation.
The idea terrifies me, hollows my belly in a way that won’t let me catch my breath.
I have no memory of the world outside these cloisters. No family to write to. No friends to visit. Only the faint, flickering fragments that come to me unbidden.
I told Sister Teresa once that I fear I wouldn’t know how to find my way back if I left. She smiled kindly and said, ‘Then you’ll have to trust God to lead you home.’
That terrified me more than I could say. Because what if He doesn’t?
What if the world is waiting to swallow me whole again, like the fire almost did? Or the fractures in my brain worsen until there’s nothing left of me worth salvaging?
I close my eyes, fold my hands beneath my cheek, and force the thought away.
I blink, my throat dry as sandpaper. ‘You look like shit,’ I rasp.
His mouth twitches with half amusement, half relief. ‘You should see yourself.’
Then another voice. Older. Harder. ‘Agreed.’
Orazio.
Shit.
The old man fills the doorway like a storm cloud in an Armani suit, his silver hair slicked back, his black cane tapping once against the floor. Even at eighty-three, my grandfather looks ready to gut anyone who crosses him.
‘You were reckless,’ he says flatly. ‘I told you – the British are lucky, not blessed. They build engines like they build their weather – predictable, miserable but stoic. Go at it at your peril.’
I manage a weak laugh that makes my ribs ache. ‘Nice to see you too, Nonno.’
His eyes narrow. ‘You think this is funny? You nearly died. The team could’ve lost millions. The family—’
‘—would’ve survived,’ I croak.
He stares at me a long moment, then sighs through his nose. ‘It is not a theory I’m in the mood to test, stronzo. But I should’ve known better than to doubt. You’re my grandson. Too stubborn to die, too foolish to live quietly.’
That’s the closest thing to affection I’ll ever get from him.
He squeezes my shoulder once – his version of I’m glad you’re alive – then turns to leave. ‘Get well, nupito. You have debts to collect and pay.’
He narrows his eyes at Dante in a look I can’t decipher.
When the door closes behind him, the room exhales. Then one by one my siblings deliver their version of Orazio’s parting words, until only my twin remains.
Dante’s still watching me, a strange look in his eyes.
‘What?’ I ask.
‘You kept saying her name, frate.’
My pulse skips.
I don’t need to ask which name he means. I know. ‘What else did I say?’
Eyebrows so identical to mine they probably contain the exact number of strands arch upwards. ‘Saying the name of the woman who—’ He pauses, his jaw iron-tight. ‘Reciting her name like some fucking prayer, over and over, like she’s your personal saint instead of the woman who put a bullet in our mother isn’t enough? You want to have said more?’ he barks harshly, unlike the laid-back brother I know.
I swallow hard, staring at the ceiling, listening to the heart monitor click back to its steady rhythm. ‘Nah… guess not.’
‘You’re lucky you knew better than to do it when Rafa visited you. He’d be even more pissed than he already is.’
‘Why is it that I’m the one lying in a hospital bed and he’s the one pissed off?’ I croak.
Dante shrugs. ‘Cesare and Sofiya told him he wasn’t allowed to kill Sebastian for T-boning you on the track. He’s not taking it well.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Yeah.’
Rafaelle, the enforcer for our family, is unhinged at the best of times. When one of us is threatened, he goes extra mental. I probably need to add my voice to the petition to save Sebastian’s life before things get out of hand. The British kid is a rookie, stupid-eager to please. As bloodthirsty as every single Salvatore is, he doesn’t deserve to die for his mistake.
But I can’t think past the throbbing in my head. Past the flashes of ghostly white that won’t leave me alone.
She’s haunted every inch of my dreams, and now she’s crept into the waking world too.
I need to do something about that.
Before I lose my fucking mind.
Nightowl
The feed has been looping for thirty-two hours.
Four different camera angles. Three audio inputs. One fading heartbeat.
Renzo Salvatore – twenty-seven years old, professional Formula One driver, registered capo in a criminal organisation that still believes it can outrun its own ghosts and be born anew. Except ghosts have the habit of hanging around.
And right now, a host of them are gathered around Renzo Salvatore.
Ten hours ago, he was up and talking.
Now, he’s losing the battle.
Lines of code crawl across my secondary screen, each one a lifeline: heart rate, oxygen saturation, neural response. I’ve patched into the hospital’s private network through a satellite bounce off Reykjavik, because the UK’s firewalls are laughable if you know where to dig. The doctors are too fucking terrified to tell the Salvatores that one of their own is hanging by a thread. They, probably rightly, fear the wrath of the Cosa Nostra.
Cesare’s been pacing for hours.
The rest keep glancing at the monitors like they can intimidate them into behaving. They don’t know I’m watching everything. They never do.
At the start of my fascination with them, I told myself I was doing it for the data, for possible leverage down the line, because nothing sells better than a juicy secret, right?
But that’s a lie.
I’m fascinated. By this family. By their story. By the unhinged carnage permanently waiting in the wings to unravel. By how so many catastrophes hinge on a name.
Two families, bloodily, fatally and inextricably intertwined. Morbidly fascinated with one another. They’re the epitome of the tired cliché of love and hate being two sides of the same coin.
On the monitor I watch his lips move. I don’t even need my special lip-reading programme to translate the silent words.
Giada Mancinelli.
At this point, I’m convinced she’s the only thing connecting him to life.
He whispers her name repeatedly, voice raw, and I feel the barest hint of something sharp and searing twist deep in my chest.
Interesting.
My fingers hover above the keyboard as a dozen possible responses queue in my mind.
Alert Rafa.
Scrub the feed, shut it all down, resist the urge to pull this particular thread.
But even as the thought hits, I pull up another window, my fingers flying.
I’ve played puppet master for too long, fingered too many pies, to turn back now.
Some would call it interference.
I call it correction.
The world is full of men who believe they’re untouchable: dons, politicians, CEOs, each convinced the rules don’t apply to them. I just happen to be the ghost in their machines, the invisible accountant making sure debts are paid. A few keystrokes and empires fall, accounts vanish, entire bloodlines are stripped bare of the power they stole. Not for justice. Never justice. For balance.
Over the years, I’ve crashed bank servers for fun, exposed corrupt judges for sport, and delivered more secrets to both sides of a war than either realise. But the Salvatores… they’re different.
They’re my favourite equation, chaos dressed in couture. I didn’t plan to become their unseen hand, but every time I meddle, the world sharpens. Patterns align. The numbers hum the way they should.
I don’t interfere.
I curate.
I’m pondering my next move when the screen beside his bed flashes red and Renzo’s vitals spike again, then drops.
Nurses rush in, blocking the camera view.
Cesare’s mouth moves and my green code captures the movements and translate.
He’s praying and cursing and praying.
They grow from a whisper to a roar when the flat line echoes through the hospital speakers.
No.
I lean closer, pulse hammering, ignoring the sweat collecting on my upper lip. Come on, you reckless bastard. Breathe. We’re not done tussling yet.
Another second. Then another.
A blip. Two.
He’s alive. Barely.
I close my eyes and let out a long, unsteady breath.
Ten minutes later, after the doctors wheel him away to place him in his second induced coma, I sit back in my seat, my fingers steepled against my lips.
That was close.
Too fucking close.
I have the solution. The last card. I hadn’t wanted to play it just yet.
But… needs must, apparently.
I drag the cursor to the top of the screen, type a new command into the encrypted server. The system blinks once, then green-lights the operation.
Nightowl
Airlift to Italy. Standby for logistics.
I watch Cesare’s phone activate and my message appear. He immediately frowns.
Cesare
Airlift? What the fuck for? He has a severe concussion. Enough to be put in an enforced coma.
Nightowl
ECMO-capable med team on the jet, portable vent, pressor drips, inline monitors. Flight plan filed under diplomatic cover. Ground ambulance door-to-door. Customs pre-clearance already greased. Wheels up in ninety.
The typing dots stall. Then:
Cesare
You still didn’t answer me. Why the fuck should I jeopardise my brother’s life for some faceless schmuck hiding behind a screen?
I don’t answer.
Cesare paces the private waiting room, jacket off, sleeves shoved up and his jaw grinding. He stops where Renzo’s empty bed was, stares where the screen that bleeped with his life is now blank, and I watch a shiver course through him.
Then he glances down at his phone and I watch his chest rise. And fall.
Cesare
Where will you take him?
Nightowl
Istituto San Cristoforo, Modena.
Cesare curses under his breath and starts to prowl, cutting tight, precise laps like a caged panther.
Cesare
Is it worth me asking why there?
When I don’t answer he swears again, invoking a string of saints and devils. Then resumes pacing.
Fucking idiot.
Nightowl
Pacing won’t help. Do you want him to live?
He freezes. Mercurial-grey Salvatore eyes sweep the corners, the vent grilles, lingers on the smoke detector. Smart boy. He turns his head and says it out loud, voice low and lethal. ‘Can you hear me too, you fucker?’
My keys click.
Nightowl
Yes.
Louder, still with his eyes on the smoke alarm, he speaks. ‘Then listen closely. He dies, there’s nowhere you can hide that I won’t find you, motherfucker. You hear me?’
I let him have the silence for one heartbeat. Two. Then I tap.
Nightowl
Save the theatre for funerals. You’ll have fewer if you follow directions. Get. Fucking. Moving. And Cesare… if I wanted him dead, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Rage mottles his face as his hand clenches his phone tight, knuckles white. But after a moment, he calms down enough to function. Good.
Cesare exhales like he’s swallowing fire, then pivots towards the door, every inch the underboss stepping into his war.
‘Doctor!’ His voice rips through the corridor like a commandment. ‘We’re transferring Renzo, now. I want an ECMO-ready team, full transport kit, intubation secured, pressors titrated, all lines taped and labelled. Get admin on the phone and clear the transfer; anyone who slows this down answers to me.’
He jabs a finger towards the nurses’ station. ‘Call operations. There’s an air ambulance incoming. We’re wheels up in ten.’ He unfurls his sleeves and slides in his cuffs, a blade being sheathed.
Then glances around the startled, frozen faces.
‘I. Said. Move!’
One last thing.
Putting this genie back in the bottle might be a problem for most. Not for me. At the very least, it might prove a worthy challenge.
As doctors and nurses scramble to relocate Renzo Mancinelli, I pull the keyboard closer.
New Instruction: Asset Retrieval.
Location: Santa Maria delle Nevi, Sicilian Alps.
Status: Protected. Hidden. Undisturbed.
Undisturbed. The word makes a single pulse of electricity zip through my system.
Because I have a feeling that status won’t remain that way for very long.
3
SISTER BENEDETTA
Three Days Later
The convent settles into its nightly silence like a great stone heart slowing after poignant and meaningful prayer.
The dinner bell has long since faded, leaving the scent of lentil stew and baked bread lingering faintly in the air. We eat in silence, as always, the scrape of spoons against bowls the only conversation allowed.
Afterwards, we wash the dishes in the communal scullery, Sister Alba humming beneath her breath and Sister Teresa chiding her for it, then file one by one through the dim cloister, heads bowed, the soft and reassuring slap of sandals echoing between the arches.
I pause before the statue of the Virgin at the end of the corridor, the one that survived the fire. Her marble skin is still blackened at the hem where the flames licked her robes, a relic of the other convent. The one we lost after hastily abandoning it to an unquenchable blaze. I carry the memory of smoke in my lungs even now, though I hardly remember that night.
Only heat and confusion, the sound of shouting, and hands pulling me through darkness.
We were told it was a miracle that any of us survived.
The fire began in the laundry, spreading faster than any of us could react. They moved the remaining sisters here, to Santa Maria delle Nevi, a little over a year ago. Everything that burned was declared lost, including the precious archives.
I tell myself that maybe it’s for the best. That all that matters is that we all made it out alive.
But in my quieter moments, I can’t help but wonder, even while I chastise myself for it, if it was far too convenient.
Or if the Lord, in His infinite wisdom, means to keep anyone from telling me where I came from.
How I ended up in a convent for the last six years.
After Compline, I retreat to my cell, a narrow room with whitewashed walls and a simple crucifix above the bed.
It’s colder here than at the old convent; the wind seeps through the shutters in an insistent whisper. I light a stub of candle, kneel by the little table that serves as my desk, and begin my nightly ritual.
Brush hair. Fold veil. Check the hem of my habit for loose threads. Say a prayer for humility. Another for forgiveness. And one more – for memory.
That last one feels like blasphemy.
The doctors said the fire damaged my hearing and stalled my healing for a while; the heat concussed me. But that’s not why I lost pieces of myself. That was before. But the nuns insist it’s all divine will. That God took what He deemed unnecessary, and in His mercy, left me enough to serve Him.
I believed them. At first.
But lately, I’m not so sure.
There are moments, small but with sudden, blinding flashes that make me doubt. A smell, a word, a sound. Sometimes when one of the younger sisters laughs, I see light through stained glass and someone turning towards me.
Or when the gardener’s son laughs and I see a figure, a man’s outline maybe, wild dark hair, blurred by the sun’s shadow.
My stomach twists when it happens, a rush of something that feels like joy and pain tangled together.
I try to ask questions, careful ones. ‘Did I have family before the convent?’ ‘Where was I found? Is Benedetta my real name?’ But the answers are always the same.
‘Be patient, Sister Benedetta. The Lord only reveals what we’re ready to bear.’
Patience, they say, is the virtue of saints.
But saints don’t wake in the night trembling from dreams of faceless strangers. Saints don’t feel the sharp stab of wanting to know who they were before God remade them.
I hate myself for doubting. I hate the small, bitter corner of my soul that wonders if faith alone will ever be enough. So I pray harder. Louder. Longer. Until the words blister my lips and the stone floor numbs my knees.
Tonight, I polish the small wooden cross that hangs at my bedside, praying the repetitive motion will sooth and ground me.
It’s cracked from years of devotion, the grain darkened by the oils of my fingers. My throat clogs and tears film my eyes as I whisper over it like an apology.
‘Forgive me, Father. For thinking I might have been someone else.’
Silence deepens and the wind rattles the shutters in answer.
Across the corridor, the bell in the chapel tolls once – a soft, hollow note. The last of the sisters shuffle to their rooms. I blow out the candle and crawl into bed, pulling the blanket to my chin. The sheets smell faintly of lavender and smoke. I stare up at the shadow of the crucifix, trying not to think about the world beyond these walls.
In two days, I’m meant to meet with the Madre Superiora.
She’ll explain the next stage of my noviciate, the one I’ve dreaded since I first heard of it. Every novice, before taking her final vows, must spend six months living beyond the convent. A trial of faith. To test one’s strength against faith and temptation.
The idea terrifies me, hollows my belly in a way that won’t let me catch my breath.
I have no memory of the world outside these cloisters. No family to write to. No friends to visit. Only the faint, flickering fragments that come to me unbidden.
I told Sister Teresa once that I fear I wouldn’t know how to find my way back if I left. She smiled kindly and said, ‘Then you’ll have to trust God to lead you home.’
That terrified me more than I could say. Because what if He doesn’t?
What if the world is waiting to swallow me whole again, like the fire almost did? Or the fractures in my brain worsen until there’s nothing left of me worth salvaging?
I close my eyes, fold my hands beneath my cheek, and force the thought away.
