Chapter 1
The walls shook again.
It wasn’t the storm outside. It was them.
Their voices, ricocheting across plaster, seeping into the cracks like poison, filling every corner of our small Italian house.
I pressed my palms over my ears, but their anger was sharper than my hands could block. It cut straight through me. My father’s roar. My mother’s shrill defiance. The sound of glass breaking against tile. The storm could never be as violent as the storm inside these walls.
“Do you think I don’t know?” my father thundered.
“Know what?” my mother spat back. “That you waste our money on your pathetic drinking while your daughter starves?”
I flinched at the word daughter.
They always remembered me when they needed another weapon.
My knees were tucked to my chest on the stairwell, the only place I could make myself small enough to be invisible. But invisibility is never enough. Not here. Not with them.
“Don’t you dare drag her into this!” he barked.
“She’s already in it!” my mother’s voice cracked, fury laced with exhaustion. “She watches us fight every night. Do you think she’s blind? Do you think she doesn’t see the monster you’ve become?”
Monster.
That word clung to the air like smoke.
I squeezed my eyes shut, praying to melt into the wood beneath me, to dissolve into the rain hammering against the roof. But it was useless. My breath gave me away. The stairs creaked under my trembling.
And then—
“Nathalie!”
My mother’s voice, slicing through me. She’d chosen her weapon again.
“Come here. Tell him. Tell him what you told me.”
My body went rigid. No, no, not me. Not tonight. Please.
But my father’s shadow stretched across the hallway before I could move. His eyes, glassy with liquor, pinned me where I sat.
“What did you tell her?” His voice was slow, dangerous, each word thick with rage.
“I—I didn’t—” My voice cracked. My throat was ash.
“Don’t lie to me, ragazza.” He lurched closer, the scent of whiskey drowning me. “What did you say?”
I shook my head, nails digging into my arms. “Nothing, Papa. I didn’t say—”
“She said you scare her.” My mother’s words cut over mine. Cold. Merciless.
The air collapsed around me. His face contorted, betrayal twisting into fury.
“Is that true?” he snarled.
My lips moved but no sound came. The truth was tangled in my chest, caught between my ribs. Fear and guilt and love, all choking me at once.
He grabbed my arm, rough, shaking me hard enough to rattle my bones.
“Look at me, Nathalie!”
Tears blurred my vision. I wanted to scream, to beg, to vanish. Instead, I whispered the only word that could slip free.
“Please.”
That single plea broke something.
Not in him.
In me.
His grip tightened, and for a moment, I thought he would throw me down the stairs. My mother shouted something, rushing forward, her hands clawing at his, trying to tear me free. Their screams tangled together—my name, curses, accusations.
I couldn’t breathe.
The storm outside wailed in harmony.
And then—
CRASH.
A lamp shattered. Someone fell. My mother screamed again, but not words this time. Just sound. Terrible, guttural sound.
I stumbled back against the wall, my knees slipping on shards of glass. My father’s shadow loomed, fractured by lightning through the window. For an instant, I didn’t recognize him. He wasn’t my father anymore. He was something else—something larger, darker, teeth bared, eyes hollow.
I thought he would kill her.
I thought he would kill me.
But before the ending came—
Before the blood, the silence, the ruin—
Everything stopped.
The memory cuts there. Frozen, unfinished.
Because some nights never truly end. They echo. They echo forever.
20 years later…
