“No.”Her grin was wicked.“This is where I tell you he is going to ruin your life… before he saves it.”
I actually laughed for the first time in days.
She grinned back, triumphant, and I knew I’d just made my first friend in Tuscany.
The candles flickered, and for one brief, uneasy second, I swore one flame bent toward the Lovers, as if fate had heard her and was already intervening.
7
Atlas - Age 34
Ireturned to the convent.
I followed the same gravel path until I got to the building.Fifteen years hadn’t changed the place, except for the paint peeling on one window and the garden that looked a little overgrown.
I knocked once, and the door swung open almost immediately.
The nun, a young, soft-faced woman who didn’t meet my eyes, gave me a single nod when I gave her my name.She was more prepared than surprised.Like my arrival was less a visit and more an inevitability.
She turned without a word, her habit whispering against the stone floor as she slipped back into the dim hallway.I fell in behind her, shoes echoing, the air colder the deeper we went.
She led me to Sister Ana’s office.The elderly nun had more lines around her eyes than the last time I’d seen her and was moving slower.But her expression was the same; a quiet judgment mixed with patience she probably reserved only for lost men like me.
When she saw me, she bowed her head.
I tensed immediately.“Don’t do that.”
She lifted her gaze.“Out of respect, Don Cavalho.”
“It’s unnecessary.”
“You are the new Don, it is respectful,” she replied, stepping back so I could enter.
The halls looked smaller than I remembered.
I’d been nineteen the last time I walked that path—young, raw, convinced I knew how the world worked.I saw flashes of that day whether I wanted to or not: a silent little girl walking beside me, her hands clenched, her eyes empty.She’d lost everything in minutes, at the hands of my family.
Now I was back, older, harder, carrying a weight I didn’t have back then.And it hit me; it wasn’t the halls that had shrunk.It was me who’d changed.I’d grown, filled out, become something else entirely.
The younger nun slipped away, leaving me standing in the quiet.Sister Ana closed the door with a soft click that somehow felt final.
“What brings you, my son?”
I dragged a hand across my jaw and leaned back.“Business.You’ve heard?”
She nodded in response.
“I received news of your father’s passing.My condolences to you and the family.”Her eyes softened.“News travels even to quiet corners like ours.Congratulations on your appointment may be the wrong word.”
“That’s an understatement.”
She studied me for a long moment.“You never wanted this.”
“No.”The word came out before I could temper it.“I didn’t.”
“And yet it is yours.”
“It’s a sentence.”My voice tightened.“Not a gift or an honor.A responsibility forced on me because everyone else either died or can’t lead.”