During the day, Sister Ana showed me small things: where the laundry was washed, how to help peel vegetables for dinner, how to sweep the courtyard.She explained the rules without pushing me.She talked to me like I was still human, even though I didn’t feel like it.
She told me I was safe here.I nodded, but I didn’t believe her.
I watched everything—the doors, the windows, the shadows in the hall.I tracked where the keys were hung.I memorized which locks made noise and which didn’t.
I wouldn’t be caught off guard again.I wouldn’t hide in a pantry and hope someone decided to let me live.I might only have been seven, but I knew one thing with absolute certainty: I wouldn’t die helpless next time.
I learnedthe rhythm of the convent faster than anyone expected.
At first, I stayed in my room most of the day.Sister Ana let me; she brought food and left it on the dresser without asking questions.I ate only enough to keep the room from spinning when I stood.
The nightmares got worse before they got better.Most mornings, I woke up shaking, gripping the blanket so hard my fingers ached.Some nights I woke with my mouth open in a silent scream, but no sound came out of me anymore.It was like my voice shut off the night everything else did.
Sister Ana pretended she didn’t hear me.It was the kindest thing she could do.
Eventually she told me I needed to join the others for chores.It wasn’t a request; I thought she just wanted to get me out of my room.So I followed her.
I peeled potatoes in the kitchen with two older nuns who talked softly about the weather.I swept the hallway with a broom that was taller than I was.I folded laundry next to Sister Ana, who worked twice as fast as I did but never commented on my slowness.
Some of the sisters smiled at me.I didn’t know how to smile back anymore, so I looked down and pretended to focus on the work.
The convent had rules about where we could go.Certain doors stayed locked.Certain areas were off-limits.Most of the girls who came here already understood why, but I was new and I was the youngest, so I watched the locked doors more than anything else.
Not because I wanted to break the rules.Because I needed to know what stood between me and danger.
I mapped the hallways in my head.I memorized which floorboards squeaked.I planned how fast I could hide if someone burst through the front doors the way the men did in my house.
It was stupid.No one was coming.The sisters kept telling me that.But I didn’t believe in safety anymore.
Sister Ana tried sometimes.She sat with me while I shelled peas or hung clothes on the line.She told me things about the convent—how long she’d been here, how many girls they’d raised, how the world outside wasn’t cruel, but humans were.
I listened, but I didn’t trust her.Why would I trust someone who knew a man who could put a gun to a child’s head without flinching?
I kept replaying that moment.His knee on my chest.The weight of the gun against my head.
His eyes.Grey and empty.
They haunted me more than the gunshots or the bodies on the floor.More than the memory of stepping over my mother’s arm when I finally left the closet.More than the way her eyes stayed open when I touched her cheek, hoping she’d blink.
I saw those grey eyes every time I closed mine.
He had no reason to spare me.And no reason to care whether I lived or died.I didn’t understand why he’d stopped.And the not knowing sat inside me like another bruise.
One night, Sister Ana brought a blanket to my room—thicker, warmer, softer than the one I already had.
“You’ll be cold when winter comes,” she informed me.
I nodded but didn’t take it from her hands.She placed it at the foot of my bed and left without pushing.
When the door shut, I pulled the blanket toward me.I didn’t cry.I didn’t break.I just made a quiet promise to myself that I wouldn’t depend on anyone ever again.
5
Atlas
Ididn’t think about anything except the work for the first two hours.
How could I?When you wiped out an entire rival family, there was no room for reflection.Only tasks.Loose ends.Men to command, men to correct, men to remind that victory meant nothing if discipline slipped for even a second.There were bodies to move, fires to put out—both literal and political—territories to secure, and questions to shut down before whispers turned into rebellions.