Page 58 of Until You Break
“You’re quiet,” Damiano said, matching my pace.
“I’m saving it.”
“For what?”
“In case you make me talk to people.”
He huffed something like a laugh. “I like you talking to me.”
“That’s not people.”
His palm pressed warmer at my back. “Better.”
We crossed into blocks that wore their years, pavement cracked, balconies rusting at the edges, potted plants leaning in crooked arrangements. A window above released cigarette smoke and the scratch of an old record, a woman’s voice stitched to static.
I knew these smells. Bread proofing heavy with yeast. The city always spoke to me through my nose first. The scents tangled with memory. Yeast and stone dust, wet iron from the tram rails, the faint drift of paint thinner my mother always carried on her sleeves. I used to sit on these steps with a box of chalks she’d bartered from Marta’s shop, drawing crooked lions and doorways until my fingers turned the color of dust. Enzo would steal rolls still warm from the baker’s window and drop half in my lap, grinning like he’d invented hunger. Some afternoons my mother would lean out the window, sketchbook balanced on her knee, and whistle for us to come back beforethe light shifted. The air tasted the same now, but different too, because Damiano’s hand was at my back, not hers. Because the only thing in my pocket was a leash, not chalk.
“Emilietto?” a voice called, soft with surprise.
I turned. Signora Rosa stood at the bus stop, market bag hooked in the crook of her elbow, the same thin blue scarf she wore every winter. She used to offer me a seat when the 103 was crowded, pressing candies into my palm and telling me to eat more or the wind would carry me away.
“Signora,” I said, and the word tasted like childhood.
Her eyes shone. “Madonna, look at you. Your mother would—” She broke off, glancing at the men around us. The smile steadied. “You come back to paint our doors, eh?”
“I…maybe,” I said, smiling before I could stop myself. “If I can find the colors.”
Damiano’s hand tightened at my back, not cruel, just impatient, a clock striking. “Later,” he said, polite enough to be a warning.
The word clamped over my ribs.
I had been away for years, Paris and its classrooms, the city I never truly returned from because the first night back, they took me. Palermo had lived without me, but the streets still remembered.
Signora Rosa’s hand was warm on my wrist, the kind of touch that used to anchor me to streets instead of chains. His interruption turned it foreign, like he’d put a price tag on kindness. Her gaze slid to him and back to me, a dozen questions choosing silence.
“Good boy.” Damiano’s voice softened, steering me away with the pressure of his hand. He guided me forward, and I let him.
The old church appeared like a ghost that hadn’t learned it was dead. Boards on the windows cast slatted shadows, goldpaint on the trim curled like petals. In my mind the candles still burned, amber light chasing itself along the nave through the night.
I’d been inside a hundred times. Perfume clinging to red velvet chairs. My mother in the lounge, sketchbook on her knees, wine leaving a ring on a cocktail napkin. She always said the trick was catching faces when they thought no one was looking.
Damiano followed my gaze. “You’d paint that.”
“The building,” I said. “And the ghosts in its lungs.”
“Both,” he agreed, mouth near my temple. “We’ll hang it where it outlives Riccardo’s name.”
Two men loitered outside a shuttered shop, voices low. One tipped his chin, not greeting, not insult, just a mark. Damiano didn’t return it. He watched them the way you watch weather.
We passed a wall worn back to its first layer: the Valenti crest, faded but stubborn, almost gone.
“Some lines don’t fade,” he said softly. “Some people don’t forget.”
“Should I?”
“Not yet.”
A cluster of older men fell silent as we approached. One’s mouth tightened, another stared into his espresso as if it had answers. No one spoke. Everyone watched.
