UNTOUCHABLE HIGH UP
1105 Words
The first thing I learned after the fire was how to function like nothing was wrong
.
It wasn’t something anyone taught me. It just happened. People expected it, so I did it. I went back to school, answered questions when I was asked, nodded when people spoke to me like I was fragile. Over time, the looks stopped. The whispers faded. Everything settled into something that resembled normal.
But normal never felt real again.
Even now, years later, I move through my life with a kind of quiet control that no one questions. I wake up at the same time every day. I avoid anything that burns too brightly or too fast. I don’t stay in places that feel too closed in. It’s not fear, not exactly. It’s awareness. The kind that never leaves once it’s been carved into you.
Most people don’t notice it
Nadia does.
Nadia has a way of noticing everything and pretending she doesn’t. She’s the kind of person who fills silence before it becomes uncomfortable, who talks too much about things that don’t matter and then suddenly says something that matters too much. She sits across from me now, her laptop open, fingers moving too fast for someone who claims she’s not doing anything important.
She calls it “light academic fraud.” I’ve stopped asking what that means.
The café is loud enough to blend into. Conversations overlap, chairs scrape against the floor, cups clink against tables. It should feel normal. It almost does.
Nadia is halfway through explaining something about one of her lecturers having a suspicious obsession with “intellectual curiosity” when she pauses, eyes narrowing at her screen
“There’s no way this man expects original thought at eight in the morning,” she mutters, shaking her head. “That’s a crime. Actually, I think it should be illegal. Like punishable. Jail time.”
I don’t respond. I’m looking at something else.
A report.
Old. Archived. Difficult to access unless you know where to look.
The night my mother died.
I’ve seen versions of it before. Short summaries. Clean conclusions. Always the same outcome. House fire. Cause uncertain. Fatalities confirmed.
Simple.
This version is different.
Not in a way most people would notice. The structure is the same. The wording is almost identical. But the details… they don’t align perfectly. The timeline is off by minutes that shouldn’t matter but somehow do. There are gaps where there shouldn’t be gaps. Sections that feel incomplete, like something has been removed rather than never recorded.
It doesn’t make sense.
“Okay, you’re doing that thing again.”
“That thing where you look like you’re about to either solve a murder or commit one,”
I blink, forcing my focus back to her.
“It’s nothing.”
She doesn’t believe me. She never does.
“It’s never nothing,” she says, leaning back in her chair. “You either say ‘it’s nothing’ or ‘I’m fine,’ and both of those are lies. I’ve known you long enough to know that.”
“It’s just something I found,” I say. “About the fire.”
That gets her attention.
She doesn’t interrupt or react immediately. She just watches me a little more closely, waiting.
“There are inconsistencies,” I continue, quieter now. “Things that don’t match what I remember. Or what I was told.”
Nadia exhales slowly, like she expected that.
“Amara,” she says, her tone shifting just slightly, “you’ve been through this before. Records get messy. Reports change. It doesn’t always mean something deeper.”
“It does this time.”
I don’t explain how I know. I just do.
Then I open the file again, scrolling down to the part that hasn’t left my mind since I saw it.
A name.
It shouldn’t be there. It has no reason to be connected to any of this.
But it is.
“I found something else,” I say.
Nadia doesn’t respond right away. She’s watching me again, more carefully this time.
“A name,” I add.
That’s what makes her speak.
“What name?”
I hesitate for a second.
Then I say it anyway.
“Luca De Santis.”
The reaction is immediate.
Not loud. Not dramatic.
But it’s there.
Nadia goes completely still.
It’s subtle. Anyone else might miss it. But I don’t.
Her expression changes, just slightly. The humor disappears. The ease she carries so naturally drops into something sharper, more focused.
For the first time since I’ve known her, she looks… careful.
“Where did you see that name?” she asks.
Her voice is different now.
I feel it instantly.
“In the report,” I say. “Why?”
She doesn’t answer right away. She leans back slowly, her gaze shifting away from me for a second like she’s thinking through something she didn’t expect to deal with today.
When she looks back at me, the lightness is gone completely.
“That’s not a name you should be finding in something like that,” she says.
Something cold settles in my chest.
“What does that mean?”
Another pause.
Then…
“He’s not just some random person, Amara,” she says carefully. “He’s connected to things you don’t want to be connected to.”
My grip tightens slightly on the edge of the table.
“What things?”
Nadia studies me for a moment like she’s deciding how much to say.
Then she says it anyway.
“Mafia.”
The word lands heavier than I expect.
“He’s not low-level either,” she continues.
“He’s high up. Like… untouchable high up. The kind of person people don’t investigate. The kind of person investigations disappear around.”
The café noise fades into the background.
Everything narrows.
“That doesn’t make sense,” I say, but it comes out quieter than I intended.
“It doesn’t have to make sense,” Nadia replies. “That’s the point.”
I look back down at the screen.
The name is still there.
Unmistakable.
Everything feels like it’s shifting again. Like the past I thought I understood is opening up into something I never saw coming.
Then something else happens.
It’s small.
But I feel it.
That same feeling.
The one from years ago.
The one I’ve never been able to forget.
I look up.
Across the café, near the entrance, someone is standing still.
Not talking. Not moving. Just… watching.
And the worst part is the moment our eyes meet, I know. He’s not looking at the room.
He’s looking at me.
- Writer
