The Mafia's Hidden Rose

POV WILLOW I wake to the thin mattress protesting beneath me — springs sighing, my shoulder aching where an old bruise still remembers. My body is a map of small betrayals: pale crescents, puckered lines, the ghost of a burn that tightens when it rains. I slide out of bed, forcing my limbs to obey. The school uniform I’ve been wearing for weeks is still barely whole, seams strained, hem mended with invisible fingers. I pull it on, knot my hair into something that passes for neat, sling my bag over one shoulder, and move down the hall as quietly as I’ve learned to be. The kitchen is the same as every morning: one bare bulb, a sink with a few enamel stains, the smell of grease that seems to cling to the walls. The silence sits heavy in the room the way a storm sits heavy in the sky. I don’t notice him until I’m already inside. His hand comes out of nowhere. Pain erupts across my cheek and I taste metal from my bitten lip. He stands over me with that grin he thinks is a joke; it’s not a face a father wears, not ever. I refuse to look up. I have no memory of warmth with anyone who should have been a parent — no photos, no bedtime songs, nothing. He’s always been Gabriel to me, never “Dad.” He calls me useless, and he says it like it’s an achievement he keeps polishing. I set the pan down and assemble breakfast like I’ve done a thousand times: eggs, bacon, the meager ritual that keeps his rage from spilling over for a little longer. He snorts as if my work is a bad joke. “This is cold,” he says, even though steam still rises. The words are a match. The plate explodes from my hands before I can think. Shards scatter across the tile; hot grease slaps my wrist. It stings, white-hot, but I swallow the sound. I learned early that noises are currency here — a choke, a whimper, a cry — and he spends them like they belong to him. He drinks all night, smokes until his fingers are stained, and disappears into rooms that smell of other people’s poison. He’s drunk at dawn like it’s noon; I don’t know where he sleeps or whom he sleeps with. All I know is the ledger of chores I maintain so the house doesn’t c***k open under us: shopping, cleaning, cooking, the endless small errands that let me pretend the floorboards hold. When I can finally escape, I pull the long sleeves of my uniform down to cover the faded bruises that map my arms. They hide most of it, but they don’t hide the way my knees give when I’m asked to stand for too long, or the way my back stiffens when someone slams a door. At school I am a ghost wearing someone else’s clothes. The cafeteria lamps and fluorescent classrooms make me transparent. Kids stare. I can feel their look like a hand sliding across my skin. “Did she pull that sweater out of a dumpster?” a girl sneers. Someone else calls me a skeleton. The words stick in my throat like thorns. I clutch my textbooks to my chest, my knuckles white under the fabric, and keep my head bent. If I breathe too loud, they’ll notice the cracks inside me. I tell myself the usual things to get through: don’t make eye contact, don’t say anything, be small. Shrinking is a skill I’ve polished; it’s kept me alive more times than I can count. I move from class to class in a practiced blur, listening to the hum of the teacher’s voice like it might lull me into pretending everything is normal. And then the intercom cuts across the monotony, brittle and official. “Willow Johnson please report to the principal’s office.” My name sounds like a stranger’s. For a second, I think there’s been a mistake — maybe I’m supposed to be someone else today — but my pulse starts to race and my stomach drops anyway. The hallways seem longer on the way to his office, every locker a possible hiding place, every whisper a predator. I fold into myself the way I always do, but there’s a new thing under the fear now: a tiny, ridiculous flicker of something that might be hope. I can’t tell if it’s courage or the last scrap of betrayal I allow myself to feel. Either way, I go.