“So where does your strength come from?”
“Books. So many heroines became my closest friends during those years. Athena and Hestia prove that.”
“Fair enough. There’s just one part of Hestia I still don’t know which side of her dominates you.”
“Which one?”
“In bed, uccellino.”
I had been taking a bite of gelato at that exact moment and nearly choked to death, requiring a laughing Lorenzo to rescue me with water.
Those days were peaceful, their lightness violently contrasting with the yellowed pages now spread through my hands. My work cataloguing my father’s victims always begins with determination and always ends with me crying beneath the shower water. It is unbearable to think of how many fetid cages he built and how many little birds he trapped inside them. He calls them guests, bu
