Nia POV
I watched Franco's face contort, but my mind was already on that freezing mountain road.
For the first half-hour after he drove away, I walked down the pitch-black road, searching the oppressive dark for the headlights of a passing car. The silence was so complete I could hear the whisper of my own breathing, and I realized quickly that this was an abandoned logging route.
The wind howled through the trees, plastering the torn fabric of my dress to my freezing legs.
Blood from my scraped knees trickled down my shins. The cold seeped into my bones, shaking my frame with violent shivers. My teeth chattered so hard my jaw ached with the strain.
A sharp crack.
I froze. The sound of a dead branch breaking echoed from the dense woods to my right.
Then, a sound of breathing—low, guttural, heavy, and wet. It was not human.
A knot of cold fear tightened in my chest, and I quickened my pace. Every step on the jagged gravel in my thin-soled dress shoes felt like a fresh wound.
I reached a fork in the dirt road. The left path led further down the mountain, while the right curved upward toward a dark, imposing tree line.
I chose the right, knowing I needed shelter, not miles of exposed, open road.
Less than twenty minutes later, what little hope I had vanished. A massive pile of dirt and uprooted trees blocked the path—a recent landslide.
In a surge of panic, I tried to climb over the wet earth, my frozen fingers finding no purchase in the slick mud.
My foot slipped on a loose rock, and I tumbled backward.
I hit the ground hard. The back of my head slammed against a stone, and my vision flared with a painful, star-like burst of white.
I lay in the freezing dirt, staring up at the stars through the skeletal canopy of branches.
Franco had always told me he loved the view from this mountain. I wondered if Mia was sitting in his passenger seat right now, looking up at those same stars.
A bitter gust of wind blew the torn fabric of my dress over my face.
My eyelids grew heavy. The violent shivering stopped, replaced by a strange lightness, as if my body were no longer my own. The pain in my knees faded into a distant hum.
A beam of light swept over my face.
Someone grabbed my shoulder and rolled me over. A thick, calloused hand pressed against the side of my neck, searching.
"Breathing," a rough voice muttered.
Strong arms hoisted me up, and the man threw me over his broad back. He wrapped a heavy, military-grade winter coat around my freezing, limp body.
The scent of woodsmoke filled my nose, followed by the savory aroma of a rich meat broth.
The first thing I saw was a ceiling of rough-hewn wooden beams.
I was lying on a solid bed, buried under two heavy, patchwork quilts. A cast-iron stove burned fiercely a few feet away, its heat a welcome pain radiating through my numb, tingling skin.
A large man crouched by the stove. At the rustle of the quilts, he turned his head, holding a steaming tin cup in his weathered hands.
He walked over and handed me the cup. The sharp, sweet scent was hot ginger tea.
I reached for it, but my hands shook so violently that I splashed half the scalding liquid over the rim.
He did not speak. He took the cup back, set it down on a nearby wooden crate, and handed me a dry, coarse towel.
"I am Dante," he said, his voice low and steady. "The groundskeeper for the estate up the ridge. I will get medicine for your knees from the town at daybreak."
I clutched the rough towel. "Is there a telephone signal here?"
Dante shook his head. "This mountain is a dead zone. The nearest town is an hour and a half away by foot."
Carefully, I picked up the tin cup with both hands. I took a sip of the spicy, burning tea, letting it thaw the block of ice in my stomach.
"Thank you," I whispered, my voice raspy.
Dante turned his broad back to me, facing the stove once more. "It is nothing. You find something alive in these woods, you bring it in."
He tossed another log into the fire, sending a shower of orange sparks up into the dark chimney.
"Who left you out there in a summer dress?" Dante asked, his gaze fixed on the flames, his back still to me.
Nia POV
For five days, I remained in Dante's cabin. For five days, the mountain remained silent.
On the second morning, Dante left before the sun breached the horizon. He walked down to the town and returned with medical supplies, fresh clothes, and a cheap plastic burner phone.
He dropped the bags at the foot of my bed before heading right back out to patrol the woods.
He never demanded answers. He never asked why a half-frozen woman was dying on a mountain road in the middle of the night.
By the third day, the swelling in my knees had gone down enough that I could walk around the small dirt yard.
To quiet my own thoughts, I watched how he lived.
There were two cabins—one for living, the other packed to the rafters with tools.
Two massive guard dogs were tied under a wooden shed. They barked at the bitter wind, but they sat without a sound the moment Dante raised his hand.
Dante cooked with a practiced economy of motion, preparing a thick porridge in the morning and roasting meat at night.
His knife skills were precise. He sliced through bone and muscle without wasting a single movement, his focus absolute.
"Do you get lonely out here?" I asked him on the third night. "Seven years is a long time to hide in the woods."
Dante wiped his blade with an oiled rag. "It is quiet," he murmured. "A man like me does not belong in the city."
On the fourth afternoon, I took the burner phone and walked down the steep trail.
Dante had told me I could catch two bars of signal near the town post office at the base of the ridge.
I stood by the rusty mailbox, letting the wind bite through my new sweater.
I hesitated for a long time, my thumb hovering over the keypad.
Then, I dialed my mother's number.
She answered on the third ring. Her voice sounded weary, laden with the usual family dramas.
"Antonia, where are you?" she asked. "Carmela told me you threw a tantrum and ran away."
I gripped the cheap plastic of the phone. "I did not run away, Mom. Franco left me on the mountain. He took my coat. I nearly died."
The line went silent.
"Couples fight, Nia," my mother finally said, her tone brittle and dismissive. "Franco is a difficult man, but he provides. He did not mean to hurt you."
I closed my eyes, a wave of sickness rising in my throat. "He left me in the snow."
"You provoke him," she continued, her voice hardening. "A Capo has stress. He takes care of us. If you just gave him a child, things would be fine. Stop this foolishness and go home."
The blind tone buzzed in the cold air. I had already hung up.
I stood in the freezing wind for half an hour, letting my mother’s cold judgment settle into fact.
My own blood had chosen his money over my life.
The burner phone buzzed in my numb hand. It was an unknown number.
I answered it.
"Nia?" Mia's voice filtered through the cheap speaker, her tone a confection of false concern. "I am calling on Franco's behalf."
"What do you want?" I asked, my voice hollow.
"The mountain thing was just a joke," Mia said breezily. "Everyone in the Family knew it was a prank. We all knew you would take it so seriously and run off. Give me an address. I will wire you some cab fare so you can come back and apologize to him."
I stared at the dirt road, the last thread connecting me to that life finally fraying.
"Do not bother looking for me," I said quietly. "Pass a message to your Capo."
I took a deep breath. "Three years of marriage. It is over."
I hung up and powered off the phone.
I turned and walked back up the mountain trail to the cabin, a hard knot tightening in my chest.
Dante was in the yard, splitting logs with a heavy steel axe.
He saw my face.
The heavy steel axe ‘thumped’ into the chopping block. He did not look at me, but turned and walked inside, returning a moment later with a dry towel and a steaming bowl of hot porridge.
I sat on the wooden threshold of the cabin and accepted it.
I took a trembling bite of the food.
Hot tears spilled over my eyelashes and fell into the bowl.
I did not bother wiping them away.
Dante stood by the woodpile, watching the tree line, giving me the unbroken silence I needed to come apart.
