Page 155 of Merciless Daddy

“I spent two years acting like I didn’t need anything,” she said. “Food. Sleep. Someone who knew where I was. I thought needing care made me stupid. Or compromised.”

“And now?”

“Now I think Little space is where I recover enough softness to face difficult things.” She glanced at me. “It isn’t where I hide from them.”

Something inside me loosened.

I had been afraid that being Sal’s Little meant becoming a smaller version of myself. A decorative one. A girl who colored while men made decisions.

But Angela knew the numbers. She saw the patterns. Pietro trusted her with work that could change the outcome of the war.

She could be soft on the rug and formidable at the table.

The possibility made my chest ache.

Tonio had left the biscuits on the coffee table. Round shortbread ones, thick with icing and ridiculous amounts of colored sugar. Angela handed me a small knife.

“Would you like to decorate?”

“I have no artistic instincts.”

“You spent ten minutes giving a mythological bird a very authentic-looking trauma response. I think you’ll manage.”

I iced one biscuit blue and added three black dots.

“What is it?” Angela asked.

“Gianni’s face.”

She considered it. “It looks more intelligent than him.”

We both laughed.

Olimpo lifted his head at the sound. Angela found a sheet of gold paper in her pen box.

“Does he need a crown, do you think?”

“He absolutely does not. Let’s make him one, anyway!”

Five minutes later, Olimpo wore a crooked paper crown between his thick eyebrows. It rested over one ear. He looked ancient, offended, and vaguely royal.

“This is humiliating,” I told him.

His tail moved once.

Angela placed a biscuit in front of him.

Olimpo ate the crown.

We stared.

Then Angela laughed so hard she folded over herself. I joined her. The sound came out of me before I could decide whether it was safe. It filled the room. It made my stomach hurt.

Sal stood in the doorway.

I saw him only after I had wiped tears from the corners of my eyes.

He wore dark trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His gaze moved from the demolished crown to the icing on my fingers, then to my face.