She swallowed. "Erjon didn't say anything. He handed me the water bottle and told me to clean up. It hurt so badly and... and... there was a lot of blood."
Her hands trembled.
"That night, he said we had to leave. We wrapped Lule in a sheet and walked through alleys we knew so well. We made it to the old bakery. We thought it would be safe."
Her voice dropped lower. "But someone saw us. There were shouts and gunshots. Erjon turned to me, looked me straight in the eyes, and said, 'Run. Don't stop. I'll lead them away. Meet me at Daja's* house.'" Her voice cracked again. "I never saw him again."
"The house was empty. Daja was long gone. The neighbours said she'd gone north. A man came a few days later, but I didn't know him. He had papers. Money. The neighbours seemed to know him well. Said Daja had paid for us to be smuggled out."
She gave a bitter smile. "She hadn't."
She looked at Crispin in the eye, unblinking. "It was hell-that long journey. Lule got sick-burning up, shivering. I thought she would die. I don't know what they planned to do with us, but we were caught by the coast guard. They processed us and sent us to a family who said I was their niece."
Another pause.
"I wasn't. But they spoke Albanian, and I thought it would be safe. They beat me, made me cook and clean. I didn't see a school for six months. Finally, a social worker came, and she could see something was very wrong. We were starving. I...I told her."
Aria looked down. "You know the rest. Foster homes. School. I started working at sixteen."
She pulled her cold hands away from where he was holding hers tightly and folded them neatly in her lap. Her eyes saidgive me space. Crispin reluctantly withdrew, as though he feared she might vanish if he let go.
"That's why I'm like this."
Crispin's mouth parted, eyes rimmed red, but he said nothing.
"I don't need your pity," she added gently. "I don't want your guilt."
"I don't feel pity," he whispered. "I feel so small. I am so sorry."
She met his gaze one last time, continuing like she didn’t hear him. "That was the first cut, Crispin. You were the second."
Silence hung between them like a shroud.
Crispin still sat back on the floor, his hands empty without hers. But Aria didn't look at him. She stared out the window, where dawn was just beginning to bleed into the sky.
Then, in a quiet voice, she said, "I never finished school."
Crispin looked up.
"I can't read very well. My teachers tried, but by then, I was already behind everyone else. Everything in my life came second to keeping Lule fed and warm." She gave a small, dry laugh. "So, no, I'm not clever. I'm not educated."
She drew in a slow breath. "I've never done anything but menial work. Cleaned toilets, made beds in hotels where no one ever looked you in the eye. Washed dishes. Chopped vegetables. Waited tables." A pause. "Worked as a carer. I am the 'help'." Her voice cracked slightly.
"I'm never going to amount to much more than I am right now-I know that. But I brought up my sister, and that's something. That's mine. My parents wouldn't have approved of me being with you...any of this. But I think... I think they'd be proud of how I raised her."
She paused, her shoulders rising with a deep breath. "When I first met you, I hadn't been in a relationship before."
She said it simply, not as a confession, but as a fact.
"I'd only ever known pain and fear of a faint memory of a nightmare. But when you looked at me, when our eyes met, I felt something." Her voice went softer, distant. "You were the man I would've dreamed of if I'd had the kind of life that allowed dreaming."
She finally looked at him. Her eyes were full of remembered pain.
"I began waiting just for glimpses of you. Then, for the short, secret meetings. And when we finally came together-" she swallowed, "-I thought maybe...maybe I wasn't broken. Maybe it was possible for me to be a woman. To be wanted, not used. You gave me that. And for that, I am grateful."
Her limp fingers fluttered like a startled butterfly for a second.
"It crept up on me slowly. This love. It felt like coming back to life."
