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Ecce: Femina

Chapter 45: Corinthians

Blood clung to him like a curse. It streaked across his fingers, seeped into the folds of his robe, pooled in the cracks of the stone. He tried to wipe it away, dipping a rag into water already thick and red, scrubbing until the flesh of his knuckles stung. But it clung to him still. Iron and incense suffocated the air, as if the very walls bore witness against him.

And then—she appeared.

Not in flesh, but in vision. His dove. His wife. Maranata—or something wearing her face. White dress, flowing hair, brown eyes that pierced deeper than knives. She did not look at the bodies. She looked at him.

“What are you doing, beloved?”

His breath stuttered. “I—I am… fulfilling God’s vengeance. The Frenchman was a trafficker. The priest—he was a rapist. Justice, justice, don’t you see?”

But her voice cut sharp. “And his assistant? The girl who barely knew?”

“She was still guilty!” he snapped. Too fast. Too hollow.

Her gaze did not bend. “And the children? What of them? Are you not calling Alexander already, to hand them over? To deport them?”

The rag slipped from his grip. His chest heaved. “They are not mine to keep. They belong—” He faltered. “They belong to the Church. To Alexander. He will… know what to do.”

Her whisper came soft, but it struck him like thunder. “Amore…”

And he shattered.

“WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT LOVE?!” His roar cracked against the stone, his hands raised as if to strike her, seize her, make her relent. “YOU ABANDONED ME! WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT LOVE?!”

He wanted to shake her, slam her against the wall, force her to stay. But when his trembling hands reached, they caught only air. The vision did not yield. Her eyes—whether hers or God’s own—burned through him.

And he fell. His body crumpled to the ground, curling into himself. He wept, shoulders convulsing, choking on the sobs he could not silence. Blood smeared his cheeks where tears carved through.

And in that moment, his own conscience spoke—not hers, but his. Maranata’s face was only its mask.

“What shall you do with Christ?” the voice asked, low as wind through graveyards. “What shall you do with the dove—the Holy Spirit that fell on you? Do you crucify Him again with your rage? Do you trample Him with your vengeance?”

The words of Romans struck like a lash, verses he had recited once in piety now turned against him:

For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.

He had known God. He had prayed, studied, fasted, spoken His Word. And yet here he was, drenched in blood he called justice, savoring the violence he called holy. He had become the very thing he despised.

And so he curled smaller still, his forehead pressed to the floor, whispering not to her, but to the silence.

“I do not know what I do… I do not know what I do…”

But he did know. That was the terror.

And the vision of his dove, his phantom wife, faded into shadow. He was left alone with the crucifix of his own conscience—Christ’s blood mingled with the blood on his hands.

Corinthus. A city of marble and rot. Commerce at its core, ports bleeding with trade, men selling idols and women selling themselves beneath pillars that once aspired to the divine. The apostle Paul had written to its church with a strange kind of tenderness, warning them against arrogance while reminding them of grace.

And now, Maranata thought, sitting in her mother’s parlor with a glass of iced tea sweating in her hand, Corinthus had been reborn in the strangest of places: Texas.

The door opened, and Dwight Coleman entered.

Blond hair neatly parted, his skin bronzed by football fields and summers spent on ranches. His suit was well cut, but it didn’t disguise the broad-shouldered swagger of a man who had once lived for touchdowns and now lived for closing deals. He smiled—perfect teeth, green eyes that belonged more in a Disney script than in real life. And yet. She knew. From the second he spoke, from the second he clasped her hand in his, firm and too warm, she saw it.

Dwight was rotting.

Not the way Goffredo rotted—with fevered visions, with bloodied penance, with his own violent theology tearing him apart. No, Dwight’s rot was quieter. Slicker. The rot of a polished man who had begun making too much money too quickly and now needed shadows to cover the glow of his fortune.

Her mother had been luminous that afternoon. “Maranata, sweetheart, Dwight is one of the most promising young men in his circle—well connected, thoughtful, and charming. You’d be foolish not to at least spend time with him.”

Her answer had been immediate, instinctive, like spitting out spoiled fruit: No.

But the ritual of Southern hospitality demanded patience, so she endured the introductions.

Dwight talked, and she listened. Wall Street this. Market surges. A portfolio growing like a beanstalk to the sky. He laughed easily, too easily, the kind of laughter that filled silences before truths could slip through. He had charm, and charm always worked on her mother.

But Maranata was not her mother.

She thought of Corinthus. Of Paul writing letters across seas to a people drunk on commerce, blinded by their own transactions. Corinthus the busy, the proud, the rich. Corinthus where faith tangled with greed and rot dressed itself in marble.

Wall Street had become its modern twin. Dwight Coleman was its citizen.

And she? She was a pilgrim walking through the market, eyes open to the smell of idols burning.

Yes, she clicked with him—oddly, unexpectedly. Not like a lover. Never that. But like a fellow conspirator who had learned to recognize the same shadows. They talked about laundering without ever saying the word. They talked about money without saying guilt. His mask met hers, and for a second, there was recognition. She understood his rot the way one addict can spot another across a crowded room.

Yet it was not the same. Not like Goffredo.

Goffredo’s rot was alive, pulsating, magnetic. It drew her in like a storm and left her gasping, terrified, desiring. With him, she knew she was playing with fire and brimstone, touching sin in its rawest form, sharp as blood and salt.

Dwight’s rot? It was numbers on paper. An account hidden behind a wall. An inheritance untaxed. His rot was boring. Manageable. He could keep it at bay with spreadsheets and smiling.

That was the difference. She could understand Dwight without being consumed. She could look at him and know he was dangerous only to himself. And she could look at Goffredo and know he was dangerous to everything.

She sipped her tea, let it sting her teeth with sweetness.

From the beginning, she made it clear: “Dwight, I’m not interested. Not in that way.”

And to his credit, Dwight didn’t push. He smiled—boyish, almost embarrassed—and said something about friendship, about how his life was full of women chasing him for all the wrong reasons and it was refreshing to find someone who wasn’t.

Platonic, then. Oddly platonic. Two people who saw through one another but had no desire to reach across the gap.

Her mother didn’t understand. Her grandmother shook her head. But Maranata held firm.

Dwight Coleman was not her husband. Not her Goffredo. Not her wound and balm. He was Corinthus: rich, tempting, hollow. She could visit his city, she could walk its streets, she could nod at its merchants—but she would never bow.

And when she watched him later—laughing at her uncle’s jokes, pouring himself another bourbon, boasting about the latest deal gone right—she whispered in her mind the words Paul had once written to that ancient, gilded city:

“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”

Dwight had no excuse.

Neither did she.

She saw the rot in him, and he saw it in her. But there was no spell between them, no fate. Only the recognition of ruins.

And in that recognition, Maranata felt something like peace.

Because she knew—her temple was elsewhere.

Her temple was with him.

Her temple was Goffredo.

The elevator was climbing slowly, its cables groaning like an old throat. Maranata leaned against the mirrored wall, blazer tight around her body, lips still faintly painted.

Goffredo, restless at her nearness, touched the fabric of her belt as if to steady himself. “Your prince charming,” he said, voice low and bruising, “reminds me of a dog.”

“Which one?” she replied without looking up from her compact, her tone light, teasing, dangerous.

“A golden retriever,” he answered. “All teeth and sunshine, wagging its tail at everyone. A creature with no master but every stranger passing by.”

Maranata smiled faintly, snapped her compact shut, and looked him straight in the eye. “A golden retriever is still a dog, Gio. And a dog—no matter how golden—will wag his tail for everyone.”

He pressed closer, his hand sliding against her waist, and growled, “Then perhaps your golden retriever should remember that lions do not wag their tails.”

She tilted her head, studied him a moment, and then let her lips curl in amusement. “Lions?” She almost laughed. “No, you are a lamb, Gio. A little cute lamb. But—” her eyes sparkled—“a stupid one.”

His nostrils flared, preparing to retort, but the elevator dinged and the doors slid open, throwing a wash of chandelier light into their faces.

She turned from him gracefully, stepping out first, her voice like a knife slipped between his ribs: “Do not look at me that way. Was it not God who said we should be lambs?”

The crowd ahead was a blur. Before she could take another step, he yanked her belt sharply, pulling her back against him. His breath seared her ear.

“He also said,” Goffredo hissed, “to be astute like snakes and graceful like doves. And you are beautiful, colomba mia—bruisingly so. But don’t think for a second I don’t know the deceitful piece of a snake you can be.” His whisper darkened. “Satan.”

The word cracked like a whip, and it was not his own but borrowed straight from scripture—the same lips that had once called Peter beloved also called him Satan when temptation burned too close.

He pushed her forward, away from his chest. Silence stretched between them as they walked back toward the hall.

At the table, Dwight sat beaming, his posture loose and princely, shoulders broad as if carved out of a football field. He rose halfway when they returned, flashing his movie-prince grin.

“There you are!” he said brightly, his voice a boom that carried over the clatter of glasses. “Where’d you two run off to? Did you sneak out for a smoke?”

Maranata slid into her seat without answering. Goffredo, calm as a marble statue, sat beside her, his jaw tight, his fingers brushing his stubble. His Roman nose caught the chandelier light like a blade; the streak of white in his curls shimmered, rebellious, uncontained.

He turned his head just enough to look at Dwight and said, with unnerving serenity, “No. I had no smoke.” A pause, a thin smile. “Something far more addicting.”

He thought of the hickeys blooming beneath his blazer on her skin. He thought of the kiss he had stamped against her clavicle like a brand. This idiot does not imagine what I did to the girl he believes is his girlfriend.

“Yes. I did.”

Dwight laughed, mistaking it for a joke, then leaned forward with a flourish of his hand, eager to fill the silence. “Dwight Coleman,” he reintroduced himself unnecessarily, his Texas vowels drawing every syllable out. “You know, her step-grandparents’ ranch—best horse breeders in the region. I was looking for a new mare, got the finest one they had. That’s how we met.” He grinned at Maranata, his teeth impossibly white. “My parents just finished building the new country club back in Houston—you’re always invited, of course. Tell me—how did you two meet? What do your parents do?”

He said it like it was obvious they must be rich, like the only reason to sit at this dinner was to belong to money.

Goffredo turned slowly, his dark eyes boring into Dwight’s green ones. His voice was deliberate, his accent heavy, words curving like knives sharpened on stone.

“We met at a French cottage,” he said, not even blinking. “And lived together for several months.”

The table went still, a few heads turning slightly as if to confirm they’d heard correctly.

Maranata’s throat tightened. “Yes,” she broke in quickly, her voice measured, gentle but firm. “It was…a seminar for translators. A research program. You see—” she forced her tone into the academic register she knew soothed Goffredo’s pride—“Goffredo is Doctor in Philology. He studied theology, linguistics. One of the most accomplished in his field.”

Dwight blinked, not quite processing. He smiled dumbly and nodded, his princely head bobbing, unable to grasp that the man before him was not another old-money heir but a scholar of dizzying weight.

“Oh. Well. That’s neat,” he said at last, reaching for his wine glass. “I always say, book smarts and street smarts—world needs both, huh?”

Maranata folded her napkin carefully in her lap, her eyes cast down. Goffredo’s hand brushed the tablecloth, his knuckles grazing her knee beneath it.

It was not affection. It was possession.

And in the quiet roar of the hall, she wondered if anyone else could see the storm raging invisibly at her side—the lamb, the lion, the snake, the dove, all fused into one man who believed himself her husband.

The chandeliers glimmered above the banquet hall, shedding their gold light on linen tables and polished glasses. Dwight was in his element—or so he thought. He leaned back in his chair, his shoulders squared with the old confidence of Friday-night lights, the quarterback who once owned the stadium.

“So, Etienne,” Dwight drawled, swirling his glass of wine though he hardly touched it, “you French guys really don’t play football? Man, you’re missing out. Best years of my life, high school championship, front page of the paper—felt like a king.”

Etienne’s mouth twitched as though he had bitten a lemon. Lucas simply blinked, his expression politely blank, but his silence was sharp as a scalpel. Dwight went on, oblivious.

“Books though, I never cared for ’em. Honestly? Haven’t read one since they forced us through To Kill a Mockingbird. Waste of time, right?” He chuckled as if expecting camaraderie, waiting for the laughter that never came.

Instead, the table sat still, eyes lowering, forks resting quietly. Maranata pressed her lips together, steadying her breath. She had warned Dwight before that academic dinners weren’t locker rooms—but Dwight only knew how to play the part he always had.

Goffredo sat motionless, his fingers laced before him, his stubble catching the light. He did not need to speak to humiliate Dwight—the silence from the rest of the table was cutting enough. His eyes, though, burned past the Texan, fixed only on Maranata.

When the awards began, the hall shifted toward reverence. Names were called, applause rising, gowns brushing against the polished floor.

“Dr. Goffredo Tedesco,” the presenter’s voice rang, “for distinguished research and contributions—an honorary mention.”

The room erupted in applause. Goffredo rose slowly, towering, his presence filling the stage before he ever opened his mouth.

He accepted the certificate with a gracious nod, then stepped toward the podium. His Italian baritone was velvet and iron both.

“We write, we translate, we preserve words because words are all we have against the silence of oblivion. But words—” his gaze swept the crowd, then caught, fastened, burned into Maranata’s eyes “—words are not meant to remain on the page. They live only when spoken. They live only when heard.”

The room clapped again, some rising. But Maranata sat frozen. She knew that speech was no academic flourish. It was meant for her alone: You will listen to me again. You will speak to me again.

When he returned to his seat, his hand brushed against hers under the table, deliberately, lightly, like a brand. She flinched almost imperceptibly. Dwight noticed nothing.

By dessert Dwight was back to bragging, elbows on the table, leaning across toward Etienne. “See, business—now that’s where it’s at. Wall Street’s been good to me. Couple ventures here and there, some family strings pulled—you know how it is. Nothing to do with books, all instinct. I got the nose for money.” He tapped his face with a laugh.

Etienne shifted his chair away. Lucas sipped his wine with slow disdain. Maranata rested her cheek against her hand, weary of his voice, while Goffredo sat in patient disdain, saying nothing.

The moment was cracked open by the sound of another voice—smooth, gentle, unmistakably sure of its welcome.

“Forgive my intrusion.”

They turned.

He was tall, dark-skinned, olive-eyed. His suit was cut with quiet elegance, his tie knotted with a grace that seemed bred, not learned. His voice—soft, resonant—carried the tone of someone who never needed to shout to command a room.

“Stephen.”

The name left Goffredo’s lips like an exhale. For the first time in months, he felt a pang of gratitude. Gratitude for a rival, yes—but a worthy one. Better Stephen, cultured and dangerous, than Dwight Coleman, who still thought the world was a high school bleacher.

Maranata’s lips parted in surprise, then broke into a genuine smile—soft, warm, unmistakably old. She rose from her chair without thinking and embraced him. “Stephen!”

Dwight blinked, bewildered. “Who’s this?”

“A friend,” Maranata said simply, her eyes lingering on Stephen as if on safe ground.

Goffredo watched, his jaw tightening. A friend—yes. But one who had known her since she was a child, one who could charm with Scripture as easily as with wit. One who could stand beside her without looking like a fool.

For once, Dwight had vanished into irrelevance. The true game had begun.

And in Goffredo’s chest, the old storm began to churn again.

The dinner dragged, heavy with chandeliers’ light and the muted clink of forks. Etienne excused himself with the grace of a diplomat—“a call I must take, forgive me”—and left the table. What remained was a strange quartet: Dwight, blissfully oblivious; Lucas, watchful, sipping wine in silence; Maranata, restless, the pulse at her throat betraying her boredom; and Goffredo, who sat like a king on a throne, chest broad, his storm-dark eyes fixed on Stephen.

Stephen had slipped into the seat opposite them, a shadow of his usual charm lingering, though fatigue was written in the lines beneath his eyes. He smiled faintly, but it was the smile of a man bone-tired, who had walked too long through the fire. His exhaustion only made him seem more dignified.

Goffredo tilted his head, his lips curving in the faint suggestion of a smirk. So this is my opponent.

“Stephen,” he said, drawing the name out like a chess player announcing his first move. “It has been awhile.”

Stephen inclined his head, his soft voice even. “Yes. And time has not dulled you, Goffredo.”

Across the table, Dwight leaned forward, grinning like a boy. “So you two go way back, huh? Old pals? Man, Maranata knows everybody.”

Neither man answered.

The air thickened. Goffredo leaned back in his chair, fingers pressed together like a priest about to bless or condemn. His voice lowered, intimate, but edged with iron. “I hear you’ve been writing, Stephen. Books, essays. Sermons.”

Stephen nodded. “Words are my craft, yes. But they belong to God, not me.”

“Oh,” Goffredo murmured, the smirk tugging harder at his mouth. “God.”

The way he said it—half reverent, half daring—made Maranata tense. Lucas stiffened too, setting down his glass with care.

Dwight, utterly lost, filled the gap with another boast. “I don’t read books myself, but I respect the grind, man. Respect it. You gotta hustle, you know?”

“Indeed,” Stephen said softly, though his eyes did not flicker toward Dwight. They were steady on Goffredo.

And Goffredo—well, he was enjoying himself far too much. He leaned closer, his baritone curling with sarcasm. “Your craft is words. Mine is truth. Yet the two of us end up circling the same woman.”

Maranata’s fork froze halfway to her lips.

Stephen blinked, then exhaled, slow and patient, as if speaking to a child. “We do not ‘circle,’ Goffredo. We walk paths laid for us. And you mistake a sister for a conquest.”

The word sister struck like a slap.

Goffredo’s nostrils flared. He smiled—too wide, too sharp. “A sister? That is what you call her?” His hand twitched beneath the table, as if resisting the urge to seize hers. “No. She is a wife. My wife.”

Maranata flushed, heat crawling up her neck. Dwight, puzzled, frowned at the exchange but said nothing, perhaps sensing some storm he could not comprehend.

Lucas’ eyes flickered, sharp with recognition: a duel cloaked in words, one quoting Paul and the other playing Samson.

Until now, they have spoken in hushed whispers as Dwight completely unaware lectures Etienne about wall street and international trade, Etienne just sips on his wine to make the night more bearable.

Goffredo leaned back, triumphant, his smirk daring Stephen to strike harder.

Stephen, however, only sighed. His voice came weary but resolute, this time audible for the whole table: “The kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power. You use words to bind. I use them to free.”

Maranata’s heart lurched. That was Paul—Corinthians. The “eloquence of the world” against the “foolishness of the cross.”

For Goffredo, the parallel was too rich to ignore. He leaned forward, baritone curling low, intimate and venomous. “Yes, Paul. But Paul also said women should cover their heads. Should be silent in church. Do you recall that, Stephen? Or does your gospel only include the verses you prefer?”

Maranata inhaled sharply, her nails pressing crescents into her palm.

Lucas closed his eyes for a moment, as if praying silently.

Dwight—finally breaking the silence—laughed awkwardly. “Man, y’all are intense. I’m just trying to enjoy dessert here.”

Goffredo ignored him. His gaze drilled into Stephen like a blade. “You see, my friend, words can be honey or venom. And I will not let anyone—even you—turn her against me with your honey.”

It was too much. Maranata set down her fork with a sharp clink.

“Gio.” Her voice cut like glass.

He turned toward her, his smirk faltering.

“Tell me,” she said, her tone deceptively light. “How is Archbishop Alexander?”

The question landed like a blow. Goffredo froze, his shoulders tightening, his breath caught in his throat. His smirk vanished.

Alexander. His master, his shadow. The man who had trained him, chained him, sanctioned his discipline—and would have gladly turned a blind eye if Goffredo took a mistress. But Maranata? No. Alexander would never approve of her. Not as wife. Not as equal.

“Alexander…” Goffredo began, his voice low, faltering for the first time that evening. He glanced at her, his storm-dark eyes burning. “He is well. As always.”

Maranata tilted her head, her lips curling faintly. “And what does he think of you, Goffredo? Of us?”

There it was—the knife.

Goffredo’s feathers ruffled, his whole frame stiff with barely-contained rage. For the first time that night, the storm inside him cracked through the mask. He looked at her, then away, his jaw tight, his nostrils flaring.

Dwight chuckled obliviously, “Archbishop who? Sounds like a big deal.”

No one answered him.

Lucas, ever silent, took another sip of wine, his eyes sharp as blades as he watched his old friend unravel.

Stephen leaned back, exhausted but steady, a faint sorrow in his gaze.

And Maranata—she sat serene, a storm of her own brewing beneath her calm expression.

For she had found the one wound that pierced Goffredo’s armor. And she had pressed it, mercilessly.

The clatter of cutlery and hum of polite conversation filled the hall, but at their table, it was a grotesque parody of fellowship. Goffredo ate with the mechanical precision of a soldier rationing through war—knife carving, fork lifting, wine glass drained and refilled with a bitter flick of his wrist. He chewed, yes, but with the clenched jaw of a man tasting ashes.

Beside him sat Maranata. She smiled when the others looked, the kind of bright, docile smile that women wore when the room expected it, and chewed as though politeness itself could make the food go down. Her dress shimmered in the low light, her hair too perfectly arranged for the girl he remembered in cotton skirts and loose braids. He could see it: every movement of hers rehearsed, every syllable measured, like she was trying to keep the whole evening from tilting into chaos.

Dwight, of course, was tilting it anyway. Broad shoulders hunched forward, his fork in one hand, the other gesturing wildly as he gloated. Always gloating. He spoke about himself as though he were a fable, a Homeric hero, a parable of the American dream. His jawline gleamed with youth, his voice rolled with certainty, and yet every story dripped with the same refrain: I, I, I. He was the kind of man who could make even victory sound like vanity.

Etienne, two glasses past sobriety, laughed at intervals that didn’t match the conversation. His cheeks flushed with wine, his hand lingering too long over his glass, eyes darting away from the table’s tension as though it were a play staged for someone else.

Stephen, on the other hand, looked undone. He sat slightly hunched, his olive skin wan under the candlelight, the shadows under his eyes darker than the suit he wore. His fork prodded the same piece of meat for minutes at a time without lifting it to his lips. He had the look of a man whose body had already betrayed him, whose mind was grasping at the seams of endurance.

And then there was Goffredo—sitting among them like a bitter ex-wife who had been invited to dinner only to witness her rival praised. His Roman nose flared with disdain at every word Dwight uttered, his stubble caught the light when he smirked, his hands toyed with the stem of his glass as if debating whether to snap it in two. He was not loud, no. He was worse: he was silent, watching, burning, letting the venom coil behind his teeth.

The only one at the table with anything resembling sanity was Lucas. Quiet, steady, his fork moving, his eyes scanning the scene like a doctor assessing a fevered patient. He had seen Goffredo strange before—Italian strange, Catholic strange, the kind of oddity that lived in candle smoke and Gregorian chants. But this…this was unsettling. Goffredo wasn’t just eccentric. He was taut. Calm like a storm is calm before the first bolt tears the sky.

“…Stephen, ça va?” Lucas asked at last, his French soft, his tone kind.

Stephen startled. His fork clattered against the plate. His eyes flicked up, glazed, as though remembering where he was. “Yeah, yeah!” he said too fast, his voice pitched high with strain. “I…I am sorry, I forgot my meds. They must be…in the car.”

He said it like a confession. Like an excuse he didn’t mean.

“Oh, I will go for them!” Maranata exclaimed, her voice sugar-sweet, her smile practiced. Good girl. Always the good girl. She pushed back her chair lightly, clutch in hand, and rose to her feet with the fluid grace of someone too used to serving others’ burdens.

It was the breaking point.

Goffredo slammed his utensils down with abrupt finality. His chair scraped against the polished floor as he stood, his body towering, his dark curls disheveled from where he had run his hand through them one too many times. Without a word, he stalked after her, his steps hard and fast, his shadow long under the chandeliers.

Etienne blinked, tipsy enough to laugh at the drama, Dwight too full of himself to notice. Stephen only stared at his plate, refusing to look up, refusing to breathe too deep lest the world collapse on his shoulders.

Lucas closed his eyes for half a second, then muttered under his breath, quiet enough that only the tablecloth could hear:

“Jahvé…”

He caught her just as she pushed through the side doors, her clutch clamped to her chest. His stride was too long, too desperate; his hand closed around her arm before she could register, dragging her back into the half-light of the corridor.

Without thought—without breath—he pressed an open-mouthed kiss to the side of her neck, the salt of her skin burning on his lips.

She jerked away, startled, but his hand steadied her, not harsh, but unyielding. “It is me,” he whispered hoarsely, his breath trembling against her hair. “It is me…”

“I know it is you, Goffredo.” Her voice had that sharp edge—resentful, weary. She shoved against his chest, putting a breath of distance between them.

His lungs constricted, aching for the closeness she had denied. He stared at her—his dove, his little bunny, his wife—standing there with her eyes too guarded, her lips painted and pressed thin.

“Let it go,” she said softly.

His mouth twisted. “Let what go?”

She smiled bitterly, looking away as if the walls held safer answers.

“La dannata tua maniera di—” He stopped himself, biting down on the Italian. “Of pretending it is all okay. Are you not aware of what this means?”

“What does it mean, Dotto—”

“I am not Dottore. Not Tedesco. Not even ‘Geoffrey.’” His voice broke, sharp and pleading. “I am your goddamn husband, Selah.”

Her jaw tightened. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what? Don’t speak the truth?”

“You are not my husband.” Her words struck like stones.

“Then what am I to you?”

“You were…” she faltered, her throat working. “…someone I loved. Once.”

“Once?” He almost laughed, but it came out strangled. “And what now? What do you want me to be? A ghost? A stranger?”

“Stop it.”

“No!” His voice rose, raw, as he pressed closer, though careful not to crush her. “You will not shut this down, not again. You feel it—I see it in your eyes, Selah. Stop pretending.”

Her hands trembled at her clutch. Her smile quivered, brittle as glass. “If I care, I’ll fall into pieces, Goffredo.”

“And if you don’t, I will.”

The silence snapped like a taut rope.

“Yes, so what?!” Her voice cracked with sudden fury, the words rushing like water through a broken dam. “So what, Gio?! What do you want us to do? Run away? Hide in some mountain village until they come drag us out?”

“Maranata, no, I—”

“This could ruin me. This could get me in trouble, and it could get you excommunicated! Is that what you want?”

“You know damn well that is not what I want.” He reached for her face, his hand trembling as if to shush her, his touch dripping adoration, desperation. “Amore… calm down, and we talk.”

“There is nothing to talk about.” She shook her head violently, her earrings catching the light. “Talk about what, Goffredo? What do you imagine we’ll fix with words?”

“About what we are doing—what we are now.” His Italian lilt thickened, his voice uneven. “Adesso. What is happening to us?”

Her breath came fast, ragged. “I don’t know!”

His hands shook as he seized hers, kissing them as though they were relics, holy and untouchable. His huge nose bumped clumsily against her knuckles, and still he would not let go. “Then tell me where you are going. Tell me how we are getting married. Tell me what happens next—for us. For us.”

She froze.

“Us?” she whispered. “Gio, there can’t be an us. Not anymore. You are a priest. That makes you a married man.”

His breath quickened as though he’d been struck. His whole body seemed to collapse and fight for air at once. “I can…” His voice cracked into a ragged promise. “I can ask to be revoked, Selah…”

“Miss Correa,” she corrected, cold, her clutch pressed to her chest like a shield.

But he pressed closer, the words slipping from him like prayer, like heresy. “Mia colomba. My dove. We can run away…”

And he kissed her hand again, reverently, desperately, his nose brushing against her palm, clumsy, enormous, like a penitent clinging to the hem of salvation.

The corridor was dim, caught between the pulsing shadows of the chandeliers beyond and the cold white light spilling from the exit sign above. She tried to move past him, but his hand was still there on her arm, still hot, still trembling with all the words he had buried for six months too long.

Her breath came out sharp. “What will be of your life?”

His laugh was small, hollow, bitter. “What will be of yours?” His grip loosened and then tightened again. “You are a free woman—yes, I know—but where will you go? To whom? Which man would want the woman that does not belong to him? You are never going to be anyone’s, Selah. Anyone’s but mine.”

Her eyes hardened. “Take your hands off me.”

He shook his head, chest rising and falling. The Scriptures came unbidden, his tongue too quick with them, the Word both shield and weapon. “The fig tree cannot produce olives. The fountain of salt water cannot pour out sweet. You cannot marry any other man.”

“Yes, I can.”

Her voice lashed like a whip. He actually flinched, stepping back several paces as if her words were stones.

“I can enter any country club,” she went on, fury thickening her tone. “I can walk into any gala, any dinner, and pick and choose whichever man I would like.”

He stumbled back another step, then steadied, eyes flashing. “But they will never get you like I do. They will never know the truth of you. You won’t give the child of another man the hands I kissed, the neck I loved, the voice that won’t let me sleep at night. The parts of you which I loved when no one else would even look at them.”

Her throat caught, but she held the line. “You do not limit me. You do not define me. I can—”

He broke across her words, voice cracking, desperate: “Even if you could, to whom? To a man like Dwight?”

Her mouth fell open. Anger burned across her cheeks. “Dwight and I are not—”

“I know, I know.” His laugh was bitter, sharp. “He can’t fill you the way I would.”

Her face hardened. “But Dwight is not the only man in the world.”

“Then who?” His voice pitched upward, dangerous, mocking. “Who? Who would want you?”

It was a blade cutting deep, right into the tenderest places where her insecurities lived. He knew it the instant it left his lips, and still he did not stop himself.

Her face paled. “Who?” Her laugh was sharp, brittle as glass. “A pretty boy? With long eyelashes and big eyes? Stephen, perhaps?”

It hit him like a lash. His heart lurched, hot blood rushing to his temples.

They are two kinds of wounded dogs

He barks

She bites

“Yes!” she spat, voice shaking. “Stephen, why not? He is everything you are, but with the things you are not.”

His laugh came out cracked, sarcastic, violent. “And what am I not!?”

Her eyes glistened. She straightened her shoulders like a soldier bracing against a blow.

“At least Stephen is allowed to marry,” she said, voice low and fierce. “He can love me and keep his vocation. He could make me not only a wife, but a pastor’s wife.”

The words landed like stones, like nails hammered into a coffin.

Goffredo staggered back against the wall, chest heaving. The air was suddenly too thin. He looked at her as if she had taken a dagger to his ribs and twisted it with her bare hand.

“A pastor’s wife,” he echoed, hollow. His throat bobbed. “You would rather be that?”

“Yes.” Her voice broke on the word, but she forced it through anyway. “Yes. I would rather be a pastor’s wife than a priest’s secret.”

He shut his eyes. His breath shuddered. He pressed his palm to the wall as though the stone might keep him from collapsing.

Silence pressed in, the kind of silence that feels like it hums, like it drowns.

Maranata looked away, her fingers tightening on her clutch until the little clasp dug into her palm. Her chest ached as though she had swallowed fire. She had not meant to say it. Not like that. But once the words came out, she could not call them back.

And he…he looked like a man undone.

He swallowed, tried to steady his voice, but it came out torn. “You think Stephen could love you better than I? That he could understand what I understand? That he could hold your nights without dreaming of your mornings?” His laugh broke into something ragged. “You think he would know the sound you make when you fall asleep with your cheek against my chest?”

Her throat tightened. She turned her face away, but he stepped forward, closing the space she had tried to carve between them.

“You think he would know,” Goffredo whispered, “that you hate silence, that you fill it with humming under your breath, like a child afraid of the dark? That you still say your prayers half in Spanish when you are tired? That you bite your bottom lip when you read?”

“Stop.” Her voice was thin, trembling.

He leaned closer, his breath hot, his words trembling with anguish. “Would Stephen know those things? Would any man?”

Her heart was hammering against her ribs. She wanted to scream, to shake him, to confess that yes, he knew her in a way no one else ever had, no one else ever could. But to admit that was to admit she still loved him, and to admit that was to surrender everything she had built since she left.

Her chin lifted, defiant, though her eyes blurred. “Stephen would not have to know my weaknesses. He would not feed on them like you do. He would cherish them. And he could love me openly. He would not drag me into sin every time he touched me.”

Goffredo recoiled as if she had slapped him. His lips parted, then closed again. His whole face twisted with something between shame and rage.

His voice dropped low, almost a growl. “Sin?”

“Yes.”

“You call it sin?”

“Yes, Goffredo.”

Her words were sharp, but her voice cracked like glass.

He pressed his palm flat against the wall beside her head, leaning down so his eyes burned into hers. “Then let me sin a thousand times more if it means I have you.”

Her breath caught.

His hand trembled against the stone. His voice broke, slipping into something closer to prayer than argument. “Selah…colomba mia…you were not given to me by accident. You were not chance. You were the rib pulled from my side. And now you would give yourself to Stephen? To anyone but me?”

Her hands shook as she tried to push him back, but he caught her wrists—not cruelly, but firmly, like a drowning man holding onto driftwood.

“You think Stephen is your salvation?” His laugh came out bitter, almost hysterical. “Stephen is a man like me. Flesh like me. Desire like me. He is no better.”

Her eyes filled. “He is better than you because he did not ask me to choose between God and love.”

The words split him clean in two.

It was not her words that struck him most, but the echo they carried. He had heard them before, though not from her lips. They belonged to the night of his vision—blood on his hands, rage in his veins, the white apparition of her dress hovering in the chapel shadows. He had demanded then: “And what do you know about love!?”

Now, as if the heavens themselves tore open, she answered him at last.

Her voice cracked, trembling, but firm enough to cut through the air:

“God is love.”

The words silenced him, hollowing him, but before he could twist them into defense or excuse, she went on, sobbing as though the syllables were pulled out of her soul:

“That means not—” She broke, choking on the phrase. Then, through the tears, she began again, each line a dagger that pierced her as much as it pierced him.

“Love is patient…”

Her shoulders shook. She pressed her hand to her mouth, trembling, but forced the words out.

“Love is generous… Love does not envy… Love does not boast…”

Her whole body collapsed against the weight of it, like she was reciting her own judgment, her own sentence. He stood still, staring, his breath shallow, because in her breaking voice he heard not just her fear of God, but the raw truth of her faith—that she was terrified, and yet she still loved, still believed.

Her words cracked again:

“Love… is not proud… it is not rude… it is not self-seeking…”

Tears streaked her face, but she went on, her voice faltering, the cadence half-prayer, half-confession.

“It keeps no record of wrongs.”

His throat burned. His hand lifted but stopped midair, afraid to touch her, afraid to shatter the trembling figure before him.

“Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth…”

Each word spilled out like a plea, like she was begging herself to believe it.

“Love always protects… always trusts… always hopes…”

Her chest heaved, broken sobs cutting through her recitation, but still she finished, the last line like a cry that stripped her bare:

“Love never fails.”

And then silence—only her sobbing breaths filling the corridor, the echo of Scripture hanging between them like the toll of a bell.

He could see her fear—of him, of herself, of God. But he could also see how much she loved, how much she needed to love. And in that trembling, breaking voice, he recognized something he had refused to name: that her love for him was real, but her love for God was greater, fiercer, more demanding.

Goffredo’s chest heaved. For the first time, he did not know whether he stood accused or absolved. Whether God’s hand hovered above him in wrath or in mercy. He wanted to say her name, to reach for her—but the words caught like thorns in his throat.

Because she had already answered his question.

What did she know about love?

Everything.

And it terrified them both.

Now, as if the heavens themselves tore open, she answered him at last.

Her voice cracked, trembling, but firm enough to cut through the air:

“God is love.”

The words silenced him, hollowing him, but before he could twist them into defense or excuse, she went on, sobbing as though the syllables were pulled out of her soul:

“That means not—” She broke, choking on the phrase. Then, through the tears, she began again, each line a dagger that pierced her as much as it pierced him.

“Love is patient…”

Her shoulders shook. She pressed her hand to her mouth, trembling, but forced the words out.

“Love is generous… Love does not envy… Love does not boast…”

Her words cracked again:

“Love… is not proud… it is not rude… it is not self-seeking…”

Tears streaked her face, but she went on, her voice faltering, the cadence half-prayer, half-confession.

“It keeps no record of wrongs.”

His throat burned. His hand lifted but stopped midair, afraid to touch her, afraid to shatter the trembling figure before him.

“Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth…”

Each word spilled out like a plea, like she was begging herself to believe it.

“Love always protects… always trusts… always hopes…”

Her chest heaved, broken sobs cutting through her recitation, but still she finished, the last line like a cry that stripped her bare:

“Love never fails.”

And then silence—only her sobbing breaths filling the corridor, the echo of Scripture hanging between them like the toll of a bell.

Because she had already answered his question.

What did she know about love?

Everything.

And it terrified them both.

Her last words—“Love never fails”—hung in the air like the final note of a hymn, but her body could not hold itself steady anymore. The dam broke. Her face crumpled, mouth contorting into the kind of sob one dreads, the kind that strips every semblance of dignity away. Shoulders shook violently. She pressed her hands against her chest as though she were trying to hold herself together, to keep her ribs from splitting open.

It was coming, the ugly sobbing, the kind that made children stare and strangers turn away. Goffredo could feel it rising from her like an earthquake, and for a terrible second he was ready to collapse with her, to catch her, to cry into her hair until the world dissolved around them both.

But then—steps.

A shadow cut across the dim corridor, slow and dragging. Stephen.

He moved like a man half-dead, his tall frame stooped, eyes hollow, complexion gray under the weak light. One hand braced against the wall as though he had forgotten how to walk without guidance. The other clutched a plastic pill bottle so tightly the ridges dug into his palm. His pupils barely focused. He was a shell of himself, dissociated, detached, drifting through the hall like a ghost in borrowed skin.

Maranata saw him first. In an instant—an act of sheer survival—she dragged her trembling hands down her face, smoothed her hair, forced her shoulders straight. The sob froze half-born in her throat, leaving behind nothing but trembling breath and swollen eyes. She tried to compose herself, but it was not enough, not nearly enough. Her cheeks were streaked, her nose red, her lips trembling in the aftermath of grief she couldn’t quite disguise.

Stephen did not notice. Or if he did, he did not ask.

He passed by them with only a glance, as if they were no more real to him than the wallpaper, his presence hollow, emptied of inquiry or care. His focus was on the small white pills in his hand, and the glass of water he must have left behind at the table.

For a second, Goffredo felt the strangest jolt of kinship—two men unraveling in different directions, two men who had touched her life and broken under the weight of it. He wanted to sneer, to gloat, to pity, to thank the heavens for Stephen’s blindness—but all of it tangled inside him into silence.

Stephen disappeared down the corridor, unsteady, dissolving back into the haze of the dinner.

Maranata was left trembling, half-composed, half-undone, her whole body still humming with the sob that had almost consumed her.

And Goffredo could not decide which haunted him more: her breaking, or her attempt to hide it.

Stephen lingered a moment too long after swallowing his pills, blinking like a man fighting to wake himself from a dream. His shoulders sagged under invisible weight, but something in him wanted—needed—to bridge the void of silence between the three of them.

“So…uh…” he cleared his throat, voice flat, monotone, utterly detached from the meaning of his own words, “the conference tonight… they said something about…honoring cross-disciplinary research. Linguistics… theology… medicine. Quite the…uh… lineup.”

It was nothing. A strip of small talk stitched together by habit, spoken as though he were reading it off a teleprompter. His mind wasn’t there.

Maranata’s body twitched at the sound of his voice, a reminder of reality, of an audience. She swung toward him too quickly, words snapping from her like a whip—too sharp, too defensive. “Stephen, you don’t have to—”

But Goffredo had muttered something low, venom dripping in Italian under his breath, a curse she half-registered but Stephen didn’t.

She pounced toward Goffredo, as if to tear the words out of his mouth.

Stephen reacted instinctively—his arm shot out, intercepting her before she could strike. His hand caught her elbow, pulling her back in protection, not restraint. The reflex was automatic, as if breaking up a fight between children.

That touch—simple, momentary—snapped him out of autopilot. For the first time all evening, Stephen’s eyes sharpened. He blinked, focused, and saw them both as if waking from fog.

But Maranata had frozen. Her chest rose and fell in fast, shallow gasps. Shame and exhaustion spread across her face as if she had been caught in a crime. And then—her hand swung, sharp and quick.

“Dude, you have to calm down, let’s go back and-”

The slap cracked across Stephen’s cheek. Left side. Red bloomed instantly against his darker skin. She gasped at herself, horrified, that slap was meant for Goffredo, not her friend.

Stephen stumbled back, stunned—not because of the force, but because reality had come crashing down on him with it.

“Go,” he told her softly, his voice firm now, clearer than before. He pointed toward the door. “Go wait in the car.”

She hesitated, eyes glistening, but she obeyed. Skirt swishing, clutch pressed desperately against her chest, she walked fast, almost ran, toward the exit.

Stephen turned around slowly—still dazed, still catching up with what had just happened—only to be met with another slap.

This one from Goffredo.

The sound echoed louder, sharper. Stephen staggered back, eyes wide, hand pressed to his face. “Man!? What in the actual—”

“You touched her!” Goffredo’s voice broke into a high, shrill register, more wounded than furious, like a boy robbed of his toy.

“She was going to hit you!” Stephen snapped, voice climbing higher in sheer disbelief, his usual gravitas cracked into something nasal and whiny. “What was I supposed to do? Let her beat you in the middle of the corridor?!”

“So what?!” Goffredo’s arms flailed wide, curls falling across his forehead in disarray, eyes glassy with indignant tears. “It was her hit, her violence! And you—you robbed me of that blessing!”

“Blessing!?” Stephen nearly shrieked, incredulous. “She was going to slap you, and you call that a blessing!?”

“Yes!” Goffredo’s fists curled, whole frame shaking with something rawer than rage—humiliation, twisted desire, the desperate need to claim every scrap of her, even her fury. “Every touch of hers is holy. Every wound, every strike—mine, mine alone! And you dared to take that from me!”

Stephen gawked, jaw slack, lips parted in stunned silence. He had heard confessions of madness before, men broken under guilt or delusion—but never this, never so naked, so absurd.

The two men stood, panting in the echo of violence.

One cheek stung with the imprint of her hand. The other burned with the weight of Goffredo’s jealousy.

And somewhere down the hall, the sound of a car door slamming reverberated like the final note of judgment.

#Ecce: Femina #Cardinal Tedesco #Tedesco #Goffredo Tedesco

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sergiosimptellitto · 7 days ago

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Chapter 12 of Frank's fic GOTDAMN IT SCRATCHES AN ITCH I DIDNT KNOW I STILL HAD. I watched mafia inc bc of u so thank u for keeping this fixation going. Imma go reread the chapter bc 👁👅👁👉👈

He he he you're welcome! I am so glad I could help you ;D

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sergiosimptellitto · 7 days ago

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Keep moving

Part 6

Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is often drawn as a neat, symmetrical pyramid. Its steps rise upward, suggesting order, clarity, and progress: from the base of physiological survival, to safety, to love and belonging, to esteem, and finally—at the very tip—to self-actualization. In theory, one climbs it step by step, each layer building upon the one below, like scaffolding for the human spirit.

But for the poor, the pyramid collapses in on itself.

You grab the sheets and pull them to take them off the bed.

The base—physiological survival—is supposed to be the firmest, the most self-evident: air, water, food, sleep. Yet when poverty hollows out a life, even those things turn precarious. Food is rationed or skipped, sleep is broken by stress, clean water costs more than a family can spare. Each of these shortages robs energy, dulls concentration, and corrodes health. Survival becomes a gamble played day after day.

The hydrogen peroxide is on the nighstand, you take it and carefully swab a dry towel with it.

And here lies the paradox: if one cannot consistently secure the very first layer, the rest of the pyramid is unreachable. No money means no food. No food means no strength. No strength means no job, no income—and thus, even less food. The spiral tightens downward, not upward. Poverty is not just an absence of wealth; it is a machine that replicates itself.

Blood. On the matress, once again, someone got their period in here and was clearly not prepared, you rub the towel agains the matress slowly - or at least is what you choose to believe, for the sanity of your well being.

The second tier—safety—sounds deceptively simple: shelter, stability, protection from harm. Yet poor housing is unstable by definition: rent unpaid, electricity cut, walls thin enough to carry the fights of neighbors and the noise of the street. Safety is not only a matter of locks on doors but of the knowledge that tomorrow will resemble today in some secure way. For those in poverty, tomorrow is a question mark, sometimes an outright threat. Evictions, sudden job loss, unexpected illness—each is catastrophic because there are no buffers, no reserves.

You go to your bag to get some plastic gloves, the hotel does not provide those for you anymore, there are two crampled fines, your hear stop, you do not remember those.

A breath of relief escapes your lips as you notice that it is the one you just paid, and the second…well…you have one more week to pay that one…

The bittersweet feeling escalating your throat is nothing short of pain, sweet because there was a time in your life when you could not even afford to pay for these, bitter because it sets you back, every fine you get, every little mishap drastically changes the course of your entire life, a single fracture, a little illness, something as small as a flue could mean homelesness if you are not carefull.

Climbing further up the pyramid requires reserves. It requires the luxury of predictability. Without them, every step crumbles.

Love and belonging, the third tier, are supposed to spring from family, friendship, and community. Yet poverty isolates. It stigmatizes. Hunger makes one irritable, exhaustion makes one absent, unpaid bills make one ashamed to answer the phone. People withdraw, connections fray. Even kind acquaintances can look at the poor with suspicion, mistaking hardship for laziness, confusion for daydreaming.

To the impoverished, it feels as if one’s very humanity is put into doubt: who would want to bond with a burden? Who would trust someone who cannot even prove their own worth with money?

The gloves slide into your hands, you pick up the trash, sanitary towels out of place - at least you know now that whoever slept on that bed did get her period.

You pick it up and start cleaning the bathroom wall, tiles, towel hanger, and for a moment, you can see your own reflection.

The next level—esteem—seems unreachable without the scaffolding below. Self-confidence grows from achievement, recognition, mastery. But how does one build confidence when all one’s energy is spent securing calories or a roof? How does one gain recognition when one’s labor is invisible, one’s effort unpaid? Poverty smothers esteem before it can even spark, turning ambition into exhaustion.

As you make your way out you make sure to take that small radio Stacy once gave you, it was a bit broken and battered but still worked like a charm and let you listen to the news.

And at the very top: self-actualization. The privilege of pursuing dreams, of expressing creativity, of reaching “full potential.” To speak of self-actualization to someone who has not eaten is a cruel joke. How can the mind soar when the body is starved? How can one paint or write or compose or invent when the electricity is cut, the stomach growls, and the landlord pounds at the door?

The pyramid, so elegant in textbooks, reveals itself as a trap for those at the bottom. Instead of being a ladder one climbs, it becomes a wall one cannot scale. The poor live inside its base, denied entry to the upper levels.

You make the volume higher and higher so you can hear your program with more ease.

There is another cruelty in this design: the constant pressure of survival does not only limit opportunity; it reshapes identity. The person becomes defined by need. Choices shrink to calculations: bread or bus fare, medicine or rent. The horizon narrows until life is lived hour by hour, day by day, with little room for imagination. Poverty steals not just wealth but time itself.

Psychologists have long noted this cycle. Hunger reduces cognitive bandwidth; stress impairs memory and decision-making. A poor person may appear careless, but in truth they are exhausted by the endless accounting of scarcity. Every purchase, every choice, is weighted with consequences, so that even small errors feel ruinous. And because of that, mistakes are punished more severely than successes are rewarded.

Thus, being poor often means becoming poorer still. The climb up the pyramid is not just steep but slippery: each slip sends one lower than before. Miss a payment, lose a day’s wages, fall sick for a week—and the whole fragile structure collapses.

And society, watching from above, too often misreads the situation. It sees only the symptoms, not the trap: the disheveled clothes, the tired eyes, the rent arrears. It judges the poor as irresponsible or passive, ignoring that no human being can flourish when pinned to the base of the pyramid. Even kindness from others carries suspicion, as if to help too much would confirm that one is unworthy of helping oneself.

The truth is simple, and brutal: poverty does not just happen at the bottom of the pyramid. Poverty is the bottom of the pyramid. It is the weight that crushes upward motion. It turns what was meant as a ladder into a cage.

To understand this is to understand that survival is not the same as living. That the poor, in being denied stability, belonging, esteem, and growth, are not just deprived of comfort but of humanity itself. And that until the base of the pyramid is secured for all, talk of self-actualization remains the privilege of the few.

By the time your shift is over your knees ache like you’ve been carrying a sack of bricks all day. Nothing special—just another day of changing sheets that were stained with someone else’s sleep, scrubbing at tiles that will never look clean, wiping the fingerprints of strangers off mirrors. The mop water always turns gray no matter how many times you change it, and you think about how your hands, too, have become gray, rough, chipped. Nobody notices. Nobody cares. That’s what poverty is: not just a lack of money, but a lack of people caring about the toll it takes on your body, your face, your breath.

Signora Adele covers for you tonight, a rare kindness, so you can make the conference. She doesn’t even ask why, just waves you off with her wrinkled hand, smelling faintly of bleach and cigarette smoke. She says she’ll handle the rooms, though she’s already worked a double herself. You thank her, but you both know it’s a debt—you’ll owe her a shift someday, maybe more than one. In poverty, generosity is a kind of barter. Nobody gives for free, not because they’re unkind, but because they can’t afford to.

You take the bus, then another bus, then a tram. Three transfers, each one waiting in the wind and exhaust, each one costing more coins you don’t really have to spend. The tram rocks you to the side, you hold onto the greasy railing, and you think about how money is not only food, not only rent. It is also distance—shorter distances, faster distances. The rich never wait forty minutes in the cold to go somewhere; they glide there, sealed in warm cars, never stepping into the dirt. Poverty is not just a lack of comfort. It is wasted time, endless wasted time.

The city looks different when you’re tired—shadows seem longer, buildings lean more crookedly. You pass a bakery that smells sweet but you don’t stop; the last coins are for the tram, not for pastries. You pass billboards plastered with promises—courses, insurance, new shoes, lives you cannot buy. And then, at the corner by the metro entrance, there’s a cluster of flyers stuck to a lamppost. Most are peeling, rain-warped, already forgotten. But one catches you. The name leaps at you.

“Dr. Timoteo Rovelli — Lecture Series on Contemporary Issues in Medicine.”

The paper is glossy, cleaner than the rest, with a photo of him in a suit. The kind of face that fits on academic journals, the kind of man whose name is always followed by titles, affiliations, awards. You stand there longer than you should, blocking the flow of pedestrians, reading the lines again. It lists citations, institutional ties, research initiatives. Private hospitals, prestigious universities. He doesn’t just give talks—he advises boards, shapes policies, gets quoted in journals you can’t even dream of buying, let alone understanding.

You feel a sharp little laugh inside your chest. Not out loud—your body is too tired for laughter—but inside. Of course. While you are scrubbing someone’s vomit out of a carpet, Timoteo Rovelli’s name is printed on glossy flyers, admired, distributed, cited. His words travel further than you ever could.

You think of the morning—your hands raw from bleach, your back twisted, your knees stiff—and compare it to the rooms where he must speak. Clean, bright lecture halls, the microphone adjusted for him, the audience of students, doctors, colleagues leaning forward as if each word that falls from his mouth is a gift.

It stings, but in a strange way it doesn’t surprise you. This is how the pyramid works. At the bottom, you are always too hungry, too exhausted, too busy with survival to ever climb. At the top, men like Rovelli float, detached from the dirt, respected because the world has already decided they are worth respect. And respect, like wealth, accumulates.

You tug your coat tighter and keep walking, the flyer’s image burned into your mind. You imagine taking it down, crumpling it, throwing it away—but why waste the energy? Tomorrow it will be replaced with another, fresh and clean. There will always be more flyers. There will always be more Rovellis.

You kick the door shut behind you with a dull thud, your arms heavy, your back screaming. The soup you left this morning is still in its pot, sealed with a film that tells you it has waited all day for you. You set it on the stove, turn the flame low, and pour water into a plastic basin. Warm water, nothing more. You sink your swollen feet into it and feel the sting, the ache that swells like a bruise before it softens. A sigh slips out uninvited. You are halfway to sleep, body folding into the cheap chair, steam from the pot wrapping around your eyelids.

Then the door creaks.

It is not the familiar wood complaining. It is intrusion. Before you can gather a single word, he is inside. The air changes instantly, radically—like a dog hearing fireworks. Your spine stiffens, your breath shortens. He doesn’t belong here, but here he is again, unbothered, uninvited. The smell of soap and starch trails him, clashing with your soup and damp socks.

He places something on the table with a heavy, deliberate thud. A book. Thick, hardbound, a workbook you’ve only heard whispers about. Notebooks students kill for, volumes passed hand-to-hand like contraband, tools of survival in exam halls. He had someone get it, he says lightly, as though it were bread or milk. Not even people with the money could secure it, and yet here it is, sitting inches from your elbow, impossible not to want, impossible to touch without implicating yourself.

You try to stand, try to move toward some other part of the room, any place safer, but his hand catches your arm with practiced ease.

“Why are your feet in water?”

“They hurt,” you answer. Your voice comes out flat, each word trimmed down to the smallest possible syllable. You give him nothing to grasp, nothing to twist.

But he notices. He notices your gaze flickering, restless, back and forth—from his eyes, to the pot simmering on the stove, to his eyes again. Always searching for an exit, a shift, a mercy. He turns, slow, deliberate, a predator giving you the spectacle of inevitability.

He walks to the stove. The flame glows against his polished shoes. He lifts the lid of the pot. Steam unfurls, carrying the scent of what you had hoped would be dinner. He laughs.

It is not cruel laughter, not sharp. Worse: it is amused. He laughs as though what he sees is a curiosity, a novelty, a sad little joke. Your soup—stretched with water, padded with bread crusts, the last handful of beans—becomes a spectacle in his eyes. Not that it is bad, not that it is shameful, but in him it awakens a condescension that burns hotter than the flame itself.

“This,” he says, tone rich with irony, “is what you eat?”

He turns the stove off, as if doing you a favor, as if your way of surviving could not be trusted. Then he ladles some into a chipped plate, carries it over with the ease of a man certain of his right to cross boundaries. He places it before you, his lips curling—not quite a smile, not quite a sneer.

It is the look of a man feeding a dog.

You feel it. The weight of it presses against your chest, fills the room. The gesture itself is simple, even kind if stripped of context: soup served to a tired woman. But in his hands, in his eyes, it becomes parody. It becomes possession. He is not nurturing you; he is amusing himself with the theater of your need.

You hold the spoon because there is nothing else to do. The soup burns your tongue, though it is not hot. The humiliation scalds deeper than heat.

He leans back in your chair as though it were his, arms folded loosely, watching. Waiting. That workbook still sits unopened on the table, patient, poisonous, impossible to ignore.

And you realize—he will not leave tonight without reminding you of the gap between you. Not in money, not in power, but in the quiet cruelty of amusement.

Your feet remain in the basin of water, pruning in silence. The warmth no longer comforts.

He leaned back as if he owned the air, arms folded in that lazy, deliberate pose of someone measuring a child’s defiance. His eyes dragged over you, slow, cutting, like a disappointed parent studying the mess of a scolded child. Then—sharp, sudden—his voice:

“Who is the woman in the picture?”

It wasn’t curiosity. It was intrusion, blunt and rude.

“The owner,” you muttered, the word barely more than breath.

“Of the house?”

You nodded once.

“Why do you have her picture?”

“She let me stay. I cooked.”

“Is the house yours now?”

A pause, your mouth dry. “…Why are you here?”

His mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “You avoid the question.”

“Is not your problem.”

That made him laugh. Not loud—low, grating, the kind of laugh that made your skin tighten. He held the photo higher, light catching on the glass frame, and repeated in a mocking murmur, “Non è un mio problema…” rolling the words with his tongue, savoring them like they were a small, sweet fruit. Not my problem. Then the sharp click of his tongue against his teeth, once, echoing in the tiny kitchen like a dropped coin.

He stared at you. Not the picture anymore, you.

“You want the scholarship. More like—you need it.” His voice was flat, merciless, every word punctured with certainty. “Do you think they will give it to a wench that lives in the middle of nowhere? Those people will ask for proof of residence, domiciliary confirmation, documents in order. How do you plan to get them, hm?”

The syllable hm lingered, venom disguised as curiosity.

Your eyes slid sideways, fixed on the water still rippling faintly in the basin at your feet. Anywhere but him. If you didn’t look, maybe it would diffuse, maybe the sharpness would dull.

But when your lashes flicked up again he wasn’t where he had been. The picture was gone from your vision, and so was the safe space of distance. He was there—in front of you, his shadow swallowing yours, his presence so close it pressed the breath out of your lungs. One hand gripped the armrest on your right, the other clamped down on the left.

It happened so fast your brain couldn’t record the motion. A blur—like lightning, like a dog startled by fireworks. You blinked and he was cornering you, blocking escape, the smell of his coat, the faint tobacco on his fingers, overwhelming.

Your pulse roared in your ears. The room bent, the warm soup smell curdled into nausea. Your gaze darted—his jaw, the frame of the door, the shut window, the photo he had left somewhere behind him. He was still, but you felt motion everywhere, an afterimage of violence that hadn’t yet come but could at any second.

The room flickers wrong. One moment he is looming over you, his arms caging you in, the next he is settled on the couch as though nothing happened. Your mind can’t hold the sequence. Did you miss something? Or did time split?

“You know,” he says, conversationally now, as if he hadn’t just—what had he done?—“I can help. I can get you the books, the places, the contacts.”

His elbows rest on his knees, the posture of a man playing at patience. His voice oiled, soft, coaxing. He watches you too closely.

A strand of hair slips forward, grazing your cheek. He reaches, slow and deliberate, hand suspended like a threat made gentle. When you lean away, the trajectory falters, and he lands elsewhere.

On your shoulder?

No—too low for that.

On your arm, the sleeve of your shirt.

No, that can’t be right.

The heat of it lingers too close to your chest.

But maybe that’s only your imagination.

You can’t pinpoint it. You don’t want to pinpoint it. The memory slides off itself, refusing to settle, like oil on water. It rewinds and replays in jagged cuts: his fingers brushing, pressing, withdrawing. A touch too heavy for accident, too misplaced for certainty.

His face is still, unbothered. A flicker of a smile, faint enough you wonder if you dreamed it. He speaks again, but the words blur against the static in your head. Something about opportunities, something about doors opening, all you need to do is—

The air in the room thickens. Your body knows more than your mind: every muscle taut, your heart crawling up your throat. You stare at the floor, at the warped shadow of him on the tiles. Anything but his eyes.

You hear the faint clink before you even look up.

He’s holding the jar. Your jar. Coins dull against the glass, folded bills crumpled small, like they were ashamed to exist.

He tilts it in his hand. “So this is where it all goes.” His voice is curious, almost playful. “Like a child with her piggy bank.”

Your mouth dries. “Put that down.”

But he doesn’t. He rolls the jar back and forth, watching the coins shift. “And how much is this now? What, enough for a train ticket? A month of rent?” He laughs softly. “Or another fine, maybe?”

You flinch. He knows.

Today’s fine is still crumpled at the bottom of your bag, the paper heavier than lead. A penalty for being too late, too poor, too small to push back. Poverty always rebranded as misbehavior: you’re not struggling, you’re disobedient.

“I told you,” you murmur, “it’s nothing.”

“Oh, it’s not nothing,” he counters. “It’s discipline. That’s what they call it, don’t they? You leave your car two minutes too long, they fine you. You forget a form, they fine you. You try to breathe in this city, they fine you.” Timoteo says, he dislikes fines too, but for him they are a momentairly trouble, a small inconvenience, and for you it may mean not eating in three days or having to triple your shifts, so disgustingly accurate, so painfully in character for a man like Timoteo to be that much unaware.

He sets the jar down on the table, leans in. His eyes glitter, pleased with his own rhetoric. “They’ve turned survival into a crime. And you—” he taps the glass, coins rattling, “—you pay for it like a good little citizen.”

So he understands

Or at least he knows

It makes sense now

He knows who you are, but most importantly, he knows where he stands: A privilged man, stable job, very in fact, a house that he owns in the fancy sheltered place of town, a shiny reputation a hard working, tax paying citizen.

So what if he indulges in a few hours of funs at the outskirts of the city with some poor stray like you? Men will be men, and he is not hurting anyone.

You are not anyone.

Your shoulders tense. “It’s not about being good. It’s about—” you stop, because the word staying alive feels pathetic on your tongue.

He supplies it for you anyway, too smoothly. “Compliance.”

The word scrapes you raw. He says it like a diagnosis, like he’s naming your disease.

“Look,” you try, your voice a thread. “It’s my money. You don’t—”

But he’s already over you, elbows on his knees, leaning closer, cutting off the space. “You think you’ll climb out of this pit with coins in a jar? You think the system ever lets you pay your way free? It feeds on you. You pay, and pay, and they fine you for paying wrong.”

You want to say: Better to save a little than to owe a lot. You want to say: This jar is the only thing that’s mine. But the words snag in your throat.

Instead you manage, “It’s still mine.”

He watches you for too long. Then—too casual—he brushes at a loose strand of your hair. You jerk away; his hand reroutes, lands—shoulder, arm, chest? The memory won’t stay still. His touch lingers in every version.

And then he says it, almost tender:

“I can help. I can get you the books, the places, the contacts. Doors will open for you, if you let me.”

Your jar sits between you on the table, cheap glass trembling with the weight of your whole survival.

And you can’t stop wondering if the jar was ever safe, or if it was always waiting to be found.

You stand up and dry your feet, rubbing the dampness against the thin towel with more force than needed, as if friction could scrub away the unease. Flip-flops slap against the floor as you walk to the kitchen. He follows, closer and closer, that shadow stretching over the tiles until it is not a shadow but his breath on your skin.

And then—wet. Your shoulder sticky with saliva. The fabric tugged down roughly, baring skin you hadn’t given.

The sound is obscene, like a dog licking a bone. You twitch away, but teeth clamp down. Sharp pain, sudden and hot, a bite that makes your whole body jolt.

His hands steady you like you’re a piece of meat flailing under the knife, pressing you in place, claiming a right you never gave.

There is nothing sensual in it. It’s ugly. It’s animal. It’s hunger without grace.

You freeze.

Breathing fast, too fast, lungs tight as if the air itself turned thick.

A high-pitched ringing shrieks in your ears.

The kitchen light vibrates above you in a nauseating hum.

You can’t move.

Deer on the highway, headlights blinding, bus barreling toward you.

This is it.

This is the moment the body forgets how to fight.

But the second stretches. A minute? Two? You don’t know. Time is elastic and cruel. And then you notice—the sound of leather scraping metal. His belt. Fingers fumbling at the buckle.

No.

Something in you snaps back into place, ugly, jagged.

No heroism, no plan.

Just survival.

Your eyes lock on the sink. The knife. A common kitchen knife, blade dull from use, handle wet from last night’s dishes. You grab it, abrupt, jerking, desperate. The impulse throws your whole body into the swing, wild and crooked, aiming for his stomach.

He reacts—his hand shoots out, seizing your wrist in a grip that burns. He snarls, the sound more beast than man. The knife halts inches from its target. His fingers squeeze until you think bones might crack, your hand trembling, knuckles white around the handle.

But he made a mistake. His strength, his force—it pulls him forward, unbalanced. You lunge with the momentum, slam your forehead into his face. The crack is sickening, a burst of pain through your skull, but the sound that follows—his cry, his gasp, the wet crunch of cartilage—is better than air. He stumbles back, clutching his nose. Blood blooms instantly, thick, red, dripping down his lip, painting his chin.

Your hand is free.

For a heartbeat you stare, not at him, but at the sight of his belt half-open, the leather hanging slack, the obscene proof of what he intended. Shame burns, but not yours. It should never have been yours.

He glares, one hand on his nose, the other reaching, greedy still, as though you were his problem to finish.

“You’re nothing without us,” he spits, voice thick with blood. “You—your kind—you beg for scraps, for charity. And when it’s offered—you bite back?”

The words drip contempt, each syllable a reminder of the way poverty itself is criminalized, your hunger made into a sin, your survival twisted into shame.

You grip the knife tighter, arm shaking. “You call it charity,” you say, chest heaving, “but it’s chains. Always chains.”

He laughs, coughs, spits blood onto the floor. “You’re dirt. They’ll fine you, evict you, blacklist you. That’s how it works. You’ll run out of hiding places. Then you’ll come crawling back.”

Crawling. He says it like it’s destiny. Like it’s already written. Like your life is only valuable bent at his feet.

Your throat burns, your whole body trembling, but the words cut through the fog. “Better crawling in the dirt,” you rasp, “than chained to you.”

Silence stretches, except for his wet breathing, your thundering pulse.

The knife glints, heavy in your hand. You don’t strike again—not yet. But the image of it lives in your arm, in the bruise blooming across your shoulder, in the bite mark that throbs and bleeds. The ugliness of it all sits in your chest like a stone. This was no romance, no seduction. It was assault. And you fought.

For the first time since he entered, he takes a step back. Maybe it’s the knife. Maybe it’s the look on your face. Maybe it’s the blood staining his teeth.

But he knows now—you are not his meal.

The belt clinks, the leather flicks in the air as though he’s got the right, as though the room belongs to him and not you. He’s breathing hard, furious that you resisted, furious that you broke the script in his head where you were meant to go limp and thankful. His nose is bleeding from the headbutt, dripping down his shirt, staining his collar.

“You little bitch,” he spits, and the word comes out wet with blood. His hands are trembling, whether from rage or from the blow you can’t tell. He lunges again, half-hearted, half-stumbling.

But the knife is still in your grip. And now you’re standing with it raised. Both hands around the handle, the blade catching the dim kitchen light, steady enough to make him hesitate.

You don’t yell. You don’t scream. You do something worse. You speak low, deliberate, venom curling at the edges of every word.

“Try me again, Timoteo. Just one more time. I swear I’ll go to the hospital. I’ll get the tests done. The pap smear, the swabs, the kit they use when women walk in after men like you. They’ll find everything. Every drop, every trace.”

He freezes.

His chest heaves, nostrils flaring.

He wants to laugh, to scoff, but you see it — the flicker of calculation behind his eyes.

The man who spent years in universities, citations trailing his name like medals, who knows exactly how evidence works, how institutions write their reports.

You press forward. “And then I’ll go to the police. I’ll give them your name. Your respectable name. Dr. Timoteo Rovelli. With your lectures, your conferences, your private hospital consultancies. Imagine the headlines. Imagine the whispers. Imagine the citations drying up because no one wants to stand next to a rapist.”

The word cracks the air like a whip. Rapist. Ugly, sharp, unblinking.

He snarls, “Nobody would believe you.” But his voice isn’t solid anymore. It quivers, thin.

You tilt your head, take one more step, the knife steady now. “Believe me? I don’t need their belief. I’ll have evidence. Do you understand? Evidence. Your semen, your spit. They don’t need to believe me when the microscope shows them who you are. Science doesn’t lie, Timoteo. You should know that.”

He wipes at his nose, smearing blood down his chin, looking cornered. He’s not used to this. He’s used to doors opening when he knocks, to students lowering their gaze, to women smiling tight and swallowing down discomfort. Not this. Not you.

You see it hit him all at once: the chain reaction. One report, one test, one doctor willing to sign a form, and his career is nothing but ash. The lectures gone, the hospital doors closed, the funding snapped in half. His name, once respected, rotting in the gutter where accusations never wash away.

Your breath is still ragged, chest tight, ears ringing, but you’ve found something harder than fear. Something sharper.

“You know what else?” you whisper. “Even if they don’t believe me, I’ll keep talking. I’ll plaster your name everywhere. Every flyer, every wall, every toilet stall in the city. Students will know. Nurses will know. Secretaries will whisper. And they’ll all look at you, and they’ll all wonder if it’s true.”

The knife doesn’t waver. Neither do you.

His belt hangs loose at his waist now, forgotten, stupid. His hands hover, unsure whether to reach for you again or protect his face. For a second he looks like he might — that last flinch of dominance, that twitch to lunge — but then your words cut sharper than steel:

“You touch me again, I’ll make sure you never step into a lecture hall. I’ll ruin you, Timoteo. Not with violence. With evidence. With law. With science. With truth. I’ll make your own world spit you out.”

“Cucciola” is what he calls you, “canna” the day you made him mad.

Because that is what he wants, not a woman, not even an affair because that would make you an equal.

Timoteo wants a dog. An obedient little mutt that will wag her tail and follow him to the end of the world, sit down, roll on her bag and let herself be pet.

If he wants a bitch, then he should not complain when you bite back.

He approaches you and tries to grab you by the troath but your grip on the knife tightens as you raise it with all the determination of a rabid dog refusing to be put down.

Something cracks in him. He stumbles back, his breath hitching. He mutters a curse, his eyes darting like an animal trapped too long. He’s calculating exits now, not victories.

And you know you’ve won — not because you’re stronger, not because you had the knife, but because you spoke the only language men like him fear: exposure.

You lower the blade a fraction, just enough to let him see you aren’t bluffing. You’re in control now, even barefoot, even exhausted, even with the ringing in your ears and the sweat on your skin.

His hands tremble as he pulls his belt back through the loops, fast, clumsy, the leather scraping loud. He won’t look at you directly anymore. His arrogance has curdled into something else: panic, disgust, shame.

When he leaves — because of course he leaves, slamming the door too hard as though to claim the last word — the room is silent except for your breathing. The knife still in your grip. The sticky patch of saliva on your shoulder. The ache where his teeth broke skin.

You stand there, flip flops on, feet still damp, staring at the spot where he’d been. There’s no triumph, not really. Just survival. Just ugliness, and the knife cooling in your hands.

But you know one thing for certain: he’ll think twice before coming back. Because now, for once, he’s afraid of you.

You make sure that he is gone to put the knife on your decaying drawer.

The memories threaten to come back…no…not again…

It was not your fault

You were just a child back then

Back when you first froze, back when you were helpless and someone else rescued you

Now you are not a child but it scared you nonetheless, this time there was no grown up to rescue you, you were the grown up.

And you did, you took a knife, you screamed, you saved yourself, and that little girl that once needed help.

When you step into the street your legs feel like stilts made of water, trembling and unsteady. The knife is still on the kitchen table behind you, the air inside still thick with Timoteo’s cologne and that awful, sour heat of what almost happened.

Out here it’s damp and cold, and every shadow looks like it might spring into another set of hands ready to hold you down. You hug your backpack close to your chest, not even sure where you’re going—just knowing you cannot stay.

Then the thought surfaces, shaky but bright: Signora Adele.

The bus ride feels endless. You sit pressed against the window, arms wrapped around yourself, swaying with every stop and turn. You don’t remember when you started crying, but your cheeks are wet and sticky. By the time you reach her neighborhood, the streets are quieter, washed with the faint gold of lamps.

Her building is old, three stories, plaster peeling, with a broken intercom that nobody bothers to fix. You ring her bell anyway. There’s a pause so long you think she’s not home. Then, a faint shuffle. Slow, deliberate footsteps down the stairs. The door creaks open, and there she is:

Signora Adele in her wool cardigan buttoned wrong, a pair of worn slippers, her thinning white hair pulled back with a tortoiseshell clip. She squints at you, then her expression softens into recognition.

“Oh, tesoro. You’ve come. At this hour?” Her voice is small, reedy, yet kind. She pulls the door wider, motioning you in with her hand as though her tiny apartment is a palace.

Inside, everything is quiet. The smell of lavender soap lingers. Plastic flowers stand in chipped vases. A clock ticks too loudly on the wall. She moves slowly, like her bones are made of glass, but she fusses over you with surprising determination: setting out a cup, heating water in a dented kettle, pulling a blanket from the couch.

You sit at her tiny table, hands still shaking. She doesn’t ask you anything, just places her palm over yours and pats, gentle as a sparrow’s wing.

“You should eat,” she murmurs. “I have some biscuits.” She puts them in front of you—dry, stale—but it feels like a feast.

The television in the corner is on mute, flickering images of a news program. She keeps glancing at it, as if waiting. “My children, they might call tonight,” she says suddenly, with a bright little smile. “They usually call late. They’re so busy, you know, with their lives. Important lives. But they’ll call, you’ll see.”

The way she says it, you almost want to believe her. But the landline sits dusty on the sideboard. The cord is tangled. You can tell no one has touched it in months.

She shuffles to the armchair and lowers herself carefully, wincing as her knees bend. “I don’t mind being alone,” she says, too quickly, too cheerfully. “I like the peace. Besides, when they come visit, the house will be full of noise again. They’ll bring the little ones. I should really buy sweets to keep ready.”

You nod, unable to speak. The words jam in your throat. You want to tell her everything—the bite on your shoulder, the knife in your hand, the smell of his belt leather when he tried to undo it—but looking at her, so fragile in her chair, you can’t.

She mistakes your silence for tiredness. “Finish your tea, then go rest. You’ll take the bed, I’ll sleep here.”

“No, I can’t—”

“Ah, ah,” she hushes you with a wave of her hand, slow but firm. “Don’t argue with an old woman.”

You look at her, really look: the way her hands tremble slightly as she folds the blanket on her lap, the way her eyes shine with hope every time the phone makes the smallest sound—even when it’s just the fridge humming. She is vulnerable in a way that makes your chest ache, because she is the only safe place you have right now.

You sip the tea. It’s weak and over-steeped, but it warms you anyway.

Outside, the world is merciless. Inside, in Signora Adele’s fragile little bubble, there’s quiet. There’s patience. There’s the faint, impossible hope of a phone call that will never come.

#keep moving #Sergio Castellitto x reader #Non ti muovere

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sergiosimptellitto · 12 days ago

Text

Keep moving

Part 5

The café internetti was half a living room and half a migraine.

Kids cackled over shooter games with broken headphones.

The printer coughed out receipts while someone’s grandmother yelled at the receptionist in thick dialect.

You sat at one of the computers in the back, next to a flickering vending machine and a radiator that never worked.

The screen was smudged with fingerprints. The keys stuck. But the connection worked.

And that was all you needed.

You typed with two fingers, slow but determined.

Università degli Studi di Santa Giulia – Facoltà di Medicina – borse di studio – esame di ammissione – requisiti 2004

The page took forever to load.

A logo: faded red and gold. A caduceus curled around a flame.

You clicked. You waited. You read.

Santa Giulia—not one of the giants like Bologna or Padova, but known. Respected. Especially for surgery. It sat in Modena-Bresciano, far from here. You didn’t know anyone there.

Which, maybe, was a good thing.

You scrolled down.

Next admission exam: September 2004

That made your chest loosen, just slightly.

It meant you had four months.

Four months to save, to study, to breathe.

The exam would cost fifty euros to sit, and it covered logic, biology, chemistry, math, and physics.

You could do that.

You’d always learned faster alone than you ever had in class.

Your notebook came out. You started scribbling.

The scholarship section was a web of documents and jargon, but you read it twice.

If your income was low enough—and it was, it was—you might qualify for the Borsa per Merito e Reddito, a grant for people like you.

It would cover tuition. Maybe even housing. Three hundred euros a month for rent. Vouchers for books and food, if you were lucky.

But you’d need documents. An ISEE form. Residency proof. Updated ID. A codice fiscale.

You didn’t have half of those.

Yet.

You jotted them down. Your pen pressed so hard it nearly tore the page.

Another grant: Fondo Integrativo Universitario—for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. You didn’t know how they defined that, but you could guess.

Housing help if you lived over 30 km away. That’d be you, too.

You searched for rent listings in Modena-Bresciano.

A shared room: 250, maybe 300 euros a month.

Groceries: 150 if you were careful.

Transportation, twenty-five.

Books? You’d find a way to borrow or photocopy. Worst case, five hundred a semester.

You did the math.

Six hundred euros a month, minimum, just to stay alive.

You needed at least a thousand to move, two thousand to survive the first stretch.

You stared at the screen.

The numbers didn’t scare you.

They gave you shape.

They gave you a road.

You could walk a road. Even through hell.

You clicked print and listened to the ancient machine grunt and whine and spit out your salvation in faded ink.

When you got up from the desk, your legs were stiff, your fingers ink-stained.

You hadn’t even noticed how long you’d been sitting.

Stacy was waiting outside, her headphones on, humming some Britney Spears song. She took one look at your face, then the printouts in your hand.

And she grinned.

"About damn time," she said “You looked like you were building a spaceship in there,” she said, tugging her faux-leather jacket tighter around her. “Found what you needed?”

You handed her the printouts.

She skimmed them like someone pretending to read, eyebrows lifting. Then she laughed.

“A surgeon? You?”

You didn’t laugh back. She noticed. Her grin wavered.

“I’m not saying you can’t,” she added quickly. “It’s just—it’s funny, no? A surgeon who uses candlelight and washes her scalp with bar soap?”

You smiled despite yourself. “It is funny.”

She took the page back and rolled it into a loose baton. “You know what’s not funny? Rent. Groceries. Life.”

Then, softer: “If you want… I can get you in. I’ve got enough clients to share.”

You blinked.

“What?”

“Weed. Soft stuff, nothing crazy. Five grams to this guy, ten to that one, weekends mostly. No corners. You’d just hand it off in cafés or house calls.” She shrugged. “You wouldn’t even need to touch the money, I’d handle that. Just means I get to split it with someone who doesn’t pocket extra like Diego does.”

You didn’t answer.

She glanced at you sideways. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s not forever. And I didn’t say you had to say yes.”

You knew her boyfriend. Not well, but enough. The way he looked at her when she joked too loud. The way her smile dimmed every time he walked into the room. He hadn’t always been around. And she hadn’t always walked like someone who was waiting to be hit.

“I’m just saying,” she muttered, softer now. “I get it. You want out. I want out. So, if you need anything—anything—I can try.”

You looked down at the folder now wedged under your arm. “I’m budgeting.”

Her grin came back. “Now that’s my girl. Gimme.”

You handed her your notes. She crouched by the sidewalk like a little goblin accountant and started scribbling quick numbers on the back of a receipt.

Stacy lists the stuff you will need, money, rent, lease agreement, downpayment.

“I have most of them already.” you respond

She gave you a crooked smile. “Of course you do.”

Then she looked up. “What do you want to be again?”

You crouched next to her and took out a few dog-eared books from your bag. “Okay, so—first is the entry exam. Then general medicine for six years. Then a specialization in surgery, which takes five or six more. Then you need years of residency. So, by the time I’m doing it fully, like really doing it, I’ll probably be almost forty.”

She stared.

“Babe… you’ll be forty years old.”

You nodded. “I’ll be forty anyway. Might as well be forty and slicing open tumors instead of forty scrubbing bathroom floors.”

Stacy whistled and looked away like she might cry or laugh—you couldn’t tell which. “That’s the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard and also the most inspiring.”

Then she stood, shoved the papers back into your hands.

“Okay. You’ll need an address. Something official. I’ll ask around. Andrea got hers sorted ‘cause her neighbor died or moved or something, so she got on the lease fast. I think my cousin Martino’s still got that garage room, the one behind the barbershop. I’ll ask.”

You nodded.

“I know someone who can get you a cheap car. Not cute, but it’ll move.”

You nodded again.

“I know someone who fakes IDs. Just for backup. In case they say you’re missing paperwork or your name doesn’t match something.”

You nodded a third time. Not agreeing, not refusing. Just… listening.

“I already have my high school certificate,” you said quietly.

She smiled. “That’s one thing done. You’re almost terrifyingly ahead for someone who sometimes sleeps in a bathtub.”

You didn’t laugh, but she did.

“Let me help you,” she said.

You tucked the papers back into your coat. “You are.”

For once, she didn’t try to play cool. She just stood beside you, two girls on the curb, as a busted Fiat coughed past and a drunk man shouted at no one in particular.

“This place is hell,” she muttered.

“I know.”

“Let’s get you out of it.”

The day had scraped you raw.

You’d been on your feet since sunrise—changing sheets, bleaching toilets, listening to guests mutter “grazie” without looking you in the eye. The hotel manager had you do a double shift because Mirta called in sick again. She didn’t apologize. She never did.

You got home late, limping slightly from a cracked shoe sole and an untreated blister. Your jacket smelled like cleaning chemicals. The grocery bag felt heavier than usual, though you hadn’t bought anything except lentils, vinegar, and a packet of pasta on discount.

But just as you turned the corner past the shuttered pharmacy, something was wrong.

Blue lights blinked in the fog.

Police cars. Three of them. Outside the crumbling complex you called home.

Your stomach dropped.

It wasn’t fear, exactly. You hadn’t done anything. It was the dread of being handled. Searched. Talked down to. The dread of knowing your name would mean nothing in their mouths.

A group of officers stood in the courtyard, their rifles hanging with casual menace. Another officer barked at a neighbor while shining a flashlight into her face. Someone else—an old man—was being shoved back inside. A woman screamed somewhere upstairs. Someone else laughed.

You stopped, standing there with your grocery bag pressed to your chest like a shield.

An officer noticed you.

“Hey!” he shouted. “You live here?”

You nodded cautiously.

“ID.”

You reached into your pocket. Your hands were trembling. The card was bent, but valid. You handed it over. He barely looked at it.

“What’s in the bag?”

“Groceries.”

He opened it anyway, muttering something to his partner. They both laughed at the vinegar. “Making bombs, signorina?”

You didn’t answer.

“Step over here.”

You obeyed. You always obeyed.

A female officer patted you down, not gently. Her rubber gloves were cold, her expression bored.

You were too used to it

The men in uniforms, the sirens, the red and blue lights.

Day after day they came, they consumed, they left.

Policemen do not help, they come here, pretend to skim around and leave in the best of cases, maybe catch a poor devil making quick money, but never the big bosses, not them, after all, if the law actually went for the people behind the narcotic crisis the country would lose its government.

When one of the policemen skims grabs your tight as he pats it looking for something unlawful you hold your breath and count to ten, this would not be the first time, he is a policeman after all, you know how men like him behave, drunk in power, the strongest narcotic there was.

A hum

Your vision blurred

Focus on the hum of your refrigerator

Feel your hearbeat, not their hands

Look at the window, not at their badges

Smell the rain, try to taste it and you may forget the metallic taste of biting your own cheek

One of the men whistled under his breath.

“You sure she’s legal?” another joked.

“She doesn’t look Italian to me.”

You opened your mouth. Closed it. You didn’t want to give them a voice to mock.

More shouting upstairs. Someone else was dragged down the fire escape in cuffs.

They never told you what they were looking for.

You weren’t sure they knew either.

Someone said your name.

You turned your head. One of the younger officers was reading your ID again, smirking.

“All these books for what? Are you re-selling them? Are you going to take them to the recycling plant for a couple cents?”

They laughed.

You stood still, the humiliation slowly rising in your throat like bile.

You wondered if this was what a candle felt like right before it burned out.

Then the headlights of a dark car cut through the smoke and noise.

A man got out.

At first, you didn’t recognize him in the dark.

But then you saw his coat. The way he walked. Unhurried. Confident.

Timoteo.

He didn’t look at you right away. He looked at the officers.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice calm and clipped. “Is there a problem here?”

They straightened immediately. Something shifted.

“May I ask who you are?”

He took out a wallet. Flashed an ID card. A crisp emblem. A name with weight.

“Dr. Rovelli. Chief surgeon at San Verano Private Hospital. I live in Via Bellini. I was passing through.”

The officer’s mouth clicked shut.

“I see,” he said. “You have… business here?”

Timoteo let a beat pass. Then another.

He looked at you. Not kindly. Not cruelly. Just looked.

“She and I have an arrangement,” he said flatly. “I check in on her from time to time.”

An arrangement.

It echoed in the silence.

The officer coughed into his shoulder. “Of course, Doctor. No problem. Apologies for the inconvenience.”

They handed you back your ID with fingers that didn’t meet your skin.

Within minutes, the officers had packed up their search.

One car pulled away. Then another.

You stood still, vinegar bottle in hand, feeling like glass.

Timoteo stepped closer.

“Are you all right?” he asked softly.

You didn’t answer.

He reached out as if to touch your arm, but you stepped back.

That made him smile. Only slightly. Like he was enjoying a quiet joke.

The blue lights faded into the distance. Sirens died like wolves retreating into the hills.

You stood still, arms at your sides, vinegar leaking from a split in the grocery bag. In your chest: silence. Not relief. Not safety. Just silence.

Behind you, the door creaked.

He hadn’t left.

Timoteo stepped further into the room, shutting the door behind him with too much ease, like it belonged to him now. He brushed his hand along your wall—the patchy plaster, the faint grease stains where smoke had clung too long—and made a sound in his throat that you didn’t like.

Almost a chuckle.

He looked around.

“I’d forgotten places like this existed,” he said, stepping over the threshold like he was entering a gallery. “Where nothing matches but everything is used. Functional. Familiar.”

He sat on your couch. The springs whimpered beneath his weight.

“You know,” he went on, voice smooth and uninvited, “Elsa used to keep the house like it was a showroom. Everything coordinated. Pillows that couldn’t be touched. Magazines fanned out just so. The dining table was only ever used for photos. Meals were eaten on stools in the kitchen—because crumbs weren’t part of the aesthetic.”

You didn’t answer.

He reached toward a mug on your windowsill. The handle had broken off, but you kept it. It was still good for rinsing rice.

He turned it in his hand like it was an artifact.

“She used to yell,” he continued, still smiling to himself. “Not angrily. But sharply. Like a bell. I left a towel unfolded, or wore my shoes past the mat. She wanted everything beautiful. But what is that, really? What is beauty if you can’t put your feet up without hearing about the cushions?”

You still said nothing.

He leaned back, elbows against your threadbare cushion, shoes planted on the uneven tile.

“This,” he said softly, “this has charm.”

His eyes followed the mismatched dishes on your shelf. The draped curtain pinned with a safety pin. The secondhand lamp. The candles—so many of them, short and melted and saved for blackouts. His gaze passed over them like fingers, stroking their brokenness.

There it was

Honestly, at this point you could not be bothered to care or to be offended by the typical ‘rich man statement’

People like Timoteo loved this, the idealization of poverty, the romantization of starvation, they love the desperate sound of someone trying to make a living like a child likes seeing a clown fall over a banana peel once again

You had heard the comments parents said to their offspring when you were a child ‘Look at her, such a good girl, she would not complain of going to school’

Then as a teen ‘See? She has no money to buy clothes of her own, she would be so grateful to have the skirt I gave you.’

Now as an adult, it still felt like they were still talking to a child whenever a rich person talked to you

‘I admire you so much, you work so hard for so little, it is people like you that inspire people like me to go on, you are the true role models.’ then they would leave in their safe, warm cars to get to their homes, which were owned and not rented, they sat at their couches abrumated for visits to the doctor, final exams, dinners they had to prepare.

Privileges are invisible for those who have it

And people like you understood it better than anyone, there was no time to envy private pools, country clubs, boarding schools or vacations.

People like you envied the things that money could not buy, yet finance.

Time for example, not wasting up to four hours in public transport just to arrive to your place of work, not spending the full day working only to come home and sleep.

Time to develop a hobby, to wind down, to sit and have a meal with your family.

Health, not a matress so sunken and beaten by years that it caused scoliosis, not a dental care that consisted in just brushing teeth and sometimes flossing, not a re-heated meal with barely any nutrients to the body.

Health that comes from visits to the doctors, being carefree, knowing where your next meal with come from, getting eight hours of consistent sleep knowing that your job is fifteen minutes away in car.

Education

Freedom

Dignity

Respect

Those cannot be brought

But they can be financed

People like Timoteo could come to your apartment, use you as inspirational porn to masturbate their egos believing they are so humble and class-conscious for spending twenty minutes in what they considered a tourist attraction, a passtime.

For them it is a bad dream

For you it is a nightmare

Timoteo goes on

“It’s not trying to be anything,” he mused. “And you—”

He turned to you.

“You’re not trying to be anything either. That’s rare.”

You stood by the wall, unmoving. You weren’t flattered. You weren’t even surprised. You’d met men like this before. Just not with a surgeon’s watch or a thousand-euro coat.

“What do you want?” you asked finally.

He tilted his head. “To understand.”

“Understand what?”

He looked at you the way someone looks at something missing. Like a painting half-finished. Like a dog that limps.

“You don’t even realize how remarkable it is that you’re still here,” he said quietly. “Most people who come from this”—he waved a hand vaguely toward the crumbling wall—“don’t fight. They don’t dream. They don’t survive.”

You stared. You held back your words ‘We are busy, Doctor, we are so busy surviving that we cannot think of living’

He laughed. Softly. Almost kindly. But it wasn’t kindness. It was something else. Something colder.

“You’re like a little flower pushing through the concrete,” he said, eyes glinting. “And you don’t even know what you look like. That’s what makes it all the more... honest.”

He stood then.

His eyes fell on your desk. On the notebooks he’d scribbled in. He tapped them with a finger, just once.

“You’re very smart,” he murmured. “But smart won’t be enough. You’ll need someone to open doors. This world wasn’t made for people like you to just... walk in.”

He stepped closer.

You didn’t move. You weren’t afraid of him. Not in the way he wanted you to be.

But you were afraid of what he saw when he looked at you.

Not a person.

A project.

A pet.

A perfect little nobody he could shape into something that owed him.

He turned toward the door.

“This place is awful,” he said with casual amusement. “But it suits you.”

He opened the door.

Paused.

Glanced back.

“I’ll be in touch.”

Then he left.

And you were alone again. You sank to the floor, not because you were weak, but because it felt like the only way to keep your body from flying apart.

You touched the edge of the mug he'd handled. It felt foreign now. Touched. Claimed.

Tomorrow, you’d clean again. Harder this time.

You’d make your bathroom shine.

#non ti muovere #Sergio Castellitto #Sergio Castellitto x reader

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sergiosimptellitto · 13 days ago

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hehehe

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sergiosimptellitto · 13 days ago

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Franco Elica the man you are

#Franco Elica #Sergio Castellitto #Il regista di matrimoni

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sergiosimptellitto · 15 days ago

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Some tweets with the Castellittos

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sergiosimptellitto · 15 days ago

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Sincerely, F.P.

Chapter 12: Ribbons

It’s past eleven when the phone rings. You’re already in pajamas, hair loose, curled up on your bed with a book you aren’t really reading. You almost let it go to the answering machine, but the second ring makes you sigh and pick up.

“Tesoro,” Frank’s voice is smooth, but there’s an edge under it — like he’s been thinking about this all day. “I’ve been considering our little… quarrel.”

You don’t answer right away. You just murmur, “It wasn’t a quarrel,” because admitting it would mean he won.

“I spoke to a man I know,” he continues, ignoring you. “A doctor. University type. Very dry. All tweed and spectacles. I explained your… situation. This problem with your integrity code.”

You sit up a little. “And?”

“And,” Frank says, drawing the word out, “he suggested something clever. Your complaint was that when people know you’re my girl, they act differently during interviews, yes?”

“Yes. That’s called bias—”

“Mm, sì, sì, bias. So… we remove the you from the interviews. No more face-to-face. No coffee chats in some cold factory office. No nervous men tripping over their words because they’re imagining me standing behind you.”

You frown. “You mean… surveys?”

“In a manner of speaking,” he says. “Written responses. Papers. Questionnaires dropped off, filled out, picked up. Same questions, same answers, but without your presence there to make them… behave differently.”

You think about it. “That’s not in my approved methodology, Frank.”

“Tesoro,” he says patiently, “this doctor — he told me these things can be changed. Your… how do you call it? Your protocol?”

“My research protocol,” you correct. “It’s the formal plan the ethics board approves before I start. It’s like… the recipe I promised I’d follow. If I change it, I have to ask permission.”

“Exactly. So I asked permission for you.”

Your head jerks up. “You what?”

“The board has approved the change. Effective immediately,” he says, as if he’s telling you the weather. “You’ll submit the questions in paper. They’ll answer without knowing you’re involved. Your precious bias problem? Gone.”

You grip the receiver tighter. “Frank… changing methodology in the middle of a study can affect—”

“Yes, sì, but your work will still be valid. And more importantly—” His voice drops into that deep, unhurried register that makes your pulse tick faster. “You won’t have to spend your days running around to every dirty corner of Quebec. You can be… comfortable. Safe.”

Safe. That word tastes like iron in your mouth.

He goes on, “I didn’t like knowing you were wasting hours in cold factories, getting stared at by men who think too much with their hands. Now you can stay here, send your papers out, and still get the same results. It’s better for you. For us.”

You realize he’s smiling on the other end. You can hear it.

“And all it took was a call,” he finishes softly. “One call, tesoro. That’s all.”

You press the receiver a little closer to your ear, feeling the tension in your shoulders ease.

“Thank you, Frank,” you murmur. “I… overreacted. I’m sorry I was upset.”

The silence that follows is warm, deliberate. You can almost see his expression even through the phone — the faint upward pull at the corner of his mouth, the way his eyes narrow when he’s pleased.

His next words roll out slow, like honey sliding off a spoon. “Guess what I have here on my lap… reminds me of you.”

You tilt your head. “…What’s in there?”

There’s a faint rustle, and then — he moves the phone away from his mouth just enough for you to hear it — a soft, rhythmic purr.

“Another cat?” you ask, already smiling despite yourself.

“Mmh.” He sounds smug. “Turkish Angora. Snow-white. Eyes like glass marbles — one blue, one green. Flawless.” His voice softens as though speaking about a jewel. “It’s a male, you know?”

You blink at the detail. “Does that make them… expensiver or something?”

“…No,” he says, almost amused. “But I believed you might want a little companion for that fluffy thing we have back home. I’m not one of those idiots who believe in… eugenics,” he scoffs, the word heavy with disdain. “But he’s the best pure breed I could find. I figured you’d want it.”

You pause, staring at the wall. “No thanks, Frank. Girls are more than breeding stock. And she’s still a kitten…”

Not that there was any doubt of it, but the kitten you had "found" on the street was planted by Frank, a tiny little gift, a reminder, an offering.

There’s a low hum on the other end — not quite disapproval, not quite agreement — just Frank processing in his own way. “Mm. As you wish, gattina.”

You imagine him leaning back in his chair, the new cat curled in his lap, his free hand stroking its fur the same way he’s stroked your hair — slow, proprietary, as though marking it as his.

And the bad thing is: you want him to stroke your fur again.

You want to curl up in the heavy scent of his cologne, your head under his jaw, knees tucked against him, listening to the scratch of his pen or the click of his lighter. You want to purr into his lap while he takes a call in Italian, his free hand idly smoothing down your hair as though your presence is the most natural thing in the world.

You want him to pull you onto his legs while he works, his gaze flicking between papers and your face, the occasional warm weight of his palm cupping your cheek mid-sentence. To be the soft thing in the room that only he gets to touch.

You like being the kitten. You like the warm, almost lazy possession of it — how he doesn’t even ask before shifting you closer, how he expects you to be there, draped over him like a favorite scarf.

But now…

Now you know the kind of man you’re dealing with.

The memory of the butchery will not leave you. The scream. The iron smell. His voice — the same one that calls you tesoro, the same one that can turn soft as velvet when he says your name — giving orders in the back room.

And suddenly the thought of his hand in your hair is double-edged. You can still feel the gentleness of it, the slow drag of his fingers, but now you can’t help seeing the same hand slick with blood.

The same lap you want to curl up on is the lap of a man who’s signed off on things you’ve only read about in court transcripts — things people like you were supposed to research, not witness.

It’s a split in your mind you don’t know how to close.

Because when he’s there, it’s easy to pretend.

When he’s there, you can forget that the expensive pen he’s holding might have been bought with money bled out of someone else’s life. You can ignore that the suit jacket brushing your arm was tailored in Italy by a man who’d never ask questions, because people who ask questions around Frank don’t last long enough to get answers.

When he’s there, you can just be the kitten.

But you’ve seen too much.

And you don’t know how much longer you can keep playing dumb without becoming part of whatever ledger he keeps in his head.

The guilt slides in quietly, the way the smell of smoke does when you’ve been standing too close to the fire for too long.

You’ve accepted gifts you now understand were paid for in blood. You’ve lived in a room that wouldn’t exist without someone else being told to move out. You’ve eaten meals bought with the same hand that handed out beatings.

And the worst part — the part that keeps you awake some nights — is that none of it is enough to make you pull away.

Because you like how he treats you.

Because in a world where everyone has wanted something from you, Frank seems to want only you.

Even if that means he keeps you the way other men keep rare paintings — somewhere private, where no one else can touch.

Even if you’re not sure anymore whether he sees you as a person or a possession.

You tell yourself you’re not naive. That you know the truth and can still make choices.

But lying in bed that night, your pillow faintly scented with cedar from the blanket he gave you, you realize something that chills you to your core:

You don’t want to stop being the kitten.

And if you stay, you’re not sure you ever will.

You knew the rule. Never come unless cited. That was the first lesson, spoken half like a joke, half like a command.

And yet here you are, in the doorway of his office, heart stuttering because he was supposed to still be in Sicily.

“Tesoro…” That smile — wide, dangerous, private — tells you he came back for reasons you’ll never know. He rises slowly from his desk, the smoke of his cigar curling like an aura.

“Come.”

You remember that morning, you weren’t expecting him.

One moment you were locking your door, the next there was a shadow across the hall, the faintest scent of his cologne — the kind that always made you feel like the air was thicker — and then him.

Frank.

Back from Sicily.

Your stomach lurched before your brain even caught up. Scared. Relieved. And, traitorously, that low, warm flicker pooling in your belly the way it always did when he looked at you like that.

He stepped closer. Each stride slow, measured, like he had all the time in the world and knew you’d wait for him. The closer he got, the more your breath shortened, the more the fear tangled with heat until you didn’t know which was which anymore.

When he finally reached you, his mouth curved, and he leaned in — not asking, never asking — and kissed you. The pressure was steady, not rough, but deep enough that you felt the certainty behind it.

Your arms went around him without thinking. You felt the faint scratch of stubble against your temple, the weight of him solid and warm in a way that made your knees want to give out.

It was almost… tender.

Almost.

Because underneath, your pulse was jumping like a rabbit in a snare, and the tight coil in your stomach was made of more than one kind of tension.

Scared. Horny. Melancholic.

When he finally pulled back, he murmured it low enough for only you to hear:

“Let’s go home, gattina.”

You nodded, because that was what you always did when he said it like that.

Frank rarely drove himself — that was what chauffeurs and drivers were for — but tonight, he opened the passenger door for you, then rounded the hood with the easy confidence of a man who didn’t need anyone else’s hands on the wheel.

The engine’s hum was steady, a quiet blanket over the sound of your breathing. And then his hand settled on your thigh.

Not a squeeze. Not a grope. Just his palm there, warm, heavy, reassuring in a way that was almost worse than if it had been suggestive. His thumb moved in slow arcs, rubbing over the fabric like he was reminding himself you were real.

Soothing.

Calm.

And you sat there, staring out the windshield at the city lights blurring past, trying not to think about how your body leaned into his touch even as your mind whispered all the reasons you shouldn’t.

Trying not to think about Sicily. Or the butchery. Or the way the same hands that touched you like this had done… other things.

Trying not to think about what “home” meant when it was his word and not yours.

You obey before thinking. He doesn’t have to raise his voice. He never does. By the time he lowers himself back into his leather chair, you’re already perched where he wants you — his lap, as if the seat was carved for two. You don’t fight it anymore. His hands guide you only lightly, a courtesy more than a force.

“Bravissima,” he murmurs, brushing your hair off your forehead with fingers that still smell faintly of tobacco and cedar. “This is where you belong.”

On the table before you: packages. Expensive paper, satin ribbons, the weight of unnecessary luxury. He takes his time, like a magician unveiling tricks.

A silk scarf in colors too rich for ordinary light. A first-edition book, annotated in the margins by a dead scholar you once cited in your master’s thesis. A small jewelry case, which he doesn’t open, but presses into your hand like a secret.

“From Palermo,” he explains, voice low and smooth, “I thought of you each time I saw them.”

You want to say something sharp, something about how you didn’t ask for any of it — but when his arm tightens around your waist, when he inhales against your hair as if breathing you steadies him, the words dissolve.

“Did you miss me, gattina?”

It isn’t a question. It’s a ritual, like the gifts, like the lap, like the way he never lets you walk into his office on your own two feet.

And then — he leans close enough that his breath warms your ear.

“You shouldn’t look so surprised,” he says. “When I want something, I don’t wait. I come back for it.”

You shouldn’t be surprised anymore, and yet you are. Frank doesn’t just hand over gifts. He performs them.

The first box is long and narrow, the kind that makes you think of chocolates or opera gloves. He unties the satin ribbon himself, slow, as if savoring the sound of fabric sliding against itself.

Then, instead of discarding it, he coils the ribbon loosely around your wrist.

“Bellissima,” he murmurs, tugging it just tight enough to hold. His eyes gleam with some idea he doesn’t share. He leaves the bow uneven, dangling down your arm like a tether, and sits back, content with his little invention.

You should pull it off. You don’t.

“Go on,” he says, nodding toward the paper, but his hands don’t leave yours. He guides your fingers, unfolding the wrapping with exaggerated gentleness, like a child being taught how to open a present on Christmas morning without tearing the paper.

Inside: a scarf the color of dusk, some silk so smooth it feels like water running through your hands. Before you can react, he drapes it across your shoulders, adjusting it like he’s dressing a doll. His palm brushes your collarbone once, twice, too deliberately to be casual.

“You wear luxury the way other girls wear plain cloth,” he says, settling you deeper into his lap. “As if it belongs there.”

The second package is heavier — a book. He doesn’t let you unwrap this one alone either. Instead, he flips it open to a page already marked, his thumb stroking the brittle margin where an old hand had scrawled notes.

“Do you recognize it?” he asks.

You do. It’s a rare edition of a text you cited in your master’s thesis. You whisper the title before you can stop yourself, and he chuckles, pleased.

“You see?” His eyes crinkle with that secret pride, the kind he shows only when you demonstrate your mind. “I know what makes you purr.”

The word makes you flush. He catches it, of course, because he always does.

The last gift is the smallest: a velvet case. He presses it into your hand but doesn’t open it. You hesitate. He watches. Finally, with a breath, you click it open to reveal a delicate brooch — gold, understated, shaped like a tiny lily.

“Lilies for my scholar,” he says softly. “Because you think you’re plain, but you bloom wherever you’re planted.”

The words make your chest ache, and you hate him for it.

You twist your wrist to loosen the ribbon. “Why did you do this?”

He raises a brow, feigning innocence. “Do what?”

“The ribbon,” you say. “Why tie it on me?”

For a heartbeat, something sharp flickers across his face, then vanishes under that lazy half-smile. He takes your hand, fingers playing with yours, stroking each one as if cataloging them.

“Because it amused me,” he says finally, his tone airy, dismissive. “A whim. Nothing more.”

But you know better. Frank doesn’t do whims. He’s never casual. Every gesture has weight, every gift an edge.

“You look like you don’t believe me.” He lifts your hand, kisses the tips of your fingers, one by one. The ribbon flutters with the movement, bright against your skin. “But what does it matter? A ribbon is a ribbon. A toy.”

He leans in, nose brushing your temple. “Unless my kitten wants it to be more.”

Your pulse stutters. You open your mouth, close it again. He doesn’t press. Instead, he cups the back of your head and guides it down to his chest, like settling a child after a tantrum. His heartbeat is slow, steady, terrifyingly calm.

“Don’t think too much,” he says. “I do the thinking. You — you unwrap the gifts. You wear the ribbons. You let me see those clever little hands stained with silk and ink instead of blood.”

And with that, he lets you sit in silence, his thumb lazily stroking the back of your bound wrist, as though he’s already decided what to do with the idea he hasn’t spoken aloud.

The ribbon still circled your wrist, a harmless loop of satin. But Frank’s thumb kept tracing it, as if measuring its strength.

“You know why I like ribbons?” he asked suddenly, his voice low, conversational, like he was musing about the weather.

You shook your head, unsure if you wanted the answer.

“They’re soft,” he said. “They don’t bite into skin. A ribbon doesn’t bruise. A ribbon leaves no trace unless you want it to.”

He lifted your wrist, tightening the loop ever so slightly. Not enough to hurt. Just enough for you to feel the way it could hold if he pulled.

“Your hands,” he murmured, turning your palm up and brushing his lips against it, “are too pretty for rope. Too delicate. I wouldn’t dare put leather or chain here.” His teeth grazed your knuckle, gentle but suggestive. “But satin? Satin is kind. Satin lets me keep you safe while I keep you mine.”

The words made your stomach twist. You should’ve pulled back. But his grip wasn’t even tight — it was barely there, more promise than restraint.

“Frank…” you whispered, not sure if it was plea or protest.

He smiled, that slow, wolfish smile. “Don’t worry, tesoro. Not tonight. Tonight, the ribbon is just a ribbon.” He loosened it again, letting the ends fall free. “But one day, when my kitten is ready…”

He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to. The image was already in your mind: silk binding your wrists, his steady hands knotting the bow.

And the most terrifying part was not the thought of being tied.

It was the thought that you wanted him to.

#sergio castellitto #Frank Patérno #Sincerely #F.P.

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sergiosimptellitto · 17 days ago

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Goffredo x Maranata core

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sergiosimptellitto · 17 days ago

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Sincerely, F.P.

Chapter 11: Frank's girl

You’d been circling this plant for weeks in your notebook, but only today did the manager finally agree to let you in. The building sat low and wide against a stretch of grey sky, its bricks stained with decades of steam and oil. Inside, the air was warm, almost too warm, humming with the rhythm of machines and the smell of fabric dye.

Your questions had been sharpened over months of drafting, translating academic language into something workers wouldn’t need to squint at. You needed answers about shift structures, compensation rates, and task rotations — terms you could later unpack into neat paragraphs about “wage stratification” and “labour segmentation.” In simpler words: who gets paid less, who works more, and why.

A floor supervisor, a man with kind eyes but the clipped speech of someone who couldn’t waste minutes, guided you between rows of sewing stations. Women bent over machines, their fingers moving like water over cloth. Many wore headscarves; some wore none. A few looked up and nodded politely before returning to their work.

The supervisor leaned close when the machines roared loud enough to swallow his voice. “There’s talk,” he said, eyes flicking toward the office door at the far end. “A sweep. Soon.”

You frowned. “Sweep?”

He hesitated, then gave a humorless smile. “Inspections. Paperwork checks. They’re not calling it that, but you’ll see. You don’t want to be here if it happens.”

You knew what he meant — sudden “compliance” raids where half the workers vanished overnight, scooped up for not having the right documents. You’d read about them in policy journals. They were always justified as law enforcement. But the truth was simpler, uglier: these raids broke up organized workers, lowered wages, and scared the rest into submission.

Still, hearing about it in the abstract was one thing. Hearing it from a man looking over his shoulder was another.

You finished your round of questions, thanked the workers, and excused yourself to the restroom before leaving. The corridor to the admin office was quiet, too quiet compared to the floor. Through the open door you caught sight of a desk piled with papers.

You didn’t mean to linger — but the top page bore a header in bold type: “Asset Transfer Agreement.” Beneath it, you recognized a name you’d seen before, stamped in blocky serif letters on the corner of invoices and warehouse orders.

N. Bellini.

Nico.

You flipped the first sheet halfway before freezing. The paperwork wasn’t about paying fines or covering operational losses after a raid. It was about acquiring the plant’s assets — equipment, storage contracts, even the building itself — for a figure so low it might as well have been theft. The date on the agreement? Two weeks from now. The “sweep” hadn’t even happened yet.

Your stomach tightened.

It wasn’t just law enforcement. It wasn’t even punishment. This was a setup — scare the workers, tank the business, and buy it up for pennies.

You didn’t hear footsteps, but you heard the low whine of the floor door swinging shut and startled back into the hallway. You left before anyone could see you there.

By the time you were outside, the winter air stung your face. You told yourself you’d write it all down later, but the image of that letterhead — Nico’s — clung like the smell of the butchery still sometimes did. The sharp, iron tang that rose in your memory unbidden, curling in your throat.

And then, as if on cue, the delivery truck pulled up outside your dorm that evening. Another package. No return address, but you knew. You always knew.

Inside: a cashmere scarf in a muted cream, the kind you’d never buy for yourself. Tucked inside the folds was a card, smooth and thick, bearing that unmistakable slanted script.

For my little gattina. Stay warm for me.

You ran your hand over the fabric. It was softer than anything you’d ever owned. Warm. The kind of warmth that made you forget, for a second, where it came from.

But the memory wouldn’t let you forget. The butcher’s tiles under your shoes. The scream, cut short. The shadow at the doorway. And then that voice — Frank’s voice — low and unhurried, carrying over the wet sound you didn’t want to think about too closely.

You pressed the scarf to your face, and for a moment it smelled only of cedar and the faint cologne that clung to everything he sent.

It would be so easy to pretend that was all there was.

The phone on your desk rang late, its metallic chime shattering the quiet hum of your dorm heater. You almost didn’t answer — you’d been knee-deep in transcribing notes, and your head was still pounding from the plant visit — but then you saw the international prefix flash on the tiny display.

You lifted the receiver. “Hello?”

“Buonasera, gattina.”

The sound of him — low, unhurried, with that faint rasp that made his English sound like smoke curling at the edges — went straight to your stomach.

You sat back in your chair, pressing the receiver closer. “Frank. You’re calling from Sicily?”

“Mm. I told you I would.” You could hear the faint murmur of voices behind him, the clink of glass. “And I hear my little scholar has been working very hard. Visiting… the textile plant on Boulevard Charest, no?”

Your breath caught. “How—”

He chuckled softly, the sound both indulgent and slightly patronizing. “Tesoro, if I am to take care of you, I must know what keeps you busy. You spoke to Signor Lefebvre… and a few of the women on the floor, si? One of them makes… ah, the blue wool scarves?”

Your fingers tightened around the receiver. He wasn’t guessing. He knew. Every detail.

“That’s… oddly specific.”

“I like to be informed. Besides,” you could hear the smile in his voice, “I picture you there, little notebook in hand, hair falling in your eyes. Probably biting your lip when you think too hard. È vero?”

You laughed — more from nerves than amusement, but it still came out soft. “You make me sound ridiculous.”

“You’re adorable. Which is worse,” he said. “It distracts everyone, I am sure. You think you are the one asking questions, but really… they are looking at you, wondering who you belong to.”

“I don’t belong to anyone.”

“Mm,” he hummed, as if you’d said something naive and he didn’t have the heart to correct you. “Tell me — what did you learn there today? I hope you are not… tiring yourself.”

You leaned back, twirling the phone cord around your finger. “Just the usual. Hours, pay rates. Nothing exciting.”

“Ah, but you are excited, I can hear it.” His voice dipped lower, that playful undertone creeping in. “I like it when you talk to me like this… voice lighter, smiling. Makes me think of when you sit on my lap and I feel your breath against my collar.”

Heat rushed to your cheeks. “Frank…”

“Do not pretend to be shy now, gattina. You are far away — I cannot reach you, not tonight. You may blush freely.”

You caught yourself grinning, despite everything. He sounded… normal. Just a man talking to the woman he liked. No shadows, no iron smell, no papers with Nico’s name on them.

“You should sleep soon,” he said finally, softer now. “I want you rested when I come back. And when I do, I expect a report. In person. Over dinner.”

You bit your lip, hiding your smile in the empty room. “Goodnight, Frank.”

“Goodnight, tesoro.”

The line clicked, and you were alone again — with your notes, your scarf, and the sound of his voice still warm in your ear.

You told yourself it was just for air.

Just for the quiet — or at least the muffled hum of the city after midnight. But really, you needed to map it in your head: the streets, the turns, the places where you could disappear if you ever had to. An exit plan.

Québec after dark had a way of looking both empty and too full. The storefronts were dark, their windows reflecting the yellow streetlamps, but the alleys yawned open like they were waiting for something to spill out of them.

You kept your hands in your coat pockets, scarf wrapped high. The air bit at your cheeks.

It wasn’t until the second turn that you noticed him.

At first, you thought he was just another pedestrian — tall, heavy coat, walking a little too fast for someone with nowhere to be. But every time you crossed the street, he crossed too. Every time you paused, his pace shifted to match.

Your pulse kicked up.

You didn’t look back again, just let your feet choose the irregular path you’d been taught years ago in a city safety workshop: change direction often, turn corners abruptly, never make it easy for someone to predict your route. The serpentine walk.

Left on a side street. Right again. Across the avenue without waiting for the light.

Still, you could feel him behind you.

The sidewalks thinned — fewer pedestrians, more shadows. You scanned the street ahead. Nothing was open except for a nightclub on the corner, its neon sign buzzing in the cold. Music thumped faintly from behind its heavy double doors, muffled but steady, like a heartbeat.

You slipped inside.

Warmth hit first, then the smell of beer and perfume and cigarette smoke. The lighting was dim, but your eyes caught the size of the man by the door immediately — the bouncer. Broad shoulders, shaved head, arms folded.

“You alright, miss?” His French was tinted with something else — maybe Haitian or Caribbean vowels — and his voice had the weight of someone who was used to making problems disappear.

You swallowed. “Someone’s been following me.”

His gaze flicked over your shoulder toward the street. “Stay here.”

You stood near the wall as he stepped outside, his frame filling the doorway. There was a brief moment of silence, then the scrape of a shoe on pavement, a low voice you couldn’t catch, and a retreating shuffle of footsteps fading down the block.

The bouncer came back in, scanning you once before his expression softened. “He’s gone. Where’s home?”

You hesitated — giving your address to a stranger felt dangerous, but then again, so did walking there alone.

“I can call you a cab,” he said, as if sensing the thought. “Paid in advance. You get in, you lock the door. That’s all.”

You nodded, relief loosening your shoulders.

The cab was waiting outside within minutes. The bouncer held the door open for you, one hand braced against the roof of the car. “Don’t walk alone at night again, mademoiselle. Not in this part of town.”

You thanked him, sliding into the seat. The ride home felt longer than it should have, the driver silent except for a quiet “bonne nuit” when you stepped out.

It wasn’t until you were unlocking your dorm door that you noticed it — an envelope tucked just inside the doorframe. Heavy paper. Your name written in ink you recognized.

You didn’t open it until you were inside, coat off, scarf dropped onto the bed.

Inside: a single card. Thick cardstock, the edges gilt.

It read:

Always get home safe. —F.P.

Your stomach tightened.

You didn’t remember telling Frank you were going out. You hadn’t told anyone. And yet… somehow, there it was. The perfect timing. The perfect protection.

You told yourself it was just a coincidence.

But you’d already stopped believing in coincidences.

You wake up the next morning still shaken from the night before. The scream, the echo of footsteps behind you, the blinding strobe-lights of the nightclub as you stumbled inside, breathless.

And then the bouncer — all calm certainty, no questions, just a solid arm guiding you to the back exit. A taxi already idling at the curb. A folded bill tucked into the driver’s hand before you could even sit down.

You didn’t even pay.

You tell yourself it was just luck. Good people exist. But the part of you that’s grown used to the quiet, invisible reach of Frank’s influence suspects otherwise.

The market is crowded with Saturday noise — clinking crates, the call of vendors, the sweet tang of fruit rotting just a little too quickly in the sun.

You’re buying tomatoes when a man behind the stall squints at you, then smiles. “You’re Frank’s girl, right?”

The words are tossed casually, like identifying the weather. But they land heavy.

You manage a polite half-smile. “…Yes?”

“Figured. First one’s free, sweetheart.” He shoves a bag of tomatoes into your hands before you can fish out your coins.

Sweetheart. Not Dottoressa. Not Miss. You don’t even remember telling him your name.

You walk away before your face can betray how off-balance you feel.

Back on campus, you cut through the main quad toward the café for a coffee. The place is crowded — midterm season — and the espresso machine is hissing like it’s angry at the world.

The woman behind the counter glances up, then nods to someone in the back. A minute later, she sets a steaming cappuccino in front of you.

“I didn’t order yet,” you say.

She smiles like she knows better. “Frank takes care of his own.”

You open your mouth to object — to ask how she knows — but the line behind you is long and impatient, and the heat in your cheeks is already unbearable. You take the cup and slip out without another word.

The library is quieter, the kind of quiet you usually find comfort in. But even here, you can’t escape it.

The receptionist, a thin, neat man with half-moon glasses, spots you before you reach the desk. “Your books are ready, Frank’s girl.”

You pause mid-step. “Excuse me?”

“Your books,” he repeats, lifting a small stack. The ones you’d requested three days ago. Titles on labor migration patterns, Quebec industrial policies from the ’70s, and cross-border trade.

You sign the slip and leave quickly. Somewhere between the tomatoes, the cappuccino, and the books, your name has been replaced.

By the time you arrive at the factory for your afternoon interviews, the shift has already changed. Men in grease-stained coveralls and women in hairnets drift toward the exit, laughing, stretching their backs.

One of the older workers — a woman you’d tried to speak to last week, who’d barely looked up from her clipboard — spots you this time and calls out, “Didn’t know you were with Patérno.”

She says it like it explains everything. Like it means she can talk to you now.

She waves you into a small break room. There’s an empty chair, a plate of cookies someone’s brought from home. “Sit, sit. We’ll talk after lunch.”

And just like that, the walls come down. People who’d been curt or cagey last week are suddenly chatty.

The realization creeps in slowly, like water under a door.

Frank hasn’t just claimed you in private. He’s announced you.

Somewhere in the quiet channels of his world — the markets, the cafés, the university offices, the factory floors — the message has gone out:

You’re his girl. And in Frank’s world, that means protected.

And owned.

You try to focus on your notes, on the cadence of the workers’ stories. You record details about overtime pay, injury compensation, seasonal layoffs. But between the numbers and the anecdotes, your mind keeps replaying the market vendor’s grin, the barista’s knowing nod, the librarian’s too-familiar tone.

It’s not that you mind protection — last night proved you need it more than you’d like to admit.

It’s the ownership. The way your academic identity is being eclipsed by something shinier and simpler in the eyes of everyone else.

Frank’s girl. Not the researcher. Not the Dottoressa.

That evening, back in your dorm, you set your bag down and catch sight of a small box on your desk.

No note this time. Just the box — pale cream, ribboned.

You already know it’s from him.

Inside: a delicate gold bracelet, the kind with a barely-there chain and a single charm in the shape of a key. It’s beautiful. You hate that it’s beautiful.

You slip it on without thinking.

It fits perfectly.

The phone on your desk rings — the direct dorm line, not your campus extension.

“Carissima,” Frank’s voice purrs, rich and unhurried. You can almost smell the cigar smoke through the line.

You swallow the urge to blurt out how do you know about the factory interviews? Because you already know he knows. Instead you keep your tone even. “Hello, Frank.”

“You’re working hard,” he says. “I hear you spoke to the women in the break room today.”

Your fingers tighten on the receiver. “…I did.”

There’s a pause, and when he speaks again, his voice dips into that raspy, velvet register. “I like the sound of that. You, in a room full of people, listening. You were always meant to be listened to.”

It’s flattery. It’s manipulation. It’s working. You feel the heat rise to your cheeks before you can stop it.

“You’re blushing, aren’t you?” he murmurs.

You laugh softly despite yourself. “Maybe.”

“Good. I like you like that.” A beat. “Wear the bracelet, tesoro. It suits you.”

You hang up and stare at the gold key circling your wrist.

Protection, ownership, maybe even affection — all bound up in one thin chain.

And everywhere you go now, from the market to the factory floor, people see it before they see you.

Frank’s girl.

The bracelet is still warm against your skin when the phone rings again. It hasn’t even been two hours since you last spoke.

You hesitate before answering. “Hello?”

“Tesoro.” The same low, pleased tone. “Tell me about your afternoon.”

You close your eyes for a second. “Frank… you’ve called me three times today.”

There’s a pause, faint static over the line. “And?”

“And I’m trying to work.” You keep your voice level. “You know, there’s… there’s an integrity code for researchers. We’re not supposed to have any sort of personal relationship with our subjects, or with people who could influence the study. It affects the results.”

He chuckles, not the deep, warm chuckle that softens him, but the quiet one that says he thinks you’re missing the point. “Carissima, I am not a ‘subject’ in your study.”

“Frank—” You sit forward in your chair. “When people know I’m… yours, they act differently. They answer differently. They give me what they think you want to hear. That’s not the truth, that’s not data—”

“They give you respect,” he cuts in. “They give you safety. Do you think those women at the factory would have invited you to sit with them if you were just another university girl with a clipboard?”

“That’s not the same as honest testimony,” you snap, then catch yourself, softening your tone. “It changes the research. It changes how they see me.”

“You’d prefer them to spit at your feet?” His voice dips, a razor wrapped in velvet. “Or perhaps shout things at you in the street like that man last night?”

“It’s not—” you start, but he exhales sharply, the sound hot through the receiver.

“Tesoro, the world will always change its face when it knows who protects you. That is not a flaw. That is a fact.”

You swallow, because he’s not entirely wrong. “I just… I need them to trust me for me, not for you.”

There’s a silence long enough that you imagine him leaning back in his chair, cigar between his fingers, watching the smoke curl toward the ceiling.

Finally, he says, almost amused, “Then perhaps you should decide, piccola, whether you want to be an investigator… or mine.”

It’s not a threat. Not exactly. But the weight of it stays with you long after the line goes dead.

You slam the receiver down harder than you mean to. The sharp clack echoes in the empty room, and for a moment you just stare at the phone, breathing through your teeth.

It’s not the calls. Not exactly. It’s the way he spoke like your work is a hobby. Something cute. Something ornamental.

Your hands curl in your lap. Because that’s what this is starting to feel like — trophy wife treatment.

You’ve seen it before. The sharp suits. The manicured nails. The women who sip champagne at fundraisers with degrees that live in dusty frames on bedroom walls. Women who once stayed up until three in the morning dissecting research papers, now talking about renovations and winter homes in Saint-Tropez.

You used to pity them. Now you’re realizing you might be one of them.

The thought makes your stomach twist.

You think of the way Frank’s eyes soften when you wear your hair down because he likes it. The way he slides his hand to the small of your back when you’re in public, steering you like you’re an accessory to be arranged. The way he introduces you with a pride that isn’t about your work, but about your proximity to him.

It hits you all at once: Frank may not want a partner. He wants a kept thing. A beautiful porcelain doll in his vitrine, something that reflects well on him but never leaves the shelf.

Educated — yes. That’s part of the shine. Masters and doctorates gather dust so much more elegantly than unframed diplomas.

Your chest tightens. Because now you see it.

He’s not worried about your research failing.

He’s worried about you needing the research at all.

#sergio castellitto #Frank Patérno

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sergiosimptellitto · 17 days ago

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Random fact about me:

I've been serenaded twice in my life

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sergiosimptellitto · 17 days ago

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Yes, sir.

Quick Sergio x Costume designer dribble because I do not have time or inspiration enless I am supposed to be doing homework

“…and cut!” the director announced the cut of yet another exhausting scene, you were in the costume department, ready to do the change of clothes, today had been a nightmare. From actors coming in late, wardrobe malfunction to scenes being re-written last minute, that had pissed Sergio off.

You were excited to work with him, the famous Italian actor and director, you did not know him before you got your contract and were handed the list of names, but in one month you watched all of his filmography and now you were hopelessly in love with the older man.

He came into the van, muttering curses and words to himself, you silently went close to help him take off his leather apron you could have sworn he grunted and then said a soft “thank you” Sergio could be stern and take his job seriously, but he was also a humble man and a good one.

You were getting ready to leave when you felt his hand softly grazing your arm.

“Stay. What was your name again?”

The question took you by surprise, he certainly did not seem in the mood for small talk or chit chat, but you yielded and told him your name.

“Sergio Castellitto, pleasure to meet you.” it hit you that there was no ‘formal introduction’ between the two of you yet, he extended his hand.

“I know…I am a big fan of your work, as I imagine everyone else in here is…we love you back home I mean, just me…”

He smiled, you noticed that you had not yet shook his extended hand.

“Oh…I am so sorry…” you said, or at least expected to have said since your brain was fully unable to form a coherent strand of thoughts, much less a sentence.

He took your hand to his mouth and kissed it “Pleasure to meet you, Carina.”

“Pleasure to meet you, sir.”

“No, no,” he shook his hand dismissively, he was NOT helping the italian man stereotypes “Sergio, my name is Sergio, you call me that, sí?”

You shook your head.

“I want to hear you say it.” stern, collected, clear, but not mean.

“Yes, Si-Sergio.”

He chuckled at your mistake, a deep sound coming from his chest that you could not avoid staring at.

“How long have you been working in the industry?” He inquired, now looking far more relaxed as if minutes ago he did not look like he was about to yell at someone

You sat down that evening and talked, about life, about your career and your trajectory for the future, along with the expectations you had for yourself, he gave you numbers and gave you advice, from the banal one about banks and down payments, to contracts and royalties.

From that day on your relationship with Sergio grew more amicable, his advice was sound, concrete and wise, and you did not mind the eye candy at all, he always greeted everyone nicely.

It maybe was your imagination or your brain was gaslighting itself but you really thought that he greeted you with more enthusiasm in his beautiful brown eyes.

“…and then we became friends, it was just a misunderstanding but since then I have been really close to these girls.” another anecdote from school, he was not hearing you, he was listening actively, actually absorbing every word that came out of your mouth as if he was going to be quizzed about it later on.

“And what about boys, you have a boyfriend?”

The question shook you, then you laughed nervously “No! I mean, not at the moment. No.”

“But you like someone?” calm, not even accusing, just a friendly conversation with the man that you were melting for.

“…no…no I do not think I like anyone at the moment…”

He took his good time examining every feature from your face, then he spoke again.

“No? What about Carlo?”

“The guest star? He is not ugly…he is just not…my type…he is younger…” Nothing against Carlo, just that as you said, he was younger and not your type.

“You like older?” the question came immediately after your answer, the way thunder comes after lightning.

“…Yeah…older.” you nodded now face smoking hot from shame

“Wiser? Masculine?” there was no way he did not know the effect he was having on you, the three seconds that your brain spiraled he used to approach his big hand to your smaller one, not touching but definitely close enough to.

“I guess I do, yes sir.”

“Sergio.” his voice went deeper, not an ounce of tease or mockery in his voice, but not anger either.

“Sergio.”

You were wearing a bracelet he had given you last week, his character wore about three at the same time so when you complimented him on how it looked he took it off and put it on your own wrist.

He extended his pinky finger and softly, very softly caressed the leather of the accesory.

“It sounds better that way, no? I have found that such titles make work feel…impersonal.” he looks back to your eyes as he drops the last word (so does his voice once again, an actor, a man that modulates his voice as a tool and uses his body as a story-telling method.

Your legs are crossed, position stiff. The clock is tickling, the air becomes harder to breathe.

And his finger still is caressing the bracelet on your wrist.

“But do you know what makes it sound much better?”

Silence

A beat

He does not seem to expect an answer.

The air in your lungs refuses to leave, in fact, all of your organs seem to be malfunctioning.

Sergio is leaning towards your ear, you can feel his nose for a split of a second as it barely touches your skin.

“…when a pretty girl says it…”

“Sergio-”

“Yes, just like that.”

Breathing intensifies, heat overcomes your whole body now, and the only two sounds amidst the entire set are your breathing, his breathing, his voice and your heart that now feels like it is under attack.

“Sir?”

A shiver, a violent shiver now, it goes all the way to your spine and you could swear to your feet as he presses a kiss to his shoulder, he stares directly at you, now forehead against forehead.

“What did I say about that?”

“Sorry…I-”

“Don’t worry, I am a gentleman after all…if you want to call me that I have no problem.”

your hyper-aware brain now has nothing to focus on but the way he rolls the ‘rs and his voice becomes raspier

“Do you want this? There are no consequences if you say no.” he leaned back to his place, his position right now was a 50/50 ready to take either answer.

“…yes…I want this…”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, sir.”

#sergio castellitto #conclave #Goffredo Tedesco #Cardinal Tedesco #sergio castellitto x reader

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sergiosimptellitto · 18 days ago

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This is a completely reasonable reaction and a very sound behaviour, #DoitforTedesco

call me silly, but whenever a coworker or patron frustrates me, i go over to our dvd section at the library, slightly pull out our copy of conclave, i see that asshole’s face, and i feel better.

like a weird version of the “do it for her” meme. i also do it with the bts memoir we have in nonfiction.

okay thanks for coming to my shower thoughts.

#do it for him #Tedesco #conclave 2024 #conclave movie #conclave book #conclave #conclave robert harris #sergio castellitto stans #sergio castellitto #cardinal tedesco #goffredo tedesco #I love old men #I love hot dad's

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sergiosimptellitto · 19 days ago

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"Neurodivergents have a hard time understanding what other people mean and communicating" have you seen neurotypicals talking??

They will be annoyed when you overexplain yourself but then tell you "Can you pass me the..." and then not complete the sentence because they assume that you will magically understand what they want?

Or when they say "pass me the box" in a room with hundreds of them because they think that you know which specific box they are talking about?

Neurotypicals live in their own world too, that's why there are wars, misunderstandings and so little media literacy and reading/listening comprehension, they assume that everyone knows what they know and will react the way they do to the same stimuli.

#neurodivergents #neurotypicals #media literacy #misunderstanding #rant #confessions of a popular nerd

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sergiosimptellitto · 19 days ago

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Castellitto Extended Universe

Chapter 2: Great minds think alike

“Great minds think alike”

Great minds think alike

Great ideas come from unity and community

What better opportunity for it that a family reunion?

The basilica bells rang loud that summer morning in Basilicata, the air heavy with incense and the chatter of guests gathered for a child’s christening. Paolo’s, a nephew neither Frank nor Goffredo particularly cared about, though both were summoned there by family obligation.

Frank arrived first. He was twenty-six now, tall and lean in a suit cut sharper than any provincial tailor could have made. Montréal had roughened him, taught him how to walk into a room as if it belonged to him. His Italian had already softened into something slower, harder. He stood in the courtyard with a cigar he didn’t smoke, his dark hair slicked back, his gaze measuring each relative as if they were pawns on a chessboard.

Goffredo had been told stories about this brother. Brave, hardworking, important in America. He had pictured a soldier or a banker, someone noble. What he saw instead was a man that resembled a butcher, not the refined new world man he was described.

When their eyes met, the noise of the crowd seemed to hush.

“You’re Francesco,” Goffredo said, his voice not yet deep.

“Not anymore,” Frank answered. “Frank.”

The younger boy frowned. “You changed your name?”

Frank smiled, sharp and unkind. “Better than being stuck with Tedesco.”

The Patriarch’s apartments were silent. The conclave had ended weeks ago, the world had a new pope — Innocentius, Mexican, soft spoken, kind, smiling for cameras. Goffredo returned to Venice with nothing but his titles. He prayed in the morning, presided at Mass, walked the cloisters. But he was restless.

A file sat on his desk that evening. He had delayed opening it, already weary of more bureaucratic disappointment. When he did, the words were worse than he feared: Canonization delayed.

He read on. A woman, venerated as saintly, her life investigated in detail. But her son — a painter, famous in some circles — refused to convert, refused to cooperate. Worse still, investigators had discovered she had not one but two living sons. Twins. Both atheists. Both divorced. Of course, he had a doctor son and the mentally impaired one that had murdered her on her sleep - as the family claimed, but due to the twins’ renuence to convert the canonization was delayed, if not cancelled.

Goffredo pinched the bridge of his nose. It was always the same. Behind every plaster saint, scandal. Behind every holy story, a mess of men.

He sat down heavily, folded his hands, and prayed.

The prayer did not come. Only the shame. Goffredo’s hands hung useless in his lap. He thought of the new pope in Rome, smiling, already reorganizing, and of his own reputation: too rigid, too loud, too bitter. He thought of Frank, still alive in Canada, still elegant, still feared.

He hated that in some ways, Frank had won.

The file lay open on the desk, the words glaring: two sons, atheists, divorced. It was as if the world itself mocked him, throwing his own failures back in his face. He closed his eyes and tried again to pray.

Everything came down, the conclave, the votes, the hard earned respect he had sown tirelessly

At least with the dismissal of that annoying Cardinal Assente he could finally breathe…no, not really.

He recalls it, that one night he was walking through the streets of Rome, when he saw Assente in civilian clothes, he had always suspected the man of being a homosexual, but now he was fully embracing it, not making an effort to hide it.

But what came then was far a worse surprise.

A man of silver hair, strong bulbous nose came out and kissed Assente’s look-alike hand

Silver hair exactly like his…

The iconic Tedesco nose…

He made his research, just to find out that to his disgrace: He was Federico.

He had no clue and never thought that the cousin that everyone said looked like his twin was even alive, much less in Rome.

After paying a private detective he found out that not only was Federico Tedesco pretty much alive but also changed his last name after Uncle Federico Tedesco found out he was gay and kicked him out the house.

Not that he was surprised, uncle Federico Tedesco and aunt Andrea Bellastella divorced, not that it was not normal nowadays but back in his years in Basilicata that gained both of them the rejection of the entire family.

Then there was his youngest uncle Franco, so young he could have been another of his eleven siblings, he got his girlfriend pregnant and they ran away, last thing he heard was that she decided to have an abortion, rumour had it she was going to have twins, rumour had it she was a woman of immense faith, who knows.

It was there and then that the Patriarch of Venice found three horrible truths:

Cardinal Assente had a twin

Tedesco had another living cousin his exact age

But worse of all, the last truth that made his stomach churn in disgust and rejection:

They were gay.

Ew.

They had slipped outside, away from the priest droning prayers over the baby’s font. The cousins darted around playing games, the mothers whispered. Frank lit the cigar at last, puffed smoke into the warm air.

“You’ll make yourself sick,” Goffredo muttered.

Frank laughed. “Sick is staying here, pretending life is Mass and prayers. Montréal doesn’t care if you believe in God. Montréal only cares if you can survive.”

“And what do you do there?” Goffredo pressed. “The family says you’re… important.”

Frank’s smile grew thinner. “Important enough. I get things done. Not like priests.”

“I’ll be a priest,” Goffredo shot back, stung. “I’ll be more than that.”

Frank looked him over, from his polished shoes to the cassock still smelling of mothballs. “Maybe. But remember, brother: your Church saves souls. My work keeps bodies fed. You can’t preach to the hungry.”

Goffredo flushed. He wanted to argue, but the words tangled. He hated how easily Frank cut him down. And yet, he felt the pull of it — the sense that this brother, this exile, knew something about survival that no sermon would ever teach.

Before they returned inside, Goffredo asked the question that burned in him.

“Why didn’t you come back before now?”

Frank’s gaze sharpened. “Because I wasn’t wanted. You were. In fact, I was just your age when mother kicked me out.”

Goffredo blinked. “I was just a baby.”

“That was enough,” Frank said. He dropped the cigar and crushed it under his heel. “You got the family. I got the exile. Remember that, little priest. You’re the reason I had to leave.”

Goffredo stared at him, stunned, as Frank walked back into the basilica without a glance.

The memory clung to him still, decades later. The accusation in Frank’s voice, the smirk, the crushing of the cigar.

They despised each other. They owed each other everything.

Goffredo bowed his head at last, not in prayer but in defeat. “Lord, forgive me,” he murmured. But the silence gave him no answer.

Fede threw his scarf onto the nearest chair with a flourish that would have made a Renaissance prince proud, though he was only in the rehearsal hall of a draughty Roman theatre.

“No, no, no! Madonna santa!” His voice thundered, dramatic yet oddly melodic. “You enter as Romeo, disguised as a man, and yet your steps are timid, like a lamb, not like a lion!” He stormed across the wooden boards, flapping his hands in exasperation at the actress before him, who looked ready to cry. “This is Shakespeare, not Sunday school. Juliet must fall in love with a force of nature, not a frightened schoolgirl in trousers!”

Yes, he kept trying to replicate the success of that night, when his main actor, Otto decided to reveal that he was in fact a she, ever since he kept repeating and repeating the same play once and over again with a madman’s precision.

Behind him, perched neatly in the corner with his notebook, sat Lorenzo — Fede’s partner, elegant in his restraint, as if his calmness were designed to balance Fede’s theatrical storm. Lorenzo adjusted his glasses, scribbled something in the margins, then said softly, “You’ve scared her again.”

Fede whirled on him, outraged, then softened instantly, his eyes twinkling. “I am not scaring her, amore. I am sculpting her! Michelangelo did not whisper to the marble. He struck it.”

Lorenzo only smiled — the kind of indulgent smile of a man who had spent a decade watching Fede’s tempests from the safety of the shore.

The rehearsal trundled on, with Fede leaping up to demonstrate lines, correcting costumes, changing blocking, tossing Shakespearean quotes and medieval references in every direction. He was exhausted and radiant by the time they ended, his shirt damp, his cheeks flushed with the thrill of his own genius.

It was only later, over an espresso in the theatre café, that Lorenzo cleared his throat. “There’s news from Venice.”

Fede arched an eyebrow, stirring his coffee as if he were conducting a symphony. “Which Venice? The romantic one, or the Vatican one?”

“The Vatican one,” Lorenzo answered drily. “My brother was there last week. He says Patriarch Goffredo Tedesco has… discovered something.”

Fede paused mid-stir, spoon clinking against porcelain. “What something?”

“That you are his cousin.”

For a moment, Fede was silent. His hand tightened on the handle of the tiny cup. “Che disgrazia.” He let out a laugh — flamboyant, forced. “Imagine! A Cardinal’s cousin directing women in trousers and men in tights. What scandal!”

“He doesn’t know about Toti,” Lorenzo added carefully.

“Of course he doesn’t,” Fede said quickly. His eyes narrowed, calculating. “And let’s keep it that way.”

Fede and Toti had the weirdest relationship among the clan.

They were accomplices, but when the time shall come, neither would doubt of stabbing the other in the back.

Toti is a genius, and last time Fede checked, he was in business with some shady mafia lord, he was not going to ask, not today, he did not need him knowing they both shared DNA with the man that was caressing the papal throne with his fingertips.

Fede never let his brother have the last cookie, the remote, or the last laugh.

And he sure as hell won’t let him have the Cardinal cousin to himself.

Toti Bellastella never rehearsed anything in his life.

It had been like that for years, yesterday, last week.

Twelve years ago.

At that very hour, while his brother agonized over costumes, Toti was slipping out of the back door of a café near the university, one hand stuffed with stolen sugar packets, the other wrapped around the waist of a much younger woman who was laughing far too loudly for discretion.

“Professor Bellastella,” she teased, “aren’t you supposed to be in class?”

“Class is overrated,” Toti said smoothly, flashing a grin that made her blush. “Besides, the law teaches itself. Like me. Self-taught genius.”

In truth, he had skipped a lecture he was meant to give on Roman contract law. His assistant would cover. He would show up later with excuses — a sudden summons, an urgent case, a migraine. His colleagues rolled their eyes but forgave him, because somehow Toti always landed on his feet, like a cat drunk on champagne.

By mid-afternoon he was already late for his brother’s rehearsal. He burst in through the side door, smelling faintly of perfume and tobacco, his Rolex glinting under the theatre lights.

“Federico!” he cried, arms spread wide. “Maestro of the century, forgive my lateness!”

Fede did not look up from his notes. “You’re late because you were busy seducing another intern, weren’t you?”

Toti placed a hand dramatically over his chest. “Not an intern. A student. There’s a difference. And she seduced me, actually.”

The brothers locked eyes, then both burst into laughter. It was always like this: barbed words softened by their strange, unspoken loyalty. They needled each other mercilessly, but heaven help the outsider who tried to do the same.

“Sit down,” Fede ordered finally. “If you’re going to disrupt my rehearsal, at least make yourself useful. You’re good at pretending to know things — watch their contracts, the theatre guild is trying to rob me blind.”

Toti sprawled in a chair, crossing one leg over the other, eyes gleaming. “Done. But only if you can give me a backstage pass.”

“Which girl?” Fede asked not even annoyed, he was used to be his brother’s pimp, well, not really pimp, women would pay to sleep with the bastard lawyer and he could never understand why.

“Whichever, does not make any difference.”

“Can you stay for the after party?” Fede asked a bit annoyed, still, Toti has a smart and sharp tongue, his younger brother was always sneaky and smart enough to help him get through life in exchange of next big promise’s phone number.

“No, scussi, I have a meeting with a special someone.”

Frank had heard whispers of another Bellastella — young, flamboyant, clever, dangerous in his own small way. A cousin, possibly a rival. He wanted to see for himself.

The meeting was arranged discreetly, in the back of a restaurant where the air smelled of cigar smoke and old wine. Frank sat waiting, elegant in a dark suit, his hair streaked with white, a man who had long ago shed his boyhood name. Francesco Tedesco was dead. Frank Patérno was untouchable.

Toti entered nervously, though he masked it with swagger. He had half expected a gun at the back of his head before dessert. Instead, Frank gestured for him to sit.

“So,” Frank said, voice smooth as glass, “you are my cousin.”

“Apparently,” Toti said, forcing a smile. “I’m Toti. Penalist lawyer, law professor, prince of the forum.”

Frank studied him in silence. Toti shifted, wiped his palms against his trousers, then added quickly: “Look, if this is about family, don’t worry. Nobody even knows we’re related. I barely believe it myself.”

Frank’s smile was slow, dangerous. “Good. Because family is a liability. But usefulness — usefulness is everything.”

That was the beginning.

Ever since then they started to get along, meet oftener, seek eachother, but not as family.

Toti became Frank’s hounddog, his fixer. He managed paperwork, smoothed over legal cracks, laundered money with the skill of a man who knew every loophole in Italian bureaucracy. Frank paid him in bribes, sometimes in cocaine, which Toti accepted with enthusiasm and a shrug. They were cousins, yes, but Frank treated him more like a pet than kin. Toti didn’t mind. It kept him alive.

One evening, after another rehearsal, Fede and Toti sat together in a crowded Roman restaurant, plates of pasta between them, wine flowing like water.

“To family,” Toti toasted, raising his glass with mockery in his grin.

Fede clinked it, rolling his eyes. “To survival.”

They laughed, flamboyant and careless, the noise of the room swallowing their words. Neither noticed the shadows that lengthened around them: Goffredo sniffing from one end, Frank tightening his grip from the other.

For now, they were brothers in arms — great minds, fools alike, united in the chaos they created. But deep down they knew: one day, they would turn those same cunning minds on each other.

The trattoria was warm, heavy with the scent of garlic and frying oil, chatter echoing against tiled walls. Fede loved it for its theatricality; the clamor of voices was like an audience applauding his every word. Toti loved it for the cheap Chianti and the waitresses who sometimes slipped him extra olives.

They had ordered too much, as always — fried artichokes, spaghetti alle vongole, thin veal slices swimming in lemon. Their table was cluttered with plates, papers, and a battered briefcase that looked out of place among the wine stains.

“You know what your problem is, Federico?” Toti asked, chewing noisily. “You think you’re an artist.”

“I am an artist,” Fede retorted, flicking his wrist. “And your problem, Salvatore, is that you think you’re a lawyer.”

They both burst out laughing, the sound as flamboyant and sharp as broken glass.

The briefcase between them clicked open. Toti pulled out a stack of neatly typed contracts. “Part-time assistants,” he explained. “Stagehands, ushers, lighting boys. All of them fictional.”

Fede skimmed one, raising an eyebrow. “Enrico Rossi, technician. Three hundred euros a week.” He whistled. “Enrico doesn’t exist.”

“Exactly,” Toti said proudly. “But his paycheck will. Goes through payroll, looks clean, comes out washed.”

“And where does it go?”

Toti tapped his Rolex against the glass. “A cooperative account. Several, actually. Split small, looks like peanuts. But peanuts make peanut butter, and peanut butter makes sandwiches.”

Fede groaned. “Even your metaphors are corrupt.”

“Better than your metaphors. Last week you compared Juliet’s sighs to Byzantine mosaics. No one understood a word.”

“It was beautiful,” Fede snapped, then softened with a grin. “But I admit, your plan is also… beautiful.”

They leaned over the papers together, brothers shoulder to shoulder, scrawling signatures, inventing names, building a small empire out of lies. The wine flowed freely, loosening their tongues but sharpening their schemes.

Yet behind the easy laughter, each carried a private silence.

Fede thought of Lorenzo’s brother, Cardinal Assente, whispering to him that Goffredo Tedesco had discovered their blood tie. The Patriarch of Venice — his cousin. Fede had not told Toti. He could already imagine the mockery, the endless taunts: “Our cousin the Cardinal, your holiness!” No. Best to keep it buried.

Toti, meanwhile, thought of Frank Patérno. Their cousin too, though he spoke of him only in his own head. The meeting in the smoke-filled restaurant, Frank’s cold eyes, the way he had said family is a liability, usefulness is everything. Toti had agreed, of course. And he was useful. A hounddog, perhaps, but a well-paid one. He would never tell Fede. The less his brother knew, the safer they both were.

“Here,” Fede said suddenly, scribbling his flamboyant signature on one of the contracts and pushing it toward Toti. “This one’s for Enrico Rossi.”

“Perfect,” Toti replied, adding his own crooked flourish. “Enrico Rossi is hired. May he never show up to work.”

They laughed again, but their eyes didn’t quite meet.

A waitress passed, refilling their glasses. Outside, night settled over Rome, the streets buzzing with scooters and tourists, neon lights reflecting in the puddles of last night’s rain.

“You realize,” Fede said, swirling his wine, “we’re untouchable when we work together.”

“Untouchable?” Toti snorted. “We’re Italian. Nobody’s untouchable.”

They clinked glasses anyway.

For a moment, silence stretched. The weight of their secrets pressed down between them — Frank’s shadow behind Toti, Goffredo’s shadow behind Fede. Each thought himself clever for keeping it hidden, certain the other could not possibly understand the danger.

But when they leaned back, both brothers wore the same sly smile.

Toti lifted his glass again, his grin broad and reckless. “Well, Federico… great minds think alike.”

And Fede, raising his own glass, echoed the thought at the very same instant: “Great minds think alike.”

The clink of their glasses was sharp, almost like a blade.

Two brothers.

Two crooks.

Different last names.

Same parents.

Same mind.

The same itch for easy money.

Yes, the saying goes: “Great minds think alike… but fools rarely differ.”

And Toti and Fede?

They’re not exactly the sharpest men in the room.

#sergio castellitto #cardinal tedesco #toti bellastella #tedesco #il grande cocomero #bellastella il tuttofare #goffredo tedesco #The Castellitto Extended Universe #Castellittoverse #Sergioverse #Sergio extended universe #Cardinal Assente

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