Chapter 8: The Market

"Get dressed," he says the next morning. "I'm taking you out." "Out?" "You've been in this house four days and you flinch at doors." He tosses a coat at me. "Out." It's a Saturday market by the river — stalls, spices, string lights, ordinary people laughing with ordinary lives, and it's the first time in a week I remember that the world still exists. Damiano walks beside me in a black wool coat, and the crowd parts around him like water around a rock. Nobody speaks to him. Everybody looks. I...