The Ones Who Saved Us

Chapter 5

Alessandro's POV

Dad was looking at me with a look that my blood run cold. His forehead was creased from the furrowing of his eyebrows, his jaw tense. I hadn't seen him like this since the day we had seen Demetri for the last time. Dad was fiercely protective of all of his children, but when it came to Ava, they had a special bond over their trauma. They understood each other more than anyone else could, and if someone hurt his daughter, there would be hell to pay.

"You're lying," I said. "Why would she think we would kick her out? We love her, and she knows that."

It couldn't be true. I had worked so hard with Ava to make her trust us, and in less than twenty-four hours, I had pushed us back to square one. Ava shouldn't feel so insecure about her place in this house, in this family. Yes, I was definitely angry that Ava was arrested and then lied to my face about what she had been up to, but nothing would ever make me give up on her. She was my baby sister, and I would do anything to make her feel loved and protected.

"Does she?" Leo asked. "She makes one mistake, and suddenly both of you are yelling at her over the smallest things. I understand that you're mad at her for the arrest and the sneaking out and lying about it, but what was the need to yell at her?"

"I know," Elijah said, rubbing his hand over his face. "We messed up big time, but how else do we deal with this? Do we just let her off the hook?"

"No," Dad said. "Obviously we should still punish her. What she did is not okay, but we need to be more gentle about it. You need to be more gentle," Dad said, looking at Elijah and I. "No more yelling. We need to make her understand that we won't let her get away with doing things like this, but we also would never hurt her."

What Dad was saying made sense to me. Ava was so conditioned from the years of abuse to associate punishments with pain that just hearing the word stressed her out. We had never carried through with any of Ava's or Teddy's punishments since bringing them back home. We couldn't handle seeing their sad faces for long, but maybe that was a mistake. Maybe if we had seen her groundings to the end, she would have realized that we were just doing what was best for her. We weren't punishing her just to hurt her. We were punishing her so she would stop sneaking out, stop with the lies, stop hiding how she was feeling from us.

"Well, what should we do?" Emilio asked. "How do we lay out her punishment without making her react like this?"

"We can't, not really," Matteo said. "How can we solve a problem without knowing the source of it? It's not the sneaking out we need to be worried about. It's Ava's refusal to open up to us."

Matteo was right. There have been so many signs that Ava was far from okay. Her constant sleeping during the day probably due to the nightmares that she never told us about. The way she was always smiling and acted as if her past didn't affect her. Once again, we failed Ava as her family. The signs were subtle, but they were there, and we chose to be oblivious because it was easier to believe that Ava was thriving than it was to realize the façade she was putting up for us. She was hurting so much, and we never noticed it. But maybe there was someone that did.

"Dad, did she ever say anything on your walks?" I asked.

Ava and Dad took walks together whenever they needed time away from the rest of us. Whenever Ava or Dad noticed that the other was having a bad day, they would offer to buy the other ice cream and walk to the small ice cream parlor down the street. Those two could spend hours talking with each other and somehow never run out of things to stay. Other days they would just sit in silence, enjoying the comforting presence that the other provided.

"No," Dad answered. "We don't talk about that stuff. She isn't ready, and frankly, neither am I."

"Dad, Ava isn't doing well and-"