Sarah is the one to open the door, eyes widening as she takes in Leandro: drenched from the storm, trembling from the cold, a split lip and a bruise forming on an eye that will be swollen soon.
“I won,” he tells her, and she sees the knuckles of his shaking fists are also bruised and bloody.
[...]In the kitchen, it takes a moment for her to gather the ingredients for a hot chocolate so saccharine, a younger Leandro got sugar high from half a mug.
While she still prepares the concotion, Leandro sits by the dinner table, noticing a first aid kit on the side.
“You don’t have to leave,” Sarah says. “Ever. You don’t have to go back to that house, you can stay with us.”
“That… That would be asking for too much.”
“I think it’s asking for too little. Are you not determined to remain besides my son beyond the point you could take our surname as part of your own?”
The warm blush that spreads across his cheeks, as he doesn’t know how to reply, makes her smile.
She sets the mug in front of him. “The pride your family takes in breaking you down is the joy of the vile.”
He tries to bite his lip, wincing as it pressures the cut. “My sister is still there. I can’t leave her alone with them.”
“You’re still a kid, and it should not be up to you to battle adults to protect another child.”
“But if I don’t, who will?”
“Depends. Will you let us seek out the law?”
Leandro is confused.
“It’s been years, Leandro. Elvira and I have talked to you before. Your family’s reputation can be destroyed beyond the power of their money, if you will let us make it public.”
“But it’s my fight…”
“Abuse it’s not a fight, abuse it’s a massacre meant for no survivors. There is no fairness in what you have been through.”
“But I-“
“You weren’t, and you aren’t, weak. Do you not love my son for the kindness that still remains in his heart? Does it not frustrate you how they broke parts of him that will never be recovered? Isn’t there something to mourn in the violence you have been forced to practice?”
Leandro looks away, tears running down his cheeks.
“You can put your weapons down. Let me and Elvira finish this.”
[..]“You are a good child, Leandro. You are not lesser for feeling pain when others intend to cause it in you.”