Chapter 31 - The Afternoon Ascent
As the heat of the afternoon began to break, painting the upper ridges of the hills in a dusty gold light, Ricardo and Leo set out up the steep goat track that wound behind the villa toward the high plateau. Elena stayed behind, preferring the cool sanctuary of the library and the quiet rustle of pages as she cataloged the new botanical texts she had ordered from Marseille.
The climb was steep, winding through thickets of wild thyme, dwarf oak, and sun-baked rock that clicked under the soles of their boots. Leo walked a few paces ahead, his small legs pumping with tireless energy, stopping every few minutes to flip over a flat stone or inspect a jagged piece of quartz.
"Father," Leo called out, pausing near a ruined stone wall that marked an ancient property boundary from the Venetian era. "Did people live up here before the road was paved?"
Ricardo caught up with him, wiping a thin layer of dust from his forehead with his sleeve. He knelt beside the boy, resting his hand on the crumbling mortar.
"Centuries ago," Ricardo said, his voice dropping into that measured, storytelling cadence he reserved for quiet moments with his son. "Before there were cars, before there were telephones, before anyone in the city knew this coast existed. Sheepherders and farmers lived up here. They built these walls stone by stone, without machines, just to keep their goats from wandering off the precipice."
"Weren't they lonely?" Leo asked, looking out over the immense drop toward the glittering blue crescent of the sea far below.
May you like
"Maybe," Ricardo considered, looking down at the boy with a dark, steady intensity. "Or maybe they realized that the fewer people you need to survive, the harder it is for the world to take anything away from you."
Leo didn't answer immediately; he simply picked up a smooth, gray pebble, tossed it into the brush, and turned back toward the trail with the simple resilience of childhood. Ricardo stood up, his eyes following the boy's small red jacket as it bobbed against the green scrub. He knew that the world down below—the towers of Chicago, the syndicate assets, the political machinery they had dismantled—was still turning. But up here, standing on the ancient stones with his son, the world felt small enough to hold in the palm of one hand.
