Twenty-nine:

Twenty-nine:

There was someone stroking my face.

I woke up, and I was not in a place that I knew of. My vision kept on going in and out but slowly, I focused on the face before me. It was not Galileo. It was not Cesare. And it was not even Nikos or my father. “Daddy?” the words came out of my mouth before I could stop them. It was not Donatello I was looking at.

It was the man that I had thought was my father.

The Fixer.

He smiled up at me. I never called him by his given name. I only kept his last name because it kept me safe. He and Donatello were twins, although it was easier to tell him because he had a big scar above his eyes. His nose also looked like it was broken. “Hey, sweetie.” He also had a deep voice because he’d been in a fire that had damaged his vocal cords.

I pulled back from him. “I thought you were dead. I thought…I thought Cesare killed you.”

He shook his head. “He let me go.”