Summary: Vinci was a town that Piero shouldn't, but sooner or later he was going to return.

Vinci was a small town on the outskirts of Florence close enough to the city to retire if Cosimo di Medici urgently needed his services, and remote enough so that the rumors of his extramarital slip were nonexistent.
His initial plan had been to delegate the raising of his bastard son to the landlords and completely detach himself. He had a reputation to take care of, and that way he would be informed if Caterina came back suddenly. The same way she left.
But theory and reality don't always coincide. Despite the plans he made, however much he resisted, Piero returned to that house after weeks of absence over and over again.
This boy woke up mixed feelings. On the one hand, he was attracted to his resemblance to his mother. It wasn't a physical resemblance, no. The similarity lay in that curiosity that minimal details woke him up; in that concern to know what, how and why ...
On the other hand, he repelled him, he repelled the questions the boy asked him. The insight reflected in the eyes of an eleven-year-old boy when the answers he demanded involved his mother, his feelings, and Piero had no choice but to lie with the certainty that his son knew he was lying.
He was also repelled by the constant expression of his gaze when he came to visit. A look of a child with an adult mind, with the conviction that he had been born for great things no matter how much his father wanted to restrict him, repress him, and even insist that he was nothing more than the imperceptible result of the greatest mistake of his life.
Every time he came to his house and faced Leonardo, he could not bear that this child that should grow up ignored as if no one was, observed him knowing himself as a better person than him.
Leonardo wasn't in any of the rooms of the house. Piero found him in the warehouse.
And he found other nasty things ... A disgusting stench, mud and drops of a viscous liquid scattered on the table, dirty knives, charcoal, and crumpled papers everywhere. And his son, so focused on his drawings that he didn't even notice his arrival. Leonardo drew and accommodated a lot of mutilated snakes on a skull that God knew where and how he had obtained it.
"What the hell are you doing!" he yelled annoyed. He had seen similar situations several times before ...
Leonardo watched him as if he didn't recognize him, as if he didn't know where he was and who spoke to him once his attention on what he was doing was interrupted.
When he deigned to answer, Piero immediately regretted asking.
"Yesterday, some acquaintances of Mr. Donatto came. One of them told me a story about a woman with snakes that integrated her body ... and alive!" Leonardo gestured and walked from one side to another like desperate as he explained "I think her name was Merluza ... Meliza ... I don't remember how. But how is it possible that several snakes are attached to a human head? Aren't snakes supposed to have their own mind in their head? Could there be a being with several minds at once? But how would they be controlled? I don't understand ... Or it wasn't a human to start with... The skull must be different ... Apart from the eyes to turn those who saw it in stone should be different too. But is it possible to convert meat ...
"Stop!"
Piero interrupted him furious at everything he had heard, annoyed at the disaster he had generated, angry for having visited that corner of the world.
Why Leonardo could not be like the other children?"I want you to clean everything immediately," he scolded, wrinkling the last macabre sketch of women with attached snakes in a little ball. He didn't look back at the elements that were on the table, he didn't want to feel nauseous and show weakness in front of his bastard son. "Get rid of all this mess and don't do something like that ever again."
Without looking into his eyes he went to the door of the warehouse with the little paper ball in his hand that was squeezing furiously.
When he reached the threshold he stopped. Leonardo said nothing, nor did he move from his place. Without turning around, Piero said:
"She was called Medusa."
And without saying more Piero abandoned that room and that town where he shouldn't, but sooner or later he was going to return.