Chapter 38 #2
“Contact left,” Sal’s voice crackles over the channel. “Second-floor window, east building, three in.”
“Got him,” another guard says, cool as ice.
“Move!” Nico commands. “On me. Elena, now.”
He’s up and moving, parting the space, one arm extended, palm back toward me. I rise into a crouch, grab Caterina’s wrist, and the three of us become one line—Nico pulling, us following, Marc compressing space behind.
We break for the car.
The sidewalk is both near and far. There’s a scream somewhere—not close. A horn. The thrum of the SUV engine right in front of us, steady and ready.
Another crack. A window up the block spiders. People on the sidewalk panic in every direction at once. I focus on the door handle of the SUV, on the slick silver of it, on the way it will feel in my hand. I focus on not falling.
“Eyes on—there!” a guard barks. “Second is moving—roofline—”
“Get them in the car,” Nico barks. He never looks away from the threat. He doesn’t have to; he knows where we are by sound and instinct.
Caterina slides across the back seat the second Marc hauls the door wide. I go after her on auto, one knee on leather, trying to pull the rest of me in fast as—
Another shot. Closer? Farther? I can’t tell except by the way Marc’s shoulders hitched, and then he shoved even harder. My hip clips the seat belt anchor; pain flashes, irrelevant. He slams the door behind us so hard the SUV rocks.
Nico’s at the open front passenger door now, half-turned, scanning, gun out—not big, not waved around. Ready. Barely visible to anyone not looking.
“Go,” he tells the driver. “Now.”
We lurch forward. The driver threads us into traffic with a speed that makes my stomach leap. Caterina’s hand finds mine and squeezes hard. The SUV takes the corner too fast. A horn blares. People shout.
I crane my head and see the back of Nico’s head and one shoulder, as he snaps commands on the comm. I see the side mirror throw a flicker of the street behind us, where the alley is getting smaller and fading.
“Two outside are tailing,” Nico says into his mic. “Sal, you and Marc are on the second car.”
“Copy,” Sal’s voice comes, smaller and more distorted now that he’s not in our same space.
I suck air in and feel it actually reach my lungs this time. My hands won’t stop shaking. I flatten them to my thighs and press, breathe again, try to keep track of what my body is doing.
Heart still racing. Vision fine. Hearing too sharp. The baby—a new flare of fear rips through me, and I put my palm flat against my belly and hold it there like I can calm from the outside in.
“You’re okay,” Caterina says, reading me right. “We’re okay.”
“For now,” I say, and I hate the way it sounds. I try to soften it. “Thank you. For—”
“Don’t,” she says. “Save it for when we’re through the gate.”
The city rushes by. We’re not on a straight shot; the driver is weaving through a course I can’t make out, rerouting around whatever traffic and whatever threats the two outside are calling in.
The wheels thump a manhole cover; we drift into the opposite lane for a breath, then back.
People blur into colors. A street vendor yanks his cart back to avoid losing a front wheel to us.
“Shot came from the second-floor window, east building,” Sal’s voice says over the comm again. He sounds calmer, farther away. “First shooter is gone. Second shooter on the roofline, lost visual.”
“Copy,” Nico says. “Stay with us until we hit the turn.”
“On you.”
I slide down one inch in the seat and try to make my shoulders lower. The leather is warm from the sun; the air conditioning blows cold at the back of my neck and makes the sweat I didn’t know I had feel like ice.
“Your head,” Caterina says suddenly, touching the edge of the hair by my temple.
I go still. “What?”
She shows me two tiny freckle-sized specks on her fingertip—paint, not blood. “From the door,” she says. “Just paint. You’re fine.”
The memory snaps sharp again: the paint spitting off the steel at my face, the sound that wasn’t a sound I’d ever heard in person before.
I swallow, and it sticks in my throat. I push it down with the next breath and find the driver’s eyes in the rearview for half a second. They’re focused. That helps.
The SUV swings right, then right again into a street I think I recognize and then doubt. My sense of direction got knocked crooked with everything else. We’re moving fast but not crazy; controlled speed.
“House has it,” Nico says into the comm. “Gate prep?”
“Open and clear,” a voice I don’t know answers, the house side. “Drive is empty.”
“ETA four,” our driver says, first words out of him.
“Three,” Nico corrects, and the driver shaves a corner like a blade and makes the number true.
I realize I’m holding my breath like I did in the alley. I force myself to let it go. I breathe in again.
“Call Papá?” Caterina asks Nico.
“He’s on,” he says, and I catch the tiny click of the comm.
He says nothing unnecessary. “We’re inbound.”
A pause I can feel more than hear. Then: “Copy,” Luca’s voice, threaded with steel hits me square in the breastbone. “Gate is open. I’m at the door.”
I don’t realize I’ve made a sound until Caterina squeezes my hand again, hard. “Almost,” she says.
“Two blocks,” the driver says.
I look past Caterina’s shoulder, out the passenger-side window. The sky is still impossibly blue.
Cars shine. People walk dogs and check phones, and carry iced coffees that sweat down their palms. The air looks the same for everybody else as it did twenty minutes ago. For us, it is not.
We roll through a yellow light that was probably red by the time we cleared the middle. The second SUV is behind us, a long black shadow on our tail that makes me feel contained in a way that isn’t suffocating for once.
“Last turn,” the driver says, and takes it in a single smooth motion that glues my shoulder to the door and then peels me off again. We straighten. The hedges I know are at the end of the block, the iron of the gate beyond them, the slice of drive that points to the front door.
“Gate,” Nico says.
“Clear,” the house says back.
We roll in. The iron swings on its hinges and then is behind us, shutting out a city full of noise.
The SUV stops in front of the steps, and the engine idles hard. For a second, I can’t get my fingers to listen to my brain. Then my seat belt releases, and the click is loud in the quiet space of my mind.
Nico has the back door open before I can reach for it. “Inside,” he says, and it’s softer now but no less immediate.
I slide out first, then Caterina, and we climb the steps fast. The air at the front of the house smells like rosemary and sun-warmed stone. I don’t let myself think until the door is open, and then there he is—Luca, waiting.
And then we’re over the threshold.
Luca is there before the latch even clicks.
One breath, I’m in the doorway; the next, I’m folded into him, Caterina too, his arms a hard band around both of us.
He smells like clean cotton and something familiar and comfortable, and for a second, my body just sags, shock catching up, relief sucking the bones out of me.
“You’re here,” he says into my hair, into both our shoulders. “You’re here.”
I nod against him because I can’t make my mouth work.
The quiet of the foyer wraps around us like it can erase the alley, the crack of the shots so close to my face, the smear of paint on a steel door.
I feel his chest drag a breath. His hand finds the back of my head and stays there, like he can anchor me by touch alone.
Caterina holds on for one more beat and then eases back, a palm on my arm before stepping back. The house seems to exhale around us—low voices somewhere, a door shutting softly. The ordinary sounds of safety.
My mind comes back online too fast.
The image hits, bright and specific: the outline of the door in my peripheral vision, the spit of paint at my cheek. The way my hip banged the seat belt anchor. The way my hand flew to my stomach when I was on the floor of the alley.
My throat tightens until it burns. I step back.
“Elena—” Luca says, reaching.
“I need—” The word scrapes. I swallow and try again. “I need a minute.”
He stills. “Okay.”
“I’m fine,” I say, which is not true, not even close. “I just… I can’t—” I shake my head because I can’t form it. I can’t stand in the middle of his house and dissolve. Not with everyone listening for the next order. Not with my heart still trying to punch through my ribs.
“Do you want me—” he starts.
“No,” I say too fast, too sharp. I soften it. “No. Thank you. I just need—privacy.”
His eyes search mine, dark and holding. He nods once. His hand lowers without touching. “I’m right here.”
I nod, because saying anything else will undo me. I step around him, fingers slipping once on the curve of the newel post as I take the stairs.
My pulse is still in my ears, a hard drum that won’t quit. I fix my eyes on the landing, on the strip of runner at the top, on a doorknob I can wrap my hand around and close between me and everything else.
Behind me, the foyer murmurs back to life. I don’t look. I keep climbing.
At the top, I turn down the corridor and let my feet take me toward the nursery. I don’t think about anything except the distance between me and a closed door. I reach it, slip inside, and close it with a soft click.
I lean my forehead to the cool wood for one breath, then another, then push away and walk deeper into the quiet.