Lucia
Normal is the most convincing lie there is.
It looks like Nico on the floor with his dinosaurs spread everywhere, bright plastic against an expensive rug that was never meant for small hands or roaring noises.
It looks like sunlight slanting through tall windows, dust motes floating lazily in the air like nothing in this house has ever shattered or bled or screamed.
It looks like guards standing exactly where they’re supposed to, faces neutral, bodies still, pretending they aren’t watching us while watching everything.
It looks like safety.
And for once, it doesn’t feel like I’m borrowing it.
I’m sitting on the floor with him, legs folded awkwardly beneath me, back against the couch.
I didn’t even think about it before lowering myself down, didn’t calculate how exposed that might make me feel.
I just… sat. The rug is soft. Warm from the sun.
My shoulders aren’t creeping up toward my ears the way they usually do.
My breath isn’t shallow. I notice that only because it surprises me.
Nico pushes a Triceratops into a Tyrannosaurus with dramatic force, making a loud, ridiculous crashing sound that would have had me flinching a week ago.
“He’s the boss,” he announces, satisfied.
“Of course he is,” I tell him. “He looks very authoritative.”
He grins, all teeth and pride, then immediately straightens the line of dinosaurs again, nudging one so it’s perfectly aligned with the edge of the rug. He adjusts another by a fraction of an inch, brow furrowed in concentration like the fate of the world depends on symmetry.
Order where he can find it. Control where it’s allowed.
I see it. I always do. But instead of panic tightening my chest, something gentler settles there. Recognition without fear. Understanding without urgency. I don’t rush to interrupt him. I don’t tell him it doesn’t matter. I let him have it.
“That one’s crooked,” he says seriously, pointing at a stegosaurus.
“You’re right,” I say, leaning forward to help him straighten it. Our heads nearly bump. He smells like soap and crayons and the faint, indefinable warmth of a child who has slept well. I fix it carefully, the way he likes, lining it up just so.
He nods, pleased. “Better.”
Much better.
He starts narrating the battle, voices shifting wildly.
Deep and menacing for the Tyrannosaurus, high and indignant for the Triceratops.
His hands move fast, confident, sweeping arcs across the rug.
He’s not checking my face every few seconds.
Not pausing to see if I’m tense, if I’m watching the door, if I’m about to tell him to lower his voice.
He’s just playing. I realize, distantly, that I am, too. Not pretending. Not bracing. Not cataloging exits or calculating how fast I could scoop him up if something went wrong. The house feels… held. Like it’s wrapped around us instead of looming overhead.
I laugh when he makes the Tyrannosaurus dramatically fall over. “Down he goes,” I say.
“He’s not dead,” Nico informs me solemnly. “He’s just… resting.”
“Of course,” I say. “Very important distinction.”
He gives me a look like I’ve passed some invisible test and scoots closer, his knee pressing into my thigh. Casual. Unthinking. The kind of closeness he only does when he feels secure enough not to measure it.
My chest tightens, but not in pain. In relief. For a moment, just a moment, I let myself believe this. Let myself sit in the quiet domestic absurdity of toy dinosaurs and sunlight and guards who don’t scare me. Let myself feel how relaxed my body is, how unfamiliar that sensation has become.
I see too much now. But for once, I don’t let it steal this from me.
Not yet.
My phone buzzes. The sound slices straight through me, sharp and wrong, like glass against bone.
My body reacts before my mind does. Not with a jump, not with a flinch, but with that cold, practiced stillness I learned a long time ago.
Muscles locking. Face smoothing. Breath slowing until it barely exists.
I don’t reach for the phone right away because I know what panic looks like from the outside, and I refuse to teach my son that expression.
Fear is contagious. Especially to children.
“Wow,” I say lightly, forcing warmth into my voice, forcing my mouth to curve the way it should. I watch Nico knock the dinosaurs over again, dramatic and loud and happy. “That was a big battle.”
He laughs, full and unguarded. The sound hits my chest like something precious and breakable.
Only then do I pick up my phone. The burner. The one I keep for emergencies. The one that lives at the bottom of my bag, forgotten on purpose. The one with a number only one person has, because limiting access feels like control, and control feels like safety.
Unknown number.
My stomach drops so fast, it’s almost physical, like an elevator plunging, like my organs forget where they’re supposed to be for a second.
I open the message.
You think you’re safe now?
We know where the boy sleeps.
The words don’t register immediately. My brain skims them the way it skims bad news, refusing to let meaning land all at once.
Then I see the photo. For a heartbeat, my mind refuses to cooperate. The image feels wrong, like it’s not meant for me, like my vision has glitched. The edges blur, soften, as if my brain is desperately trying to buy time. Then it sharpens.
The Mancini estate.
The gates.
The curve of the drive.
Stone lions caught mid-shadow.
Taken from outside the perimeter.
And there, just inside the grounds, unmistakable even at a glance, is Turo’s car. From this morning.
The world goes very quiet. The kind that happens when your blood drains out of your head and everything pulls inward, tight and cold. My hands go numb around the phone. My pulse slams hard enough that I can feel it in my throat, in my ears, in places that have no business having a heartbeat.
This isn’t a threat sent from far away. This isn’t someone guessing. This is someone standing close enough to photograph the house. Someone patient enough to wait for the right angle. Someone who knows schedules. Patterns. Habits.
Someone who knows where my son sleeps.
I don’t scream. I don’t cry. Those are for later. Those are private.
Right now, I move.
“Nico,” I say calmly, my voice steady enough to fool even myself. I place the phone face down on the side table like it’s nothing, like it’s not radioactive. “Sweetheart, let’s put the dinosaurs away for a bit, okay?”
He looks up at me, brow creasing slightly. “Why?”
“Because it’s almost dinner,” I say, already reaching for a toy, already setting the rhythm. “And I want you comfy.”
He accepts that immediately. He always has.
Too easily.
We gather the dinosaurs together, his small hands trusting, mine precise.
I keep my movements slow, deliberate, so he doesn’t feel the speed screaming through my veins.
I walk him to his room, smiling, chatting softly, my body running entirely on instinct while my mind fractures outward into worst-case scenarios.
Angles, distances, response times, how fast I could get him out if I had to.
I settle him on the bed. Smooth his hair. Smile. Every gesture careful. Every touch soft. Like I’m laying down calm on top of a live wire.
“You stay here and read,” I say. “I’ll be right back.”
He looks at me for a long second, eyes searching my face like he’s learned to do. “Promise?” he asks.
The word hits me straight in the chest. I swallow.
“I promise.”
I step into the hall. The door clicks shut behind me, soft and final, and something inside my chest snaps like a wire pulled too far. The calm I built for Nico doesn’t follow me out here. It stays behind the door with him, fragile and temporary.
I don’t slow down. I go straight to Turo.
I don’t knock. Knocking implies hesitation, permission, time, and I don’t have any of those.
I walk into the room where he’s standing over security feeds and hold the phone out to him like evidence.
Like a weapon. Like a truth I can’t carry alone for another second.
He takes it. Reads. And goes completely still. Not anger. Not violence. The kind of stillness that terrifies me, because it means he’s already ten moves ahead and every one of them hurts someone.
“When did this arrive?”
“Five minutes ago.”
My voice sounds strange to my own ears. Too controlled, like it might shatter if I let it bend.
He’s already dialing, already gone somewhere colder. “I need a trace on a number. Burner. Immediate.” He recites the digits without looking, like he’s branded them into memory. “Yes. Priority.”
He ends the call and turns back to me. “This number,” he says. “Who has it?”
“My sister,” I say. “Only her. She’s in Madrid. I’ve been careful. I’ve been—”
“I know,” he cuts in, but his jaw tightens, anyway, hard enough that I see the muscle jump. “Then someone’s been watching close enough to get it. Or someone with access shared it.”
The room feels smaller suddenly. The same name forms in my head at the same time I see it flicker in his eyes. Heavy. Rotten. Inevitable.
I don’t wait for him to say it. “I can help.”
The words come out sharper than I expect, edged with something like panic and something like fury. He opens his mouth immediately, instinct kicking in. The reflex to move me back, to shield, to put distance between me and the blade.
I don’t let him.
“I plan events,” I say, stepping closer, my pulse roaring in my ears. “I map people and movement. I track timing, access, who’s always exactly where they need to be. I read rooms for a living.” My hands are shaking now, but I don’t hide it. “Let me help you.”
“Lucia,” he says quietly, warning threaded through the softness. “This is dangerous.”
A laugh rips out of me before I can stop it. Not amused. Not hysterical. Just raw.
“I’m already in danger,” I say. “So is Nico. Waiting in another room while men decide my life doesn’t make me safer. It just makes me blind.”
Silence stretches between us. He studies me. Not like something fragile. Like something forged.
“All right,” he says at last. “We do this together.”
The shift is immediate. I’m not escorted away. No one tells me to sit, to wait, to be calm. He brings me in. The security center hums around us. Screens flickering, feeds looping, maps layered with information that smells like threat and control.
He talks. I listen. And I start seeing what he can’t. The timing. The proximity. Who always knows just enough.
“Enzo,” I say quietly.
He doesn’t deny it. “I know,” he says. “I’ve been building the case.”
“How long?”
“Since the attack,” he admits. “Maybe before.”
My stomach twists. “What are you going to do?”
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to. I nod, because I understand his world well enough now to hear what silence means.
“When?”
“Soon,” he says. “When I have proof that holds.”
We work late into the night. Not don and guest. Partners. Equals.
By the time we make it back to the bedroom, the house has settled into its armed quiet. Nico is asleep. The threat is still there, humming under everything like a live current, but it doesn’t own me anymore.
Turo locks the door behind us. Not to cage me. To choose me. He pulls me into his arms, solid, unyielding, real, and for the first time since my phone buzzed, my body remembers how to breathe.
“We’ll end this,” he says.
I believe him.
Because this time, I’m not standing behind him.
This time, I’m standing with him.