9. Serena
SERENA
Matteo finds a clinic that doesn’t ask questions. That sounds shady. It’s not shady. I ask. Actually, I ask three times, because pregnant women hiding from mafia husbands shouldn’t be casual about medical care.
“It’s a real clinic,” Matteo says, setting a paper bag on Lucia’s tiny kitchen table. “Registered. Licensed. Midwife-led. They also do private scans.”
Lucia leans against the counter with a mug of tea and the face she uses when she wants to interrogate a man but has decided not to start with violence. Growth. For Lucia, anyway.
“Why would they not ask questions?” she says.
“Because I’m paying privately,” Matteo says. “And because Serena’s an adult woman entitled to medical privacy.”
The words stop me. Adult woman entitled to medical privacy. The sort of sentence that should be normal. It hits me like a gift. Not roses. Not diamonds. Just one man saying I have rights like it’s obvious.
My standards are in hell.
Lucia’s eyebrows lift.
“I hate that I liked that answer.”
“You don’t have to like me,” Matteo says.
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Good.”
“Excellent.”
Two people who would rather chew glass than admit they agree on anything.
I open the paper bag. Inside are crackers, ginger biscuits, a banana, a bottle of water, and a small packet of sour sweets I ate twice on the plane and never mentioned again.
I take the sweets out slowly.
“How did you know?”
Matteo shrugs.
“You stopped turning green after eating those.”
That is all. No speech. No big meaningful stare. Thank God.
Lucia looks at the sweets. Then at Matteo. Then at me. Her face softens. That, too.
“Do you want me to come?” she asks.
I do. I don’t. I want my sister beside me.
But Lucia has a shift at the bakery, and we need money, and I’m already staying in her living room like a sad decorative pillow with nausea.
Also, if she comes, she’ll ask the midwife nine hundred questions about whether stress can make the baby inherit mafia nonsense.
I love her. I am tired.
“Go to work,” I say. “I’ll call you after.”
Her mouth tightens.
“Serena.”
“I’m not alone.”
The room changes. Just a little. Because I said it before thinking.
I am not alone.
Matteo goes still. Lucia looks at me like she’s trying to decide whether to feel comforted or start screaming. Same, honestly.
“He stands outside,” I add quickly.
Matteo nods once. “Unless you ask otherwise.”
Lucia points at him with her tea. “If she asks you to fight a nurse, you call me first.”
I make a sound that might be a laugh. It feels strange in my chest. Like using a room in a house I thought had burned down.
“I’ll call you before fighting medical staff.”
“Good. I like a man with boundaries.”
“You don’t like men.”
“Exactly.”
For a second, the flat feels warm. Not safe exactly. Safe is a big word.
But warm.
Then my phone buzzes on the table. All three of us look at it. The screen shows a text from an unknown number.
Accounts restored. No conditions. Confirmation attached.
Below it, two screenshots load. Bank logos. Numbers. Transfer access. My name. My hand goes cold.
Lucia puts her mug down with too much care.
“Is that him?”
I don’t answer. Another message arrives.
You can verify directly. No one will stop you.
No apology. No explanation. No Rocco. Just fixed, the way a boss fixes anything—an order goes out, a hand somewhere unfreezes an account, and the problem stops existing. Like he knocked over a glass, wiped the table, and now we’re all meant to admire the shine.
I should be relieved. I am relieved. Money matters. I have a baby inside me and no job and borrowed leggings with a hole near the waistband. Access to funds means appointments. Food.
It’s also insulting that it had to be returned to me like a confiscated toy.
I lock the phone.
“Serena,” Lucia says.
“I’m fine.”
“That has never once meant you were fine.”
“Then I’m whatever comes before fine and after murder.”
“Progress.”
Matteo says nothing. That is the thing about him. He doesn’t rush into my pain like he has a flag to plant there.
Rocco used to know when to be quiet too. Before everything became orders and silence and closed doors. Before I became a woman he could send away.
The clinic is twenty minutes away by taxi and six lifetimes away from my old life. We are standing in the close outside Lucia’s building. It smells like damp stone and someone’s fried breakfast.
“Are you armed?” I ask, because I’m apparently that woman now.
Matteo checks the street before answering. “Yes.”
“Could you not be armed for a baby appointment?”
He looks at me then. Really looks. “If you ask me to leave it, I will.”
The words are right there. Leave it. I should say it.
Normal women go to appointments with handbags and ultrasound photos and husbands who remember which week they’re in.
They don’t negotiate hidden weapons before hearing a heartbeat.
But normal women also aren’t being watched by Rocco Castellano’s men, Rafe D’Amato’s people, and maybe whoever helped make a fake sex tape with their hair and wedding ring.
My life hasn’t been normal since the night Rocco came home late from the docks, kissed blood off his knuckles, and asked if I was afraid of him. Some shipment had gone wrong, some debt collected in person. I said no. I meant it then. That is the embarrassing part.
“Keep it,” I say.
“Okay.”
“But if anyone sees it, I’ll pretend I don’t know you. And if they ask who you are, you’re not my husband.”
Something flickers over his face. Fast. Gone.
“I know.”
I look away first.
The taxi arrives. He opens the door, then steps back. No hand at my elbow. No guiding palm at my lower back.
Rocco always touched me in public. His thumb brushing the inside of my wrist under a table full of men discussing things they didn’t think I understood.
I loved being claimed by him. I didn’t understand that being his and being believed by him weren’t the same thing.
Matteo sits beside me with a full seat between us and places the paper bag on his knees.
“Eat a cracker,” he says.
“Bossy.”
“Hungry pregnant women are frightening.”
I take one. It is the right kind. Plain, salted, not the weird seeded ones that taste like punishment.
I chew and stare out the window as Edinburgh moves past in gray stone and wet glass.
I wonder if Rocco slept. I wonder if he watched the video again. I wonder if he sees me when he looks at it or if he sees what they wanted him to see.
Then I hate myself for wondering.
The baby flutters. Small. Low. Like a fish brushing the inside of a bowl.
I freeze.
Matteo notices immediately.
“Pain?”
I shake my head. My hand goes to my stomach.
There it is again. Barely anything. Everything.
My eyes sting.
“The baby moved.”
Matteo goes still beside me.
“Good,” he says.
His voice is rougher than usual. Not much. Enough.
For one second, I want Rocco so badly I almost make a sound. Not the boss. My husband. The one who put his big hand over my still-flat stomach every night like he could guard a grain of rice from the whole world.
He should be here.
He is not.
Matteo passes me a tissue without looking at me.
“Don’t say anything nice,” I warn.
“I wasn’t going to. Your mascara’s fine.”
“I’m not wearing mascara.”
“Then it’s especially fine.”
I laugh, wet and ugly. The laugh turns into a sob before I can stop it.
Matteo doesn’t touch me. He sits there with his hands on the paper bag and lets me cry for three traffic lights.
It feels like too much.
At the clinic, he handles the desk without making it look like he’s handling anything.
“Appointment for Serena Russo,” he says.
Not Castellano. Russo.
The receptionist asks for ID and hands me a form. Partner. Spouse. Emergency contact. Next of kin.
I used to fill out Rocco’s name without thinking. Rocco Castellano. Husband. The person to call if something goes wrong.
“Friend?” the receptionist asks, nodding at Matteo.
Friend isn’t the right word. Guard isn’t right anymore. Protector sounds like a romance cover.
“Yes,” I say. “Friend.”
Emergency contact: Lucia Russo. Not Rocco. The letters look strange on the page. Like a door closing quietly.
Matteo sits two chairs away because apparently he’s made personal space his religion.
“It’s a chair, Matteo. Not a marriage proposal.”
He sits beside me. Careful. Quiet. The paper bag rests between his boots.
“Serena?” the midwife calls.
My stomach flips. Not from the baby this time. From fear.
I stand. Matteo stands too. Then he stops.
“I’ll be here,” he says.
He’s making this very difficult. Not because he’s doing too much. Because he’s doing the right amount.
That’s the dangerous part.
The midwife is named Asha. She has kind eyes and practical shoes. She asks about my dates, my nausea, my stress levels.
I laugh at that one. “A little more than the brochure recommends.”
She asks about bleeding, pain, eating, sleeping.
“Not really.”
She nods without making a face about it. I appreciate that.
Then she says the words. “Would you like to hear the heartbeat?”
My whole body goes quiet.
“Yes.”
She warms the gel between her hands first. That small kindness nearly finishes me.
I lie back and lift my shirt. My stomach is rounder than it was even a week ago. Proof that my body’s carrying on with the plot while my marriage lies facedown in a ditch.
She presses the doppler low.
Static fills the room. More static.
My heart starts climbing into my throat.
“Sometimes it takes a minute,” she says.
I know that. I still stop breathing.
She moves the probe.
A whoosh.
Then there. Fast. Strong. Galloping.
The baby’s heartbeat fills the room.
I make a sound I don’t recognize. Too small to be a sob and too broken to be anything else.
“There we are,” Asha smiles.
A sound no louder than a trapped bird. It holds my whole life up anyway.
I turn my head to the side. The place a husband would stand. Muscle memory older than the anger.
The chair is empty.
“Heartbeat sounds good. Strong and regular.”
I want Rocco.