11. Serena
SERENA
Rocco knocks like a man trying not to break the door. That’s my first thought.
Not the obvious ones. My husband is here. I miss him. Oh good, the crime lord has arrived at my sister’s flat and this’ll be totally normal for everyone involved.
My first thought is about the knock.
Three hard raps. A pause. One more, softer.
Like the old Rocco got his hand to the wood first, and the new one grabbed his wrist before he could make it worse.
Lucia freezes in the kitchen with a spoon in one hand and a jar of instant coffee in the other. Instant coffee. Because apparently rock bottom has a beverage program.
Matteo is already moving. On the sofa bed one second and at the door the next. Just his hand near the gun I know he has under the back of his shirt.
“Don’t open it,” Lucia whispers.
The knock comes again.
“Serena.”
One word. My name. Rocco’s voice.
My body reacts like an idiot. My stomach dips. My pulse trips. Heat moves over my skin before I can tell it not to.
Traitor body. Married body, apparently, because it hasn’t received the paperwork from my brain.
Matteo looks at me. Not Lucia. Me.
“Do you want him gone?”
Simple question. Not, should I handle him? Not, let me decide. Do you want him gone?
I should say yes. That would be clean. Strong. Good for my blood pressure, probably.
But Rocco is on the other side of the door.
Rocco, who didn’t answer when I called. Rocco, who sent me away with guards and cold money. Rocco, who missed the heartbeat today.
My hand goes to my stomach. The baby is quiet now, as if even the baby knows we have reached the dramatic hallway portion of the program.
“No,” I say.
Lucia makes a wounded noise. “Serena.”
“I didn’t say let him in.”
Matteo unlocks the door but leaves the chain on. The gap opens two inches.
And there he is.
My husband fills the narrow strip of hallway like he was built too large for ordinary buildings. He belongs in dark cars and private rooms and expensive suits that make other men remember appointments elsewhere.
Here, under the weak yellow hallway light with damp on his shoulders and a bruise going yellow along one knuckle—someone, somewhere, having a worse week than me—he looks wrong.
He also looks wrecked. Not tired. Wrecked.
His hair is damp from rain. There are shadows under his eyes I can see even through the gap.
He looks like a man who hasn’t slept and knows he deserves worse.
Good. Mean thought. True thought.
Rocco’s eyes find me. Everything in him goes still.
It used to make me feel chosen. Now it makes me want to step behind Lucia’s terrible curtains and live there.
“Serena,” he says.
My name sounds different this time. Like it can cut him.
I fold my arms. Not easy with the baby bump and Lucia’s borrowed sweater, but I manage.
“Why are you here?”
Rocco looks at the chain. Then at Matteo. Then back at me.
“To see you.”
“No.”
His face tightens. “No?”
“That’s not an answer. That’s something men say when they don’t want to admit the real reason is messier.”
Lucia murmurs, “Correct.”
Rocco’s attention cuts toward her. She lifts the coffee jar like she might throw it.
My sister’s five foot four in a cardigan with a sheep on it. Rocco’s six foot three and has probably made grown men cry by breathing near them. I still put my money on Lucia.
“I came alone,” he says.
Matteo’s mouth doesn’t move, but something in his face says he’s already checked.
“That’s the minimum,” I say.
Rocco nods once. No argument.
That annoys me. I was ready for the argument. I had lines.
“May I come in?” Rocco asks.
Lucia laughs. Not nicely. “Absolutely not.”
Rocco doesn’t look away from me. He waits.
The waiting is worse than a demand.
The old Rocco would already be inside. Not because he’d hurt me. He’d have called it securing the room. Clearing the risk. Two men on the stairwell, one on the street, the whole apparatus that follows a boss everywhere. Protecting his wife.
Then I’d have been standing in my sister’s flat surrounded by his choices again.
But he’s standing in the hallway. Asking.
I resent how much it matters.
“Chain stays on,” I say.
Rocco’s eyes close for a beat. Relief, maybe. Pain, definitely.
Matteo doesn’t remove the chain. Rocco accepts it.
The hallway smells like rain, old carpet, and someone’s curry from downstairs. Exactly the setting every girl dreams of when imagining the first time her estranged mafia husband comes to maybe apologize after exiling her while pregnant.
“Say it,” I tell him.
Rocco’s hands hang at his sides. Empty. No phone. No weapon. No men behind him. Just him.
Still dangerous. But stripped down in a way I’ve never seen.
“I have doubts about the tape,” he says.
For one second, nobody speaks.
Then I laugh. Sharp and ugly. A laugh like something broke and made the wrong sound.
Rocco flinches. Good.
“Doubts,” I say.
His throat moves. “Yes.”
“How lucky for me.”
“Serena—”
“No, really. How wonderful. My husband has doubts. Should I get the good mugs, Lucia?”
“We don’t have good mugs,” Lucia says.
“Exactly.”
Rocco’s eyes are on my face. Not my stomach. Not Matteo. Me.
“I was wrong,” he says.
The words hit harder than I expect.
Some animal part of me lunges at them. Wants the chain off. Wants to believe him so badly my hands ache with it.
I lock my knees.
They should feel good. They do not. They’re too small for what they have to carry.
Rocco didn’t just get something wrong. He looked at a video with no clear face and let it become louder than me.
And doubts are cheap. Certainty is what put me on the plane.
“About what?” I ask.
He goes still. “Serena.”
“No. About what?”
Rocco’s jaw works once. “About the footage.”
“Try again.”
His hand flexes at his side. Not anger at me. This is turned inward, and I hate that I know that too.
“About believing it before I believed you.”
My chest tightens. Closer. Not close enough.
“You didn’t believe it before you believed me,” I say. “That makes it sound like you had two things in your hands and picked one too fast.”
His face goes pale.
“You believed it instead of me.”
The words hang there. Nobody saves him. Definitely not me.
Rocco bows his head once. On him, it looks like a building cracking.
“Yes,” he says.
My eyes burn. I’m furious about that. I’ve cried enough. At this point, my tear ducts need a union and a week off.
“What changed?” I ask.
“I looked properly.”
The laugh comes again, smaller. Meaner. “And before, what, you were looking decoratively?”
Lucia whispers, “Nice.”
Rocco takes the hit.
“Before, I was angry.”
“I noticed.”
“And hurt.”
“Yes, Rocco, I imagine seeing a fake video of your wife was very upsetting for you.”
He closes his eyes.
I should stop. Maybe. But I’ve been good for days. Careful with my body and calm with strangers and brave in clinic bathrooms and polite to bank employees who told me my husband froze my money for security concerns. I’m allowed to be a little vicious in a hallway.
“Did you find proof?” I ask.
His eyes open. “Not enough.”
My heart drops. I hate that some part of me was waiting for him to say yes. Waiting for the magic sentence that would make the last week something we could put in a drawer labeled nightmare and never open again.
Of course.
“Then what are you doing here?”
“I needed to tell you I have doubts.”
“Your doubts do not help me sleep. They do not give me back the phone call you ignored.”
His mouth tightens. I see that one land.
I’m so tired of wanting him to hurt and hating it when he does.
“They do not put you in the room today,” I say.
Rocco’s eyes drop to my stomach. Just once.
“Was the baby all right?”
My hand covers the scan envelope tucked into the side pocket of Lucia’s cardigan. I put it there because I didn’t want it on the coffee table when Rocco arrived. Which means some part of me knew he’d come.
“Yes,” I say.
His shoulders fall half an inch. It still hurts to see.
“Good,” he says. His voice cracks on the edge of it.
Rocco Castellano doesn’t fall apart in hallways. Apparently he only makes wives do that.
“I heard the heartbeat,” I say.
I don’t know why. Maybe to punish him. Maybe because I want him to know our child is real outside of his fear and his footage.
Rocco goes utterly still.
Oh. That hurt him. It shouldn’t make my throat close.
“Strong and regular,” I add.
His hand lifts a little, like he’s going to reach for the door. He stops before he touches it.
“Serena.”
So much pain in it I nearly step closer. Nearly.
Matteo shifts in the flat. Just enough that Rocco’s eyes flick to him.
The room changes. Not because Matteo does anything wrong. Because Rocco sees him. Really sees him. Barefoot in my sister’s tiny kitchen. One hand still near his weapon. The man who got me to the appointment and waited outside until I asked him in.
Matteo’s here. Rocco’s in the hallway. That’s a full sentence.
Something goes rigid in him. Old danger moves through him. Quick. Dark. Familiar. My body, being an absolute embarrassment, remembers that danger in other rooms. No. We’re not doing that. My libido has terrible timing and no ethics.
Rocco looks back at me before the old danger can become anything else. He swallows it. I watch him swallow it.
“Matteo,” Rocco says.
Matteo says nothing.
Rocco’s mouth twists. Pain trying to be civilized. “You kept her safe.”
Matteo’s voice is flat. “She kept herself alive. I helped with doors.”
Rocco’s eyes move to Lucia. “I’m sorry I brought this to your door.”
Lucia stares at him. Then she says, “You didn’t bring it. You mailed it first class and then acted surprised when it got here.”
Rocco nods. Again, no argument. He is taking everything.
It should feel powerful. It mostly feels awful.
“I won’t force you back,” he says.
My stomach tightens. “I know.”
His brows pull together. “You do?”
“You told your men not to touch me.”
His face changes. Not anger. Shame.
“Yes.”
“That was very evolved of you.”
“It was late.”
That stops me. “Yes,” I say. “It was.”
Rain taps against the stairwell window behind him. Somewhere below, a door slams and a woman laughs. Life, rudely continuing while mine holds its breath.