22. Rocco #2
Serena narrows her eyes but lets it go.
“Who else?” I ask.
Serena thinks. Really thinks. Not like a woman accepting my plan. Like a woman making hers.
“No men who were there the day I was taken from the house.”
My stomach drops. “Done.”
“Even if they were just following orders.”
“Especially then.”
She hears it.
“No guard takes me anywhere because you told him to,” she says.
“It’s in the papers.”
“I want it in their mouths.”
I nod. “You’ll hear them say it.”
Her fingers tighten on the yellow sock. “I want Lucia to approve the flat plan.”
Lucia’s eyebrows lift. “I accept this burden.”
“You were going to anyway,” Serena says.
“Correct.”
“And Matteo,” Serena adds quietly.
Not a surprise. Still, it hits.
I look at Matteo. Bruised. Tired. Too good at standing in my failures.
“Yes,” I say.
“You mean that?”
“No.” Her face tightens. “I hate it,” I say. “But I’ll do it.”
Matteo’s jaw flexes. Serena waits. There is more and she knows it.
“I hate that he knows what scares you now,” I say. “I hate that you ask him with your eyes before you ask me. I hate that he gets to stand in a room and have opinions about your safety because I made myself unsafe first.”
My voice is low. Rough. Not angry at her. Never again if I can help it.
“But the part that matters is this. He kept you alive. You trust him. He knows things I don’t. So he’s looped in.”
Serena presses her lips together. She looks like she might cry again.
“Okay,” she whispers.
Matteo says nothing. Lucia says, “Good. I’ll make tea.”
There’s a strange power in Lucia making tea while a mafia security plan forms around my unborn child. British, possibly.
We spend the next hour building the plan Serena can live with. Not the plan I want. The one she chooses.
Two approved guards inside the building, never inside the flat unless invited.
Exterior cameras only on the front entrance, alley gate, and roof access, with Serena and Lucia having the live feed.
No bedroom monitoring. No hallway listening.
No tracker on her phone. No tracker in her bag.
No tracker in her prenatal vitamin bottle, which Lucia mentions because she “knows men with resources and no imagination.”
I don’t admit I briefly thought of the vitamin bottle. Instead, I write it down under forbidden placements.
Serena sees. Her eyebrow rises. “You thought about the vitamins.”
“For half a second.”
Lucia makes a sound of disgust. Matteo says, “Amateur.”
We both almost smile. It’s horrible. Progress often is.
We mark three routes to the hospital Serena actually wants, which is neither Hampstead nor St. Agnes nor Edinburgh Royal. She picks a quieter maternity wing recommended by her doctor, farther from our usual patterns, with a backup plan if labor begins fast.
I hate that it’s smaller. I hate that I can’t own every door. I hate the phrase if labor begins fast because my brain immediately offers six disasters and a seventh with weather.
I write down the plan anyway.
“No convoy,” Serena says.
“Two cars.”
“Rocco.”
“One primary. One shadow car at distance.”
“Define distance.”
“Far enough you don’t see it unless you want to.”
“Close enough to help?”
“Yes.”
Matteo says, “Depends on the route.”
I turn to him. “Then pick the route.”
His eyebrows lift. So do Serena’s. Even Lucia pauses with the teapot.
“What?” I ask.
Lucia says, “Nothing. Just enjoying the sight of a Castellano man passing a wrench instead of hitting someone with it.”
Serena laughs. A real one. Small, but real. It goes through me so fast I almost have to look away.
Matteo studies the route map on Lucia’s small table and points with his good hand. “This one has too many choke points.”
“I know.”
“Then why mark it?”
“Because the roads are wider for medical transfer.”
“Wider roads mean easier pursuit.”
“Narrow roads mean easier blockade.”
His eyes lift to mine. The edge. Not yet a fight. But the shape of one.
“Alternate two?” I ask.
Matteo looks back at the map. “Better. More turns. Less obvious from main approach. But if she’s in hard labor, it’s slower.”
Hearing him say hard labor does something vicious to my chest. He’s thought about my wife in labor. In pain. Afraid. How to get her safely to a hospital while I was busy believing lies.
The jealousy that moves through me is so sharp I have to put my pen down. If I hold it, I might snap it.
“Alternate two,” I say, voice even. “With a medical kit in the car and Miriam trained on the route.”
Matteo nods. “Yes.”
It’s good. I hate it. Both can live in the room. Apparently.
When the plan is done, Serena looks tired enough to scare me. Not medically. I know the difference now. This is emotional exhaustion. Too many decisions. Too many men.
“Do you want to rest?” I ask.
She relaxes by one inch. One inch is plenty. “Yes.”
“I’ll go downstairs with Matteo and finalize the route.”
Matteo looks at me. Serena looks between us. “Do I need to worry?” she asks.
The honest answer is probably. I give the useful answer. “No.”
Matteo says, “No.”
Lucia says, “I’ll count the knives before and after.”
Serena points at all of us. “No bleeding.”
“Already failed,” Lucia says.
“New bleeding.”
I stand. My side pulls. I ignore it.
“Text me the final plan,” she says.
“I will.”
“Not as a polished PDF with dramatic Castellano branding.”
I pause. She stares at me. “Rocco.”
“I’ll send plain text.”
Lucia mutters, “He absolutely had a letterhead thought.”
I did. Obviously. I leave before they can see my face.
Matteo follows me down the narrow stairs. He moves slower than he wants to. I move slower than I want to. Between us, we make one functional man and one bad decision.
Miriam is in the stairwell with her arms folded, Enzo standing three feet away holding two untouched cups of tea like a man awaiting sentencing.
“No sugar,” Enzo says quickly.
Miriam eyes him. “I’ll decide that.”
“No one enters the flat unless Serena or Lucia invites you,” I tell them.
“Yes, boss,” Enzo says.
“Not boss,” I say. He blinks. “When it comes to the flat, Serena is the authority. Lucia if Serena’s resting. You take orders from them unless there’s an immediate life threat.”
Enzo’s face does a small, complicated thing. He’s one of the men who wasn’t there the day I sent Serena away, but he knows the story now. Everyone knows. That’s the point.
“Yes,” he says.
“Say it to her later.”
“I will.”
Miriam nods once, approving. High praise.
I continue down into the small rear courtyard behind the building. It’s damp from earlier rain, the brick walls dark, the air smelling like wet stone. A black metal table sits under a striped awning. One potted rosemary plant, half alive.
Matteo closes the door behind us. We stand there for a second without speaking. There are a lot of ways this conversation can go wrong. Most of them involve my fist.
So I put both hands flat on the back of the metal chair. Insurance.
Matteo notices. “Good idea,” he says.
“Don’t make me regret it.”
“I’m not suicidal.”
“You just discharged yourself with bruised ribs to visit my wife.”