23. Serena
SERENA
The weeks after the council have a strange, heavy calm to them.
Rocco handling things two streets over—docks, tribute, a rival capo who won’t stop pushing at the edges of what’s ours.
Papers signed. Guards I chose learning how I take my tea.
Somewhere in that calm I slid into eight months, close enough to the end that Lucia has started pricing prams and I’ve started losing arguments with my own feet.
Then Rafe knows the hospital.
That’s the sentence everyone tries not to say for six full minutes. Which is ridiculous, because I’m right there. Pregnant. Not deaf.
Rocco tells me himself. He comes back into Lucia’s guest room with his face locked down, Matteo behind him looking like he’d rather be stabbed again, and Lucia carrying tea nobody asked for because apparently British women handle targeted mafia threats with mugs.
“Tell me,” I say.
Rocco sits in the chair by the bed. Not on the bed. Not touching me. I notice things like that now. Where he puts his body. Whether he treats my fear like a door he can walk through.
He does not.
“Rafe sent a package.”
“What kind of package?”
Rocco’s jaw moves once. “A hospital bracelet and a photo.”
The room gets smaller. Lucia sets the tea down too hard on the dresser.
I look at Rocco because if I look at anyone else I may crack. “A photo of what?”
“The maternity wing you chose.”
It still hits like a hand closing around my ribs.
Rocco’s hands flex on his knees. He wants to come to me. Every part of him wants to cross the room, put his hands on me, tell me nothing will touch us.
This Rocco stays in the chair.
“Is the hospital compromised?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “Watched. Not compromised as far as we know.”
“As far as we know isn’t my favorite phrase.”
“Mine either.”
“What did you do?”
“Lewis has the package contained. Miriam checked the building again. No one comes inside the flat. We changed the hospital plan.”
My stomach tightens. “You changed it?”
“No. Bad wording. We drafted options. Nothing changes unless you approve it.”
I stare at him. “Okay,” I say.
It softens something in his face.
Matteo clears his throat. “The hospital you chose is too exposed now.”
I know that. I hate that Rafe took one more thing and made it unsafe before I even got to use it. A place to give birth. He made it a message. Men like Rafe ruin even beige things.
“So where?” I ask.
Lucia crosses her arms. “Somewhere they haven’t already photographed like tourists from hell.”
“Helpful.”
“I’m here for moral support and snacks. Strategy is the men’s punishment.”
The fear loosens enough for air. Then the baby moves. One firm roll under my palm.
My eyes burn.
Rocco sees my face change. “Baby?”
I nod.
Want crosses his face. Not sexual. The want to touch. To be part of this.
I make him ask.
“Can I?”
“Yes,” I say, because we’re using words now like emotionally functional adults.
Rocco comes to the bed and sits on the edge, careful not to crowd. His hand hovers until I take it and put it over the spot where the baby just rolled. Then there’s a small thump.
I look away before it takes me under. Because seeing him feel the baby is dangerous. Not dangerous like Rafe. Worse. Dangerous like hope.
“Hi,” Rocco whispers.
He said that before. In this same flat. On his knees. My body remembers everything. It’s very inconvenient.
Matteo shifts near the doorway. His face is calm. Too calm. He’s doing that thing where he makes himself smaller so I don’t have to feel guilty about him. It doesn’t work.
“You should rest,” he says.
“Everyone keeps saying that like rest is available in stores.”
The baby is currently the size of a small melon, out of room, and fully committed to a career in bladder attacks.
“You said there were options,” I say.
Rocco straightens. Business, then. Safe ground. He removes his hand from my stomach even though I didn’t ask him to. That matters too.
He reaches for a folder on the chair. Of course there’s a folder. Rocco Castellano loves a folder.
I’m still angry. Just apparently also horny.
Rocco lays out three sheets on the blanket. Plain paper. No letterhead.
“You remembered.”
“I’m capable of learning.”
The sheets show three possible birth plans.
Plan A: a private midwife-led unit. Plan B: a hospital two towns over with a consultant already briefed under a neutral name.
Plan C: emergency transfer to the nearest NHS ward if labor moves too fast. Each with my approved guards, where they’d be and where they wouldn’t.
There are notes in the margins. No internal room surveillance. No guard in delivery room unless Serena asks. Matteo included on emergency route, if medically cleared.
I read that last one twice.
Rocco notices. “He knows the routes,” he says.
Matteo says, “I can sit in a car with bruised ribs. Heroic, I know.”
Lucia says, “You can sit in a car after a doctor clears you or I’ll staple you to a bed.”
“What do you hate?” Rocco asks.
“About the plan?”
“Yes.”
Not what do you like. Not are you impressed. What do you hate. The question is so useful I almost resent him for it.
“I hate the neutral name.”
He nods. “Why?”
“Because I’ve had enough of pretending I’m not me.”
Something in his face stills. “Gone.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“Won’t that make me easier to find?”
“Maybe.”
“Rocco.”
“I can solve for harder to find in other ways. I don’t need to take your name to do it.”
Oh. That one goes through me. Deep. Quiet. Rude. I look back at the paper because his face is becoming a problem.
“I hate that all of this exists.”
Rocco is quiet for a second. “Me too.”
“No. Not in the same way.”
“No,” he says. “Not in the same way.”
I mark a few changes with a pen Lucia hands me. Purple ink. Of course. No neutral name. Miriam in primary car. Lucia has final say if I can’t speak and there isn’t time for medical paperwork. Rocco second.
I pause after writing that. Rocco second. Not first.
“Okay,” he says. Just okay. No flinch. No argument.
It makes my chest ache.
“You’re not upset?”
“I am. But Lucia didn’t send you away pregnant.”
Lucia makes a small sound. I can’t look at her or I’ll cry.
“You can be third,” she says. “That wasn’t kindness. I simply refuse to deal with your face if I’m trying to make medical decisions.”
Matteo says, “Can I be fourth?”
“You can be in the waiting room drinking supervised soup.”
I laugh. The laugh breaks something tight in the room. Not the danger. But one thread of it.
Then Matteo’s phone vibrates. He checks it, frowns, and looks at Rocco. “Miriam wants me downstairs. Delivery access question.”
Lucia says, “If someone sent another creepy bracelet, I’m biting people.”
Matteo shakes his head. “Supply delivery. Actual groceries. Miriam’s suspicious of aubergines.”
“Do you want me to stay?” Rocco asks.
Do you want. Not I should. Not I need. Want. My whole body answers before my pride can find shoes.
Yes. I want his mouth on me. I want to stop thinking about hospital bracelets and Rafe. I want this husband. The one who asks. The one who stops. The one who looks like giving me control is cutting him open and does it anyway.
“Stay,” I say.
Rocco’s eyes sharpen.
Matteo’s gaze flicks between us once. He knows. Of course he knows.
“I’ll be downstairs,” he says. His voice is even. Too even. I hate the hurt under it.
“Matteo.”
He looks at me.
So I say the only true thing that fits. “Be careful.”
His mouth softens. “Always.”
Liar.
He walks out with Lucia, who says she’s going to supervise the aubergine situation because “men panic around vegetables and packages.”
The bedroom door closes. Rocco and I are alone. Not completely. There are guards. Lucia downstairs. But the room is ours.
Rocco stays in the chair. My husband has become very attached to that chair. Possibly because it keeps him from climbing me.
“Serena,” he says.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Say my name like you’re trying to be good.”
His throat moves. “I am trying to be good.”
“I see that.”
“Is that bad?”
“Right now? A little.”
The air changes. Fast. Sharp.
Rocco’s hands close on the arms of the chair. “Tell me what you want.”
I say, “Lock the door.”
He stands. Then stops. “Are you sure?”
I point at him. “I swear to God, Rocco.”
“That’s not yes.”
“Yes,” I say. “Lock the door.”
He locks it. The click is soft. My pulse is not.
He turns back. “Lucia will kill me.”
“Probably.”
“Worth it.”
“You’re learning.”
He crosses the room slowly, giving me time he thinks I still want. I don’t need time. I need him.
He stops beside the bed. I reach for him. He catches my hand and kisses my palm. Soft. Too soft. My body clenches anyway.
“I want to touch you,” he says.
My voice comes out thin. “Then touch me.”
“How?”
He’s not teasing. He’s giving me the controls and waiting until I take them.
“Your mouth,” I say.
His eyes go to my thighs. “Yes.”
He lowers himself to his knees beside the bed. This is for me. It should feel like too much. It does. I want it anyway.
He slides his hands under the blanket and pauses at my knees. “Still okay?”
“Yes.”
He lifts the blanket away and exposes my bare legs, my soft old sleep shorts, the body that doesn’t feel like mine some days and feels too much like mine on others.
His expression changes. Not pity. Want. Real want. Hungry and restrained.
“Don’t look at me like I’m breakable,” I whisper.
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
He kisses the inside of my knee. “I’m looking at you like I want to put my mouth on you and I’m trying not to scare you.”
“I’m not scared.”
“No?”
“I’m mad.”
He kisses higher. “At me?”
“Yes.”
Another kiss. “Good.”
His hands slide up my thighs. Slow. Warm. “Tell me if you want difficult.”
My skin goes hot. “I want honest.”
“Then I want to taste you until you forget there’s anyone outside this room.”
My breath breaks. “That was very honest.”
“I’m practicing.”
“Practice lower.”