Chapter 13 Twenty-Four Hours
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS
Caitríona
Sometime after midnight, I wake to the sound of the door opening beyond the crashing waves. Soft. Careful. Like a thief.
The room is dark, the air thick, and Matteo is standing there with his shirt half off and blood blooming down his side. For one terrible second my brain refuses to make sense of it. This is Sicily. This is summer. This is us. Blood doesn’t belong in this room.
“Matteo?” My voice snaps on like a light. He flinches.
“I’m fine,” he says immediately, too quick.
He is not fine. He is swaying. There’s a cut across his ribs, a smear of red at his hip, and his hands look wrecked like he fell on gravel.
“What happened?” I’m already out of bed. Already at him. My heart is a fist in my throat.
“Nothing. Just some low-life trash trying to steal my wallet. They didn’t expect me to fight back.”
It’s a stupid lie that doesn’t fit the way his eyes won’t meet mine. I swallow it anyway because I don’t know what else to do. Two weeks ago, my whole life split open with one tiny strip of paper.
Pregnant.
He promised me everything was fine, that we’d figure it out and I believed him.
I clean him with shaking hands, and I try not to cry because crying feels like admitting I can lose him. He watches me the whole time, silent, too quiet and too tense.
When I kiss the cut like luck is something you can bargain for, his jaw ticks, and he closes his eyes like it hurts.
“I’m okay,” he repeats, but it sounds like he’s trying to convince himself.
When I finish, I climb back into bed and pull him close, forcing his hand to my stomach. He lets me. For a while, I think we’re okay.
Then I wake again at dawn.
Matteo is at the window, sitting on the edge of a chair like he’s afraid the bed will swallow him. The sea outside is silver, and the sun is barely up.
His shoulders are rigid, and his gaze is fixed on nothing. It’s like he’s listening for footsteps that aren’t there.
“Hey.” My voice is soft. I slide to the edge of the bed and reach for him, touching his arm.
He flinches again. Then he turns his face toward me, and it’s like looking at a stranger wearing his features. His eyes are too dark. His mouth is too hard.
“What are you thinking?” I whisper, and my fingers slide up his forearm to his wrist, to the place where his pulse is racing like it’s running from something.
He stares at me like the words are a trap. Then he looks away. “I can’t,” he mutters.
It doesn’t even register at first. It’s too vague. Too absurd.
“What?” I sit up, the sheet sliding down my chest. “You can’t what?”
His throat moves. He swallows, and I watch the muscle work like he’s forcing something down. “I’m not ready to be a father.”
The words hit me wrong, like they were said in the wrong room, in the wrong story.
I blink at him. Then I laugh once, breathless and sharp, because my brain refuses to believe him. “You’re just scared,” I whisper. “It’s okay. We’re both scared. We don’t have to decide everything right now.”
He shakes his head. Not frantic. Final.
“I’m not deciding.” His voice is flat. “I’m telling you I can’t do this.”
My skin goes cold, all the air siphoning from my lungs. “Can’t,” I rasp out, tasting the word. “Or won’t?”
His eyes flick to mine, and there’s something in them that looks like pity. Like I’m already the one left behind. “Either.”
The room tilts. I press my palm to my chest, a stupid reflex, like I can physically hold my heart to keep it from shattering.
“Is there someone else?” The question scrapes out of me because it has to be that. It has to be something.
“No.” He doesn’t even hesitate. “It’s me, Cat. It’s… my life.”
“What life?” My laugh breaks in half. I sit up straighter, rage rushing in because it’s the only thing that keeps me from falling apart.
“You work at the marina and steal lemons from old ladies. You fix scooters, make coffee and flirt with tourists and talk about going back to Manhattan one day. What life is too big for this?”
I grab his hand and press it to my stomach hard enough to make him inhale sharply. I want him to feel the truth he’s trying to abandon. “For us?” My voice cracks on the word like it’s glass.
He freezes. His fingers curl instinctively, protective, like his body still knows what his mouth is denying. For a second, I think I’ve got him. Then he rips his hand away like it burned him. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.
I stare at him. Just stare at the bruise blooming on his ribs where I cleaned him hours ago. Then I stare at his hands, raw and scraped. Something happened. Something he won’t tell me. And now, he’s hiding behind that cowardly sentence.
“You asked me to trust you… You said we’d figure it out.”
“I was wrong.”
Wrong. Like I’m a bad guess. Like our baby is a mistake on a page he can cross out.
My throat burns. I nod once because nodding is easier than screaming. I slide out of bed and dress with my hands shaking so hard I can barely get my sandals on. My keys sit on the table. I snatch them up, more for something to hold than because I’m leaving. I don’t even know where I would go.
I turn back and he’s watching me like he already doesn’t deserve to look.
“Say it,” I demand, voice rising. “Say whatever the hell this is. Because you don’t get to just… to just drop this on me and stare at the ocean like it’s the one breaking my heart.”
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t explain. Doesn’t fight for me. He just stands there with that wounded expression like he’s the victim.
And something in me detonates.
“Are you kidding me?” I choke out. “You come in here last night bleeding, you let me patch you up, you let me kiss you like I can fix it, and then you wake up and decide you’re done?”
His jaw tightens. Still no explanation. Still no truth.
My eyes sting. I blink hard, furious at myself for even threatening to cry in front of him. “When you leave,” I hiss, and I can hear myself going sharp and vicious like a blade, “don’t come back.”
He flinches again. Good.
“Don’t you dare come back, Matteo.”
He takes a step toward me and for one stupid second, my body leans into him, instinctive, desperate, and traitorous.
Then he does the thing that makes me want to burn the whole island down. He kisses the top of my head. It’s a soft, gentle kiss. A goodbye kiss.
My hands curl into fists at my sides. I don’t shove him because I’m afraid if I touch him, I’ll beg. And I will not beg.
He brushes past me, and I smell him, the familiar mix of sun and salt and coffee. It makes me sick.
I spin toward him unable to control myself. “That’s it?” My voice breaks. “That’s all you have? I can’t? I’m sorry? After everything you said?”
He pauses at the door, but he doesn’t turn around.
He doesn’t look at my stomach.
“I’m doing what I have to.”
And then he leaves. The click of the door is the loudest sound I’ve ever heard. For a moment, I just stand there, keys clenched in my fist so hard the metal bites into my skin.
My mind races, trying to make sense of it. Trying to find the mistake, the trigger, the moment I missed.
Was it the baby?
Was it me?
It doesn’t matter. Whatever it was, he still chose to walk out on me. On us.
The burner vibrates like a hornet in the hollow of the couch, drawing me from the dark thoughts of the past. I let it buzz. Then buzz again and again. Da’s number flashes across the cracked screen, each time sending more guilt lancing through my chest. But I don’t answer.
Because I already know what he’s going to say.
And the memories are too raw, too real right now. I heave in a breath and shove them down. Hard.
Another missed call.
I know exactly why Da is calling. He’ll ask why I’m taking my time.
He will tell me I’ve humiliated him. He’ll tell me what everyone else in the business will tell me if I don’t move fast enough: that hesitation is a luxury I can’t afford.
That if I don’t finish it, someone else will finish it for me.
He’ll name Donal as my replacement with a clipped finality that makes the hair at the back of my neck stand up.
I pace the tiny living room like an animal on a short chain, boots scuffing the floor.
The cheap curtains do nothing to mute the city, a taxi horn, somewhere distant, a dog barking.
The whole city is loud and alive, and I am an intruder in my own silence.
I drop down on the couch to force myself to stop the incessant circling, but my hands fidget with the edge of the armrest instead.
My thumb rubs the outline of the locket against my chest without thinking.
The phone keeps ringing. I let it. I let it because if I answer I will hear Da and once his words spool out, I will be one more thread pulled too taut until I snap.
If I answer, I will lie. If I answer, I will say what he wants: I’m close.
I’ll finish it. Don’t worry. And the lie will live for another hour and then another call will come, and it’ll begin all over.
I stand again because I just can’t keep still and press my forehead to the cool glass of the window, letting the city hum blur the panic into something manageable.
I should be making a plan. I should be lining up scopes and exits, counting angles.
Instead, I think of Matteo’s face when the ladder broke, the way he hit the pavement like something alive and fragile.
And I taste salt water, and for an instant I’m eighteen on the jetty and not an assassin with an order above her name.
More than an order, it’s my duty as Eoin’s fiancée.
I should want revenge… But I feel nothing.
This directive from Quinlan is just another cage.
The incessant buzzing finally stops. I let out a breath I didn’t remember holding. And for a minute, I can breathe again.