Chapter 23
WHEN I RAN
Matteo
A trickle of sweat snakes down my spine as I stand pressed against the brick wall of a narrow alley off Amsterdam. My heart pounds an erratic beat while I count down the seconds for Cat to appear around the corner.
Two minutes since I left her. Ninety seconds since the sirens swarmed the block behind us. Forty since I lost sight of her hood.
My phone buzzes again in my pocket. I don’t need to yank it out to know who it is. Ale’s been calling nonstop. And I’ve been ignoring each text message, voicemail, even email.
What the fuck are you doing, coglione? Papà’s voice echoes in a furious chorus, bouncing across my skull.
I’m going against everything I’ve ever been taught.
Family before all else. Then Cat storms back into my life waving a gun at my face with a mouth that still tastes like nineteen on my tongue, and it all goes straight to hell.
Never in my life have I felt so torn up about a decision—no, that’s not true.
That day in Sicily, when I ran out on her…
We sleep on the beach because the air is too hot for walls. Every morning tastes like salt and oranges. She rolls toward me with sand in her hair and a future in her eyes, and for a breath I pray the world will forgive my family’s sins one more time.
Last night someone tried to kill me.
It happens fast: a narrow street, the Vespa coughing under me, a car door opening where it shouldn’t.
Two men. One with a nasty smile, the other with messages carved into his hands.
“Your father sends greetings,” he sneers.
Lie. It’s my father’s enemies reminding me that it doesn’t matter how far I run. ..
I fight because that’s what we do. I bleed because I’m nineteen and stupid and think old men’s wars can’t touch me if I keep to the edges.
A knife slices across my ribs, pavement scrapes at my palms, and I see my name in tomorrow’s paper.
But I’m fast and I don’t want to die today. So I run and somehow, I live.
Past midnight I stumble into her room with blood on my shirt and apologies on my tongue. Cat’s hands shake while she cleans me. She kisses the cut like I’m a precious thing to her.
“What happened?” Her eyes are filled with worry.
“Nothing,” I lie. “Just some low life trash trying to steal my wallet. They didn’t expect me to fight back.”
She nods, snagging her lower lip between her teeth. For some reason, I don’t think she buys it.
Once I’m all patched up, I curl into her side and press my hand to her belly. She’s pregnant. We’ve known for all of two weeks now and in that time, everything has changed.
Silence. Then I see it for an instant. The crooked house with a lemon tree we can’t keep alive. Her laugh in a kitchen that belongs to no one but us. A baby with her mouth and my temper. A life where bullets aren’t invited.
Then the cold breath of the night sits against my ribs again. Reality stands up in the corner.
I don’t sleep. I sit at the window and watch dawn turn the sea silver. I replay how those men found me and how easily they’d find us. You don’t build a crib in a room that doubles as a target.
She wakes and touches my face like she’s already forgiven me for the quiet.
“What are you thinking?” she whispers.
That I can’t keep you safe.
That I don’t deserve any of this.
That I’m my father’s son, the Gemini heir, no matter how far I run.
I lie instead.
“I can’t,” I mutter and feel the first crack spider through my chest. “I’m not ready to be a father.”
Her expression holds, then shifts. “We don’t have to decide everything right now.”
“I’m not deciding,” I force out. “I’m telling you. I can’t do this.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Either.” It’s worse than swallowing glass. “Both.”
She sits up, the sheet falling. Her palm rests below her collarbone, as if she’s trying to keep her heart from breaking. “Is there someone else?”
“No.” That part is true. “It’s me, Cat. It’s…my life.”
“What life?” Her laugh breaks. “You work at the marina and steal lemons from old ladies. You make coffee and fix scooters and talk about going back to Manhattan one day. What life is too big for this?” She presses my hand to her stomach, and my bones go soft. “For us?”
I lock the truth behind my teeth. Because I’m a coward or an asshole, maybe both.
I can’t tell her about the men that showed up in the dark saying my father’s name or that ‘us’ is a map to hurt her.
I tell myself I’m loving her by choosing the version of me without a gun.
I tell myself walking away will save her, save them.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, each word gutting me.
She looks at me like I became a stranger while she slept. “You asked me to trust you,” she murmurs. “You said we’d figure it out.”
“I was wrong.”
She nods once. The sharp movement is the kind you use to remember how to breathe. She dresses without looking at me. Sandals. Keys. Then comes the fury.
“When you leave,” she hisses, throwing the keys at me, “don’t come back.” Her eyes shine like something inside just burned clean. “Don’t you dare come back, Matteo.”
I stand and steal a kiss to the top of her head one last time when she passes close enough. I taste salt and walk out into the Sicilian sun feeling like I left a rib behind.
I tell myself I saved her. I tell myself the child will never know the life I spared them. I tell myself fairy tales while I book a flight and re-wrap the bandage around my side.
For that one summer, we were children building castles on a beach, pretending the tide isn’t scheduled.
Walking away from her is the worst thing I do. Living with it is a close second.
A whistle snaps me back. Then footsteps. A hood slips around the corner, then the rest of her. Cat’s cheeks are flushed, throat marked by the clean line of a blade that sliced and missed. Thank Dio. Her eyes find mine like magnets that still work even when you swear you’ve broken them.
“You’re late,” I mumble, because if I say I’m sorry again I won’t be able to stop.
“You’re loud,” she shoots back, breath fogging the air. She scans the street over my shoulder before she looks at me again. “He had friends.”
“I met one.” I jerk my chin in the opposite direction where a body lies crumpled. “Are you hurt?”
“No.” She touches her throat, then shrugs. “Just the scratch.”
The line of crimson across her neck blurs and all I see is red.
My vision tunnels and my fingers curl into fists.
I want to kill that pezzo di merda all over again for making her bleed, for daring to hurt what’s mine.
I may have walked out on her that terrible day all those years ago, but she’ll always be my Kitty Cat.
My gaze drops to the zipper of her jacket, and a locket glints beneath the sunlight.
I look away before I see more than I’m allowed.
She has a habit of pressing her palm flat beneath her collarbone like she’s steadying herself on something I can’t see.
It makes my chest ache for all the wrong reasons.
“Tiernan?” she asks.
“No word yet.” The words drop like a stone. “But he and Donal can’t be far.”
She nods once, like she’s been expecting doom to stay punctual. “What now?”
Now is where a smart man hands her over. Now is where a good cousin calls Ale and tells him everything. Now is where a better man than me doesn’t want to touch her so badly he has to curl his fingers into his palms until the hunger passes.
“Now we move,” I ground out instead. “Northwest. Cut through campus, over to Broadway, then up past the seminary. I’ll keep eyes off you and meet you at the park entrance.”
“And if you don’t?”
“Keep going.”
Her mouth tilts, not quite a smile though. “You say that a lot.”
“I mean it every time.”
We stand there one beat too long, the city throwing sound at us like it wants us to forget the private war we’re in. Somewhere a siren turns a corner. Somewhere a phone rings a little too sharply.
“Matteo,” she whispers, and it’s my name how she used to say it, like it was both a dare and a home.
“What?”
She shakes her head. “Nothing.”
She turns to go, but my hand moves before I can stop it.
I catch the edge of her hood and tug it higher over her head, a small stupid gesture that feels like so much more.
My knuckles brush her throat, eyes catching a thin gold chain but all I can focus on is the fury rolling through me again.
It’s a good thing I already killed that fucker for touching her.
Heat flashes through me, and she flinches like the cut stung and not because I touched her.
“Go.” I force the word out, voice low.
She does. I watch the blonde of her hair vanish under the hood and the crowd, and I tell myself I did the right thing back then. I tell myself the world I kept her and the baby from is exactly the one that’s after her now.
The lie tastes the same as it did years ago.
I push off the wall and step into the street, choosing the kind of sin I can live with: buying her another few minutes, another block, and another chance.