Chapter 26 The Girl from the Beach
THE GIRL FROM THE BEACH
Matteo
I come to with the taste of copper in my mouth and the kind of headache you can hear. It throbs across my temples in a steady pulse. Son of a bitch.
The room begins to coalesce, my eyes focusing. Ceiling. Cheap fan. Ah yes, the safehouse.
I try to sit up and learn something new: I’m tied up. That sneaky little… She attempted to seduce me, then knock me out? A tiny part of me is proud of her. Again. My wrists are bound behind the chair, my ankles to the legs, and something rough digs into my skin. Rope, not zip ties. Thoughtful.
“Kitty Cat,” I croak, and the room doesn’t answer.
There’s a folded scrap on the nightstand beside me, weighed down with my own damn phone. I twist until the chair creaks, catch the paper with my fingertips, and drag it to the edge. It flutters to the floor.
Damn it.
I tip the chair, stretch, and somehow manage to snag it between two knuckles.
Four lines, block letters. Her hand.
Matty,
I sent Tiernan a picture of you “dead.” It’ll buy us some time. Do not follow me. And for the love of all things, lie low for a little while for both our sakes.
—C
A laugh punches out of me and turns into a wince. Of course she did. She knocked me out and still found a way to keep me breathing.
I test the rope. She cinched it like a sailor so there’s no slack to free myself.
Ankles first—always the leverage. I grind at the knot until the chair scrapes a half-inch.
The buzzing behind my left eye spikes. I breathe through it and tip again, inch by ugly inch, until I can get enough momentum to crash the chair sideways without splitting my skull.
The impact knocks the wind out of me and loosens the hinge on the back right leg. Thank, Dio. I roll, curl my knees to my chest, and worm my feet under the chair rung. Ankles out, then hips, then I scoot like a lunatic inchworm toward the kitchenette.
Only for you, Cat.
The drawer I want is second from the left.
I hook it with my heel, then yank. Silverware screams against the wood, and a paring knife skates to the lip.
Perfect. I catch it with numb fingers and angle the blade backward.
It takes forever, rope fraying strand by strand and my shoulders on fire, then the last fiber finally snaps and blood floods my hands as they come free.
I strip the rope from my ankles, sit against the cabinets, and wait for the room to stop blinking. Then I stumble back to the nightstand.
She didn’t take my phone. I’m not sure if that’s mercy or a dare.
My thumb shakes as I wake the screen. Leo’s last text sits under one unsent draft from me. He’s worried. The man is like the big brother I never had. I ignore both for now and open the tracker app.
A map appears, and the Gemini interface pings a neat, blinking dot.
Northwest. Good girl.
I tell myself I only slipped the microtag under the insole of her boot because I knew she’d run the first chance she got.
I tell myself it was insurance. I tell myself a lot of things while remembering how small her feet looked kicked up on the safehouse bed, boots flung half off like she trusted the room more than she trusted me.
I slid the tracker in like a sin and stood guard like it wasn’t.
“You’re not following her,” I mutter to the empty apartment, reading the note again. “You’re making sure she lives.”
Then I close out the app and text Leo.
Me: Scrub cameras on our grid for the last two hours and feed Ale the wrong blocks.
His response takes a minute, and I hold my breath. He’s my guard but his loyalty extends to all Geminis. Can I really risk telling him the truth?
The reply finally comes.
Leo: Copy. You good?
Me: Define good.
Leo: What’s going on, capo?
Me: I can’t get into it now. Just keep this between us.
Leo: Will do.
A long pause, then more dots.
Leo: There was another breach in Gemini’s security system today. The IT guys are waiting on you.
Fucking Spada Nera. Their timing couldn’t be worse.
Me: I’ll handle it when I get back.
I push to my feet. The bedroom tilts, and I steady it with a palm to the dresser.
The phone’s camera roll holds three new photos I didn’t take—me on the rug, limp as a corpse.
Smart. Vicious. She must have sent Tiernan the pictures from my own phone.
Proud doesn’t begin to cover the feeling crawling around under my ribs.
I grab a clean shirt from the closet, a different gun from the lockbox in the wall, and cash from the dead drop under the bathroom sink.
I pocket a second tracker and a comms bead just in case.
The mirror over the sink shows a man who looks like he lost a bar fight with a memory and came back for more.
I thumb the map again. The dot moves. It’s steady, not sprinting. Where are you going Kitty Cat? She thinks she has time now. She bought it for me too. Of course she did.
“Just keep her safe,” I say out loud, to the fan, to the walls, to Dio if He’s listening. “Then let her go.”
It sounds noble until I really taste it. It tastes like the same lie I told myself on a Sicilian morning with seagulls in the air and a future in her eyes.
I kill the lights, rearm the alarm, and slip out the back like I was never here. The March air knifes my lungs awake. Somewhere a dog barks. And further in the distance a train complains its way across town.
The dot slides another block west. I set off after it, fast and quiet, telling myself this is the last time I chase her.
But I know fully well it isn’t.
If I’m being honest with myself, I started chasing her the day we met on the beach and some part of me never stopped. My thoughts whirl to the past, drawn deeper with my quickening footsteps.
My boys and I are shouldering through a crowd at the beach club the scent of the sea and rum thick in the air.
Rope lights are strung between palms with a plywood bar in the center and a DJ spinning summer beats out of tired speakers.
Waves crash along the shore, thumping behind the music like a second heart.
I’m halfway to ordering shots when the back of my neck goes hot.
She’s here. The girl from the beach.
She’s in a white sundress, bare shoulders kissed pink by the sun, and hair like copper lit from the inside. She’s laughing at something a girl beside her says, not looking at me, and it ruins me more efficiently than any bullet I’ve ever dodged.
“Matteo,” Enzo crows, clapping my shoulder, “you’re buying the first round—”
“Later.” I’m already slipping away.
I cut through dancers, sand and bodies until I’m in her shadow. Up close she smells like orange peel and something I don’t have a word for yet. She sees me a beat before I speak and her mouth softens, then sets.
“You didn’t answer me,” I blurt with no finesse and all nerve. “I sent three messages.”
“I noticed.” Those Irish vowels turn the words into velvet and barbed wire.
Honesty, clean as a knife.
“Why didn’t you reply?”
She studies me like she’s cataloging my flaws for an exam. “I was busy.” A glance at my open shirt, the chain at my throat, and the grin I can’t stop wearing. “Besides, I know guys like you. Beautiful summer boys with big grins and bigger promises.”
“Ouch.” I slam my hand to my heart. “You wound me.”
“You’ll live.” She tips her chin toward the sea. “I’m not here for a holiday romance. I’m working doubles, and saving up my money. I’m getting out of Ireland for good, and a distraction with pretty eyes won’t help.”
Pretty. She thinks I’m pretty and says it like it’s a problem. My grin widens despite myself.
“What if I’m not a distraction,” I attempt, “but a cultural exchange? You teach me to pronounce your name without insulting your ancestors, and I teach you that not all Italians are trouble.”
She snorts. “You’re absolutely trouble.”
“Give me one dance to change your mind.”
“One?” She’s skeptical, but the corner of her mouth twitches.
Got you.
“One,” I promise, holding up a single finger. “Sixty seconds. After that you can go back to not answering my messages and I’ll go back to being tragically wounded.”
The song shifts to something with a lazy drumline and a soft guitar. She looks at my hand, at the sand, then at the sky that still hasn’t figured out how to get dark here. Finally, she does the bravest thing anyone’s done around me. She trusts me for the length of a chorus.
“Fine,” she mutters. “Just one.”
I pull her into the tideline where the sand is firm and cool. I don’t grab, don’t press, I just fit our hands together and let the music set the rhythm. She moves like she was born to dance. Her hips are sure, chin high, and eyes bright with suspicion she keeps forgetting to wear.
“What’s your name again?” I tease, leaning in so she can hear over the bass. “The long version. I want to get it wrong in at least three languages.”
“Caitríona.” She draws out her name slowly, perfectly, and my body files the sound under sacred. “You?”
“Matteo,” I confess, like I’m offering something bigger than a name.
Her brow lifts. “Mateo.” She flattens the t and I fall a little in love with the mistake.
“That’ll do.” I spin her once and she laughs. It’s sharp, surprised, and unguarded. It hits me in the sternum like a thrown stone, waking every organ I have.
“Don’t forget the rules, Matteo.” Her breaths come a little quick now. “If I dance, you stop texting.”
“Impossible.”
She narrows her eyes. “Then you stop showing up where I am.”
“Also impossible.” I tilt my head toward her friend waving from the bar. “Besides, fate clearly wants us to suffer.”
She tries not to smile and fails. “Flattery won’t work.”
“It isn’t flattery.” I lower my voice without meaning to. “I just haven’t been able to stop thinking about the way you looked on the beach. Like you were listening to the sea, and it was actually answering.”
Her gaze flickers as if she’s surprised I noticed anything that wasn’t skin. “Do you always say things like that?”
“Only when they’re true.”
The chorus fades into a bridge. We don’t stop. She steps closer without stepping closer, the way smart girls do, and I inhale a breath that tastes like sugar and salt and a future.
“What do you want from me, Matteo?” she asks finally, wary again.
“Sixty more seconds.” Then, because something in me wants so much more I add, “And your real laugh. The one you don’t give to strangers.”
“That’s very greedy.” A hint of a smile curls her lips.
“I can be patient.” It’s the first lie I tell her and the easiest to mean.
“Hmm.” She considers me like I’m a puzzle with one missing piece. “I don’t like olives,” she blurts, as if we’re trading truths.
I bark a laugh. “I’ll eat yours then just to prove how serious I am. I can at least tolerate the black ones.” I pause and find her eyes glistening with mirth. “I’m also known to burn toast.”
“Criminal.”
“And I read subtitles out loud.”
“Absolutely not.”
We’re grinning like idiots now. The song returns to its chorus, and I swing her once more, careful and sure. Wet sand brushes our ankles and a wave creeps close before thinking better of it. Her hand tightens in mine for a heartbeat longer than it needs to.
“One minute’s up.” Her words nearly get lost on the breeze.
“Time is fake,” I counter, just as softly.
She should walk away here. She knows it. I know it. Instead, she looks at our hands, then at my mouth, and then back to the sea. “I’m not going to date you,” she warns.
“I wouldn’t dream of asking.”
“And I’m not some summer conquest you get to tell your friends about.”
“Dio forbid.” And I mean it so much it scares me.
She lets go first because she’s smarter. But she doesn’t move until I step back, because she’s clearly kind. I tuck my hands into my pockets so I don’t reach for her like a prayer.
“Goodnight, Matteo.” And Dio, my name in her mouth sounds like a real possibility.
“Goodnight, Caitríona,” I reply, giving each syllable the care it deserves.
Then I watch her weave through bodies and noise and realize two terrible, beautiful things at once: I’m already in over my head, and I have no intention of ever coming up for air.