8. Cielo
— ? —
Cielo
Glass explodes inward, and I’m already dropping to the floor before the pieces land.
Down. Cover. Move.
Giovanni’s voice in my head, calm and steady, the same tone he used when he taught me to shoot in the basement range at the Milan house. You’re not going to need this, he said then. But I need to know you can protect yourself.
I’m moving before I can think about it, crawling behind the sofa as more windows shatter - living room, kitchen, the whole front of the house becoming a storm of breaking glass and shouting voices. My phone is still on the daybed, too far away, and I curse myself for leaving it there.
The front door splinters on its hinges.
Think. Think.
The back stairs. Giovanni showed me when we first arrived - a servants’ passage that leads to the kitchen and out to the garden. There’s a knife block in the kitchen, and my phone is between here and there, and if I can just-
I run.
The sound of my footsteps is swallowed by the chaos of the break-in - men’s voices, boots on tile, furniture overturning.
I don’t look back. I grab my phone from the daybed as I pass, shoving it into my pocket, and I keep running toward the kitchen and the knife block and whatever slim chance I have of getting out of this alive.
The baby. Think about the baby.
I reach the kitchen as the first man rounds the corner behind me. He’s big, dressed in black, and he’s not expecting me to have a knife - which is probably why my slash catches his arm before he can raise his weapon. He swears, staggers, and I’m past him before he can recover.
The garden door. Three more steps.
I make it through just as another window breaks somewhere upstairs, and then I’m out in the night air, running for the tree line and the path I’ve walked a dozen times since we arrived.
Delphine’s car. She arranged it a week ago, after one of our phone calls when I was crying too hard to pretend I was okay.
Just in case, she said. A car in the village, keys with the bartender at the café. If you need to leave, you leave.
I thought it was overkill. I thought I’d never need it.
I pull out my phone as I run, dialing Giovanni’s number. Please pick up. Please, please pick up.
It rings once. Twice. The sounds of the raid fade behind me as I push deeper into the trees, branches scratching my arms, the blue dress catching on thorns. My lungs are burning - I’m not used to running, not like this, and there’s a stitch in my side that feels like a knife.
The phone connects.
Relief floods through me, so intense I nearly stumble. “Giovanni-”
But it’s not his voice that answers.
“Hello, Cielo.” Ludovica. Her voice is silk and poison, dripping with satisfaction. “Looking for your husband? I’m afraid he’s… occupied.”
My blood goes cold. “Where is he? What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything. I just made sure he wasn’t available when you needed him most.” A laugh, low and cruel. “Did you really think you could have him? Did you really think he chose you?”
“Let me talk to him.”
“He can’t come to the phone right now. He’s in a meeting, you see. Very important business. Much more important than whatever little emergency you’re having.” Another laugh. “I told him he’d regret leaving early tonight. I wonder if he’s figured that out yet.”
The words hit me like physical blows. She did this. Ludovica did this - arranged the raid, timed it for when Giovanni would be unreachable, made sure I’d be alone and vulnerable and trapped.
“You’re the reason for this,” I say, and my voice comes out strange - flat, distant, like I’m hearing myself from very far away. “You planned this.”
“I’m the reason for all of this.” She says it like a gift, like she wants me to know. “Too bad you figured it out too late.”
The line goes dead.
I stand there in the dark, phone pressed to my ear, listening to nothing. Behind me, I can still hear the raid - shouts, crashes, the systematic destruction of the house where I was supposed to be having dinner with my husband. Ahead of me, the path to the village stretches out like a lifeline.
Move. You have to move.
I shove the phone back in my pocket and start running again, but something’s wrong - there’s a burning in my arm that I didn’t notice before, and when I look down, I see the tear in my sleeve and the dark wetness spreading through the fabric.
Blood.
Someone shot at me in the chaos, and I didn’t even feel it. The graze is shallow - I can tell that much from the way it bleeds, sluggish rather than gushing - but it’s there, red and real and undeniable.
I press my other hand against it and keep moving.
The trees thin out, and I can see the village lights below - faint, scattered, impossibly far away. My legs are shaking. My arm is throbbing. And somewhere behind me, the house where I was supposed to be having dinner with my husband is full of men who wanted me dead.
I pull out my phone with my good hand and dial Delphine.
She answers on the first ring. “Cielo?”
“I’m out.” My voice sounds strange, thin and far away. “The house - there were men - I got out but I’m-”
“Are you hurt?”
“Just a graze. My arm. It’s not bad.”
“Where are you?”
“The woods. Heading toward the village. The car-”
“I know where it is. Can you make it?”
“I think so. Yes.” I force my legs to keep moving, one step at a time. “Delphine, she answered his phone. Ludovica. She said she was the reason-”
“Save it. Tell me when you’re safe.” Her voice is sharp, focused. “Get to the car. Get out of Sicily. Head north - I’ll text you an address. Don’t stop, don’t call him, don’t do anything except drive. Can you do that?”
“Yes.”
“Then go. And Cielo?” A pause, heavy with everything she’s not saying. “You’re going to be okay. Both of you.”
She means the baby. She guessed - I can hear it in the way she said both of you, the careful emphasis.
“You know,” I say. It’s not a question.
“I suspected. The way you’ve been talking the past few days.” A pause. “Am I right?”
“Yes.” The word comes out small, but saying it makes it real. “Yes, you’re right.”
“Then run faster, ma chérie. And call me when you’re safe.”
“I will,” I say, and I hang up, and I keep moving.
* * *
I don’t know how long it takes me to reach the village. Time has stopped making sense - there’s just the path and the darkness and the burning in my arm and the cold, hollow space where my heart used to be.
Ludovica did this.
The thought keeps circling, a vulture that won’t land. Ludovica arranged a raid on my home. Ludovica timed it for when my husband wouldn’t answer. Ludovica laughed as she told me I was alone, as she made sure I knew exactly who to blame.
But underneath that thought is another one, quieter and more devastating: Giovanni let her.
Not the raid - he didn’t know about that. But the distance. The absence. The months of choosing his mission over his marriage. He left so much space between us that someone else filled it with violence, and he wasn’t there to stop it.
He’s never there.
The village is quiet when I emerge from the trees, the café closed at this hour but a single light burning in the window. The bartender is waiting - Delphine must have called ahead - and he hands me the keys without a word, pointing to a small gray car parked in the shadows behind the building.
“Grazie,” I manage, and my voice sounds like a stranger’s.
I slide into the driver’s seat and sit there for a moment, hands shaking on the wheel.
The graze on my arm has stopped bleeding, mostly, but my dress is ruined - torn, dirty, spotted with blood.
My hand goes to my throat, an instinct - and finds nothing.
The necklace. The gold star Giovanni searched for.
The clasp must have broken somewhere in the woods, torn away by branches I didn’t feel. Gone.
Something in me cracks.
Three years he looked for this necklace.
Three months he couldn’t find time for me.
The crack spreads, and suddenly I’m not sad anymore - I’m angry. Furious. Incandescent with rage at the man who promised me everything and gave me table scraps, who let another woman orchestrate my destruction while he sat in a meeting that mattered more than his wife.
I think about the table I set. The candles I lit. The speech I rehearsed, all those careful words about loneliness and fear and needing him to choose.
I think about the baby he doesn’t know about. The life growing inside me while his house burned around us.
I think about calling him again, telling him everything, begging him to come after me.
And then I think: no.
No more waiting. No more hoping. No more believing that the next time will be different, that the next promise will be kept, that the man who loves me will actually show up when it matters.
I start the car.
The engine rumbles to life, and I pull out of the village and onto the road that leads away from Sicily, away from the villa, away from the life I thought I was building with a man who was never really there.
I don’t look back.
I will never come back to this life, I swear to the darkness. My child will never know this world.
The road unfolds in front of me, and I drive toward a future I’ll have to build alone.