13. Max
— ? —
Max
Traffic.
Of all the goddamn things, traffic. At this hour, in this town, on streets that should be empty. A delivery truck jackknifed three blocks ahead, according to the radio chatter I’m barely hearing over the roar in my skull.
Cat’s breathing is in my ear, shallow and too fast, fear riding every exhale.
“How many?” I ask, weaving between stopped cars.
“I don’t know. Five, maybe six. They’re searching the street.”
“Stay hidden. Don’t engage.”
“Max-”
“I’m three minutes out.”
The line goes to static for a moment, interference, or she’s muffling the phone again. I slam my palm against the steering wheel hard enough to hurt. Three minutes is an eternity. Three minutes is the difference between finding her alive and finding her body.
The traffic doesn’t move.
I’m out of the car before I’ve fully processed the decision, gun holstered under my jacket, feet hitting pavement. Someone honks. Someone shouts. I don’t hear any of it. All I hear is her breathing, faint and terrified, through the phone I’ve jammed against my ear.
“Cat. Talk to me.”
“They’re getting closer.” Her voice is barely a whisper. “Max, I don’t think-”
“Stay with me. I’m running now.”
I run.
The church rises dark against the night sky. St. Michael’s. I know this building, passed it three times today while canvassing the area Nico pinpointed. Old Catholic, mostly abandoned, the kind of place teenagers break into for dares and homeless people shelter in during winter.
The kind of place my wife chose to hide.
There are men outside. Two of them, at the main entrance, hands on weapons. They see me coming and draw, but I’m faster, always have been, and the first one drops before he can get his gun up. The second hesitates, just for a second, and that’s all I need.
Through the doors.
The church is chaos. Overturned pews, broken glass, flashlight beams cutting through the darkness. And near the altar, three men dragging a woman who’s fighting every inch.
Cat.
She’s slower than she should be. Favoring her left side. But still fighting, of course still fighting.
“Get off her.”
My voice echoes through the nave. Everything stops. The men turn. Cat’s head snaps toward me.
“Moretti,” one of them breathes.
“Let her go.”
“We have orders-”
“I don’t care about your orders.” I’m moving forward, gun raised, calculating angles. “Let her go, and you walk out of here.”
“Can’t do that.” The one holding Cat’s arm tightens his grip. She makes a sound, pain, barely suppressed. “Sergio wants the woman. Dead or alive, his choice.”
“Sergio doesn’t run this family.”
“Not yet.”
The attack comes from my blind side. I should have checked the shadows, and then there’s a blade, bright and fast, slicing across my ribs before I can twist away. The pain is sharp but distant, adrenaline drowning everything except the sight of Cat being hauled toward the side door.
I catch the knife-wielder’s wrist, twist until something snaps. He goes down screaming. When he reaches for the fallen knife, I fire once. The gun comes up again, but they’re using Cat as a shield now, and I can’t get a clear shot without risking…
The candle stand.
Heavy brass, ornate. I grab it and swing.
The first man drops. The second bolts through the side door. I let him go; Cat matters more than a fleeing man. The third, the one holding Cat, shoves her away and draws his own weapon, but I’m already moving, and the candle stand connects with his skull before he can aim.
He crumples.
Silence.
I stand in the center of the church, breathing hard, blood seeping through my shirt. The knife wound burns now, but it’s shallow. I’ve had worse.
Behind me, the main doors burst open. My men. Nico must have called them in.
“Secure the perimeter,” I snap without turning. “Check for more outside. Get someone to clean this up.”
“Boss, you’re bleeding-”
“Later.”
I turn.
Cat is pressed against a pillar, half-hidden in shadow. She’s staring at me like I’m a stranger wearing her husband’s face. Her hands are shaking. Her whole body is shaking.
“Cat.”
She doesn’t move.
“It’s over. You’re safe.”
Still nothing. Just those wide, terrified eyes.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” My voice comes out rougher than I intend. “I would never-”
“I know.” Barely audible. “I know you wouldn’t.”
She steps out of the shadows.
Her coat swings open.
And the world stops.
The belly.
Full and round and unmistakable under the stretched fabric of her shirt. Five months, maybe more, impossible to miss once you’re looking.
My wife is pregnant.
My wife has been pregnant this whole time, hiding in motels and dying towns, running from me, running with my child inside her.
I don’t remember dropping to my knees. I just know that suddenly I’m on the stone floor, staring up at her, and my eyes are burning.
“Why?” The word tears out of me. “Why did you leave?”
“You know why.”
“I don’t-”
“The meeting, Max.” Her voice cracks. “I heard everything. Every word you said about me. About our marriage being a mistake.”
The meeting. The performance I rehearsed in a mirror. The words I made myself say to a room I knew held traitors.
“And then someone came to my room that night. Tried to take me.” She’s crying now, silent tears streaming down her face. “And you couldn’t even look at me after. You walked away like I was nothing.”
I was there after the bedroom attack. I saw her injuries and left her with a medic instead of staying long enough to hear what she feared. Nico’s photograph of Marcella’s note finally showed me how she had put those pieces together.
“I ran because I thought you wanted me dead.” Her hand moves to her belly, protective. “I ran because I thought you’d rather have me gone than deal with the complication of keeping me alive. And then I found out about this, and I couldn’t, I couldn’t risk-”
“Cat.” Her name comes out broken. “I never wanted you dead. I never wanted you gone. Everything I did-”
“I can’t hear this right now.” She holds up a hand, and it’s trembling. “I can’t hear your reasons, Max. Not tonight. Not standing in a church full of bodies while I try to figure out if I just hallucinated my husband killing six men for me.”
“Five.”
“What?”
“Five men. One of them ran.”
A sound escapes her, half laugh, half sob. “That’s not the point.”
“I know.” I’m still on my knees. I can’t seem to make myself get up. “I know it’s not.”
She sways.
I’m on my feet instantly, reaching for her, and she flinches back, then stops herself, lets me catch her arm.
“I’m fine,” she says. “I just need-”
“You’re gray. You’re shaking. You need to sit down.”
“I need to understand what’s happening.”
“What’s happening is you’re five months pregnant and exhausted and you nearly got killed tonight.” I keep my voice steady through sheer will. “We can fight later. We can yell and scream and tear each other apart later. But right now, you need rest.”
“You don’t get to tell me what I need.”
“You’re right. I don’t.” I loosen my grip on her arm, but I don’t let go completely. “I’m asking. Please, Cat. Let me get you somewhere safe.”
She stares at me for a long moment. I can see her weighing it, the exhaustion against the anger, the practical need against the emotional wound.
“I’m not forgiving you,” she says finally.
“I know.”
“And I’m not going back to that house.”
“I wouldn’t take you there.”
“And this doesn’t mean-” She stops, swallows hard. “This doesn’t mean anything. I’m letting you help because I don’t have another choice. That’s all.”
“That’s enough.”
She looks at me, really looks, for the first time since I entered the church. Whatever she sees, I can’t read it.
“You’re bleeding.”
“It’s shallow.”
“You’re bleeding a lot for shallow.”
I keep my body between her and the door, ignoring the wet heat spreading under my shirt. It can wait. She can’t.
“I’ll deal with it later.”
“Max-”
“Later, Cat. Please.”
She doesn’t argue. That’s how I know she’s truly exhausted, the Cat I married would have pushed, would have demanded I get the wound treated before we moved. This Cat just nods, once, and lets me guide her toward the door.
Nico appears at the entrance. His eyes go to Cat’s belly, then to my bleeding side, then back to my face. He doesn’t say anything. Smart man.
“The car,” I say. “Now.”
“Already waiting.”
I strip off my jacket as we walk, it’s ruined anyway, blood-soaked and torn, and drape it over Cat’s shoulders, then pull her close under my arm. She tenses at the contact but doesn’t pull away.
“The ring,” she says quietly.
I look down. The chain has slipped free from my torn shirt, her wedding band visible against my chest.
“You kept it.”
“I never took it off.”
She doesn’t respond. But her shoulders come down a fraction.
We step out into the night. The car is idling at the curb, one of my men behind the wheel.
Nico follows us out. “I’ll handle cleanup,” he says as I help Cat into the backseat. “The bodies, the evidence, all of it. You focus on getting her somewhere safe.”
“Find a doctor. Someone vetted, someone who can do a full exam. Discreet.”
“Already on it.”
I slide into the backseat beside Cat. She’s pressed against the opposite door, as far from me as the space allows, her hands resting on the curve of her belly.
“Go,” I tell the driver.
My phone lights with Nico’s message before we reach the main road. Paolo is wounded but alive. Sal returned to the church lane and helped bring our men in. I tell Cat. She closes her eyes and exhales for the first time since she got into the car.
We pull away from the church, leaving Nico to manage the aftermath.
Cat’s eyes are closed, but her breathing is too fast for sleep, her hands too tense where they rest. I watch her in the dim light, cataloging every change, the sharper angles of her face, the dark circles under her eyes, the way she holds herself like she’s bracing for impact.
Four months. Four months of searching, of dead ends, of slowly losing my mind. And the whole time she was carrying my child. Protecting our baby from the man she thought wanted her dead.
I did that. My silence, my strategy, my goddamn inability to just tell her the truth. I did all of that.
“Max.”
Her voice is quiet, barely audible over the engine.
“Yeah?”
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere safe. Somewhere they won’t find us.”
“Somewhere isn’t a place, Max.”
“I’m checking which place is clear before I choose.” I watch the dark roads unspool ahead of us. “I have properties they don’t know about. Places I kept off the books. We’ll go to one of those until I can figure out our next move.”
“Our next move.” She opens her eyes, and they’re flat, unreadable. “There is no our, Max. There’s you, and there’s me, and there’s this baby. That’s it.”
“Okay.”
“I mean it.”
“I know you do.”
She turns away, staring out the window at nothing.
I don’t push. She’s given me more than I had any right to expect, she’s in the car, she’s letting me take her somewhere safe, she hasn’t put a bullet in me despite having every reason to.
For now, that’s enough.
We drive on into the dark.