15. Cat
— ? —
Cat
The Romano house looks exactly like I remember it.
Stone fa?ade, iron gates, the kind of old-money elegance that whispers rather than shouts. I grew up in a house like this, different city, different family, same weight of history pressing down from every corner.
Before we left the motel, the vetted doctor Nico arranged saw me, blood pressure, basic exam, confirmation that the baby’s heartbeat is strong. No ultrasound yet, just reassurance that we’re both stable enough for what comes next.
Max pulls the car to a stop outside the main entrance, and I watch his hands tighten on the steering wheel.
“You ready?” I ask.
“No.”
“Good. Neither am I.”
We sit there for a moment, neither of us moving. Through the windshield, I can see guards at the door, two of Enzo’s men, hands already moving toward their weapons as they register the unfamiliar vehicle.
“They’re going to shoot you,” I say.
“Probably.”
“You could wait in the car. Let me go in first, explain things.”
“No.” He cuts the engine. “If I’m asking your family for help, I do it face to face. Not hiding behind my pregnant wife.”
“That’s either very brave or very stupid.”
“With me, it’s usually both.”
He opens his door before I can respond, stepping out into the morning light with his hands clearly visible. The guards react immediately, weapons drawn, shouts of warning, the whole choreography of threat assessment that I’ve seen a hundred times from the other side.
“I’m unarmed,” Max says, voice carrying across the courtyard. “I’m here to see Don Romano. Tell him his sister is with me.”
I get out of the car, slower, one hand on my belly. The guards’ eyes flick to me, widen, and I watch the calculations shift in real time. Not just a Moretti on their doorstep, a pregnant woman. Their boss’s sister.
“Cat?” One of them, Matteo, I think, been with Enzo for years, lowers his weapon slightly. “Is that you?”
“Hi, Matteo. It’s been a while.”
“We thought you were, your brother said you were on some kind of retreat-”
“It’s complicated. Can we come in?”
He looks between me and Max, clearly torn. Protocol says shoot first, ask questions later. But protocol didn’t account for the don’s baby sister showing up pregnant with the enemy at her side.
“I need to call this in,” he says finally.
“Of course.”
He speaks rapidly into his radio, never taking his eyes off Max. I watch my husband stand perfectly still, hands at his sides, making himself as non-threatening as a six-foot-three crime lord can possibly be.
It’s almost funny, the way a car crash can be.
The front door opens.
Enzo appears in the doorway, and my heart clenches at the sight of him. My brother, older than me by four years, grayer than the last time I saw him, carrying the weight of a family on his shoulders the way he has since our father retired.
“Cat.” His voice cracks on my name. “Sorellina.”
“Ciao, fratello.”
He’s down the steps before I can take another breath, crossing the courtyard in long strides, and then his arms are around me, tight, crushing, the kind of hug that says I thought I lost you.
“You’re okay,” he breathes into my hair. “You’re okay, you’re okay-”
“I’m okay.”
“Four months, Cat. Four months of phone calls that told me nothing. Four months of lying to Mamma and Papà about where you were. Four months of-” He pulls back, holds me at arm’s length, and his eyes drop to my stomach. “Madonna santa.”
“Yeah.” I manage a weak smile. “Surprise?”
“You’re pregnant.”
“Very observant.”
“You’re pregnant, and you’ve been hiding in, where have you been hiding?”
“Pennsylvania, mostly. A little steel town nobody’s ever heard of.”
“Pennsylvania.” He says it like it’s a foreign country. “You’ve been in Pennsylvania, pregnant, alone-”
“She wasn’t alone the whole time,” Max says quietly.
Enzo’s head snaps toward him, and I watch my brother’s expression transform from shock to something much, much colder.
“You.” He releases me, turns to face Max fully. “You have thirty seconds to explain why I shouldn’t have my men put you in the ground right now.”
“Because your sister asked me to come. Because I owe you the truth. And because I’m here to ask for your help.”
“Help.” Enzo laughs, sharp and humorless. “A Moretti don, asking a Romano for help. That’s rich.”
“It’s necessary.”
“Enzo,” I cut in before this can escalate further. “We need to talk. Inside. All three of us.”
“Cat-”
“Please.” I take his arm, the way I used to when we were kids and I needed him to listen. “I know you’re angry. I know you have questions. But I need to sit down, and I need water, and I need to explain what’s been happening before you decide to start a war in your front yard.”
He looks at me for a long moment. Then at Max. Then back at me.
“Inside,” he says finally. “But your husband walks in front of me, where I can see him.”
“Fine.”
“And if I don’t like what I hear, he doesn’t walk out.”
“Enzo-”
“Those are my terms, sorellina. Take them or leave them.”
Max steps forward, hands still visible. “I accept your terms.”
“I didn’t ask for your acceptance.”
“You have it anyway.” He meets Enzo’s eyes without flinching. “Whatever you need to hear to let us through that door, I’ll say it. Your sister’s been on her feet for hours. She needs rest.”
“Don’t tell me what my sister needs.”
“Then let’s go inside and she can tell you herself.”
The tension crackles between them like static electricity. Two men who’ve spent their lives on opposite sides of a war, now standing three feet apart with nothing but my pregnancy keeping them from tearing each other’s throats out.
“Inside,” Enzo says again, and this time it’s not a negotiation.
The study hasn’t changed.
Same leather chairs, same mahogany desk, same portrait of our grandfather glaring down from above the fireplace. I sink into one of the chairs with a groan of relief, and Enzo immediately summons someone for water, tea, food, anything his pregnant sister might need.
Max stands by the window, hands clasped behind his back, positioned exactly where every guard in the room can see him.
“Start talking,” Enzo says, settling into the chair across from me. “From the beginning.”
I look at Max. He nods once.
“The family’s falling apart,” I say. “Sergio Greco and the old guard have been planning a coup since Aldo died. They want to dissolve the alliance, go back to the blood feuds, everything the treaty was supposed to end.”
“I know about Sergio’s faction. We’ve been watching them for months.”
“Then you know they hate me. What I represent.”
“You’re the symbol of the alliance. Of course they hate you.”
“It’s more than hate, Enzo.” I take a breath. “Someone tried to kidnap me. From my own bedroom, three days before I left.”
“What?”
“Two men. Professionals, not family soldiers. They got past the security, got into my room. I fought them off, hit the panic button. Max’s guards came, but-”
“You were attacked in your own home.” Enzo’s voice has gone dangerously quiet. “And nobody thought to inform me?”
“I didn’t know who to trust. I didn’t know who was compromised.”
“So you just disappeared instead? Let me think you were on a writing retreat while someone was trying to kill you?”
“I didn’t know anyone was trying to kill me. Not then.” I reach into my bag, pull out the folded cream stationery that’s gone soft at the creases from four months of being unfolded. “I found this. In Max’s study, the morning he left for Chicago.”
Enzo takes it, unfolds it, reads.
His face goes white.
“Where did you get this?”
“His desk. Tucked under the blotter.”
“Cat, this is-” He reads it again, then looks up at Max. “Is this Marcella Greco’s handwriting?”
“Nico sent me a photograph before we met at the church,” Max says quietly. “Until then, I’d never seen it.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s the truth. This is the first time I’ve held the original. I told Nico to keep it with Cat so nobody could make it disappear.”
“You expect me to believe that a note planning my sister’s murder was sitting on your desk and you never saw it?”
“I think someone put it there specifically for her to find.” Max’s voice is steady, but I can see the tension in his shoulders.
“I knew from Cat’s farewell that she feared for her life.
But I didn’t know why until I saw this. A real threat placed where it would look like a message to me.
That was enough to make the rest believable. ”
“And Marcella’s involvement?”
“The handwriting looks like hers. Marcella may have written it, but she didn’t work alone.”
“If you’d found this note, what would you have done?”
“I would have killed her,” Max continues. “If I’d known she was plotting against my wife, I would have put a bullet in her head myself, consequences be damned. The fact that I didn’t tells you everything you need to know about whether I saw that note.”
Enzo stares at him for a long moment. Then he looks at me.
“You believed this? You believed he was planning to kill you?”
“What else was I supposed to believe?” My voice cracks despite myself.
“I heard him, Enzo. At a meeting I wasn’t invited to.
I stood in a service corridor and listened to him tell his entire leadership he didn’t know if he loved me enough to keep me.
That he wanted to know how long the treaty bound him because he couldn’t stand it much longer. ”
“The meeting was theater,” Max says. “I knew there were traitors at that table. I said what I needed to say to make them think Cat was worthless to me.”
“And you didn’t think to warn her first?”
“I thought guards could keep her safe while I made her look useless as leverage. When they were overpowered, I should have admitted I was wrong. Instead I added more men and kept avoiding the conversation.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“I know.”
“You made your wife believe she was disposable. You made her think you wanted her dead. You-” Enzo stands abruptly, crosses the room in three strides, and punches Max in the face.
I’m on my feet before I’ve processed what happened. “Enzo-”