14. Rocco
ROCCO
Do you know how much I wanted you to believe me?
Serena closes the car door before I answer. Probably because there’s no answer worth hearing.
Not on a curb outside a hospital. Not while she is pale and exhausted, one hand still resting over our child. Not while Matteo stands by the driver’s door and Lucia glares at me through the back window like she is deciding where to hide my body.
Do I know?
No.
That’s the worst part. Not the guilt. The blank. She asked the one thing I should be able to answer in my sleep, and there’s nothing there. A held breath. A shut door.
I know what it looked like. I know what it cost. But I don’t know what it felt like for her, standing in front of me, telling the truth to a man who had already decided. Not all the way. Maybe not at all.
A husband should know the size of the wound he made. I only know I made it.
I know the shape of my own pain too well. It’s loud. It’s been throwing furniture in my head for days. Hers was quieter. That doesn’t mean it was smaller.
The gray car pulls away. I stand on the curb and watch until it turns the corner.
Lewis steps up beside me.
“Outer car is following two streets back.”
“Good.”
“No one near the building.”
“Good.”
“You should sleep.”
He doesn’t look sorry. People keep getting brave around me. Serena would say I look like death in an expensive coat, and she’d be right.
“Find Claudia,” I say.
Lewis exhales. “She’s at the Edinburgh house.”
I turn my head slowly. “My Edinburgh house?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“She said Vittorio asked her to wait there in case you needed family.”
Family. That word is getting abused today.
“Is Vittorio there?”
“Not yet.”
“Good.”
Lewis gives me a look. “Good?”
“I want her first.”
“Careful.”
“People keep saying that to me.”
I almost smile. Almost.
“Bring Neil’s full file,” I say. “Nadia’s photo. The payment route. And the hospital photo someone sent.”
“All of it?”
“No. Enough.”
Lewis nods. We don’t show Claudia everything—snakes strike differently when they think the boot is still guessing.
The drive to the Edinburgh house takes twelve minutes. I remember none of it. I sit in the back of the car with Serena’s question in my mouth like a blade I’m not allowed to spit out.
I wanted to believe her and did not. That may be worse. I had all the right instincts and still obeyed the wrong fear.
The Edinburgh house is a narrow Georgian place Meridian Holdings owns on paper, the kind we use when family business requires distance from London and a legal fiction of privacy.
Very elegant, if your idea of elegance includes panic rooms and men named Ewan pretending to be gardeners while carrying guns under waxed jackets.
Claudia’s in the drawing room. Of course she is. She’s always understood staging.
She sits in a green velvet chair by the fire, a black shawl over her shoulders. Widowhood, but seasonal.
She rises when I enter.
“Rocco.”
Soft voice. Soft eyes. Soft black dress. I think of Serena in a hospital gown, telling me no, telling me outside, telling me not like this. Soft doesn’t mean harmless. Sometimes soft is where people hide the knife.
“Sit,” I say.
Claudia’s expression tightens. Only for a second. She sits. I do not.
Lewis closes the door and stays by it with the file under his arm.
Claudia looks at him, then back at me. “Should he be here?”
“Yes.”
“I thought this was family.”
“You keep using that word.”
Her mouth parts slightly. Good. Let her start off balance.
“Rocco, I heard about the hospital.” She leans forward. “Is Serena all right? Is the baby?—”
“Do not.”
The word is quiet. She stops. Her hand freezes halfway to her throat. That hand. Always there when she needs to look delicate.
“Do not what?”
“Use my child to sound kind.”
Her face changes. Hurt first. Then confusion. Then the exact level of wounded pride a normal woman might show if wrongly accused.
She is very good.
“I’ve only cared about your family,” she says.
“Have you?”
“Yes.”
“Then you will be happy to help.”
Her attention drops to Lewis’s file. “Of course.”
“Neil Barker is in Castellano custody.”
The room changes. Not much. The fire cracks. Claudia blinks. Once. Too slow. She knows what that word costs in this family. People don’t leave our custody with their secrets intact.
“Custody?” she says. “That sounds dramatic.”
“He tried to run.”
“From what?”
“From questions.”
“Perhaps he was frightened.”
“He was.”
She weighs me. “You can frighten people without meaning to.”
“I usually mean to.”
“Rocco,” she says, “what’s this about?”
“The footage.”
Her face goes still. There, under all the velvet. The tiniest lock of the jaw.
“I thought we had already discussed that.”
“We discussed what you wanted me to see.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Yes, you do.”
Her eyes shine. Oh, she can do tears.
“I brought you something painful because I thought you deserved the truth,” she says. “It hurt me to do it.”
“How much did it hurt you?”
She stares at me. “That is cruel.”
“No. Cruel was Serena hearing our child’s heartbeat today in a hospital after pain scared her half to death because I made her afraid to call me.”
The tears vanish, then return weaker.
“I’m sorry she was frightened.”
“Are you?”
“Of course.”
I move one log in the fire with the poker because my hands want to break something, and for once I’m trying to be selective.
“Tell me about the raw footage,” I say.
Claudia’s fingers tighten on the shawl. “Raw footage?”
“Yes.”
“I only saw what you saw.”
I look over my shoulder. “Did you?”
“Yes.”
Lie. Clean. Immediate. Practiced.
I set the poker down.
“The version you sent me starts after Rafe’s already in bed.”
“I don’t remember exact?—”
“You told me the morning Serena left that you were sorry I had to see Rafe undress her.”
Silence. Small. Deadly.
“I was speaking generally.”
“Rafe does not undress her in the version you gave me.”
She swallows. The slip. Not enough for a council room. Enough for me.
“The implication was clear,” she says.
“Interesting word for a woman who brought me certainty.”
Her face hardens for the first time. Barely. But I see it. It’s a shame I began seeing things after I exiled my pregnant wife.
“You were the one who chose what to do,” Claudia says.
I smile. There she is. Under the tears, under the shawl, under the dead husband she wears like armor.
“Yes,” I say. “I was.”
That throws her. She expected denial. Rage. Maybe a threat. Not agreement.
I take one step closer. “I chose wrong.”
Her mouth trembles. “Because she lied.”
Cold moves through me. The good kind. The kind that clears the smoke.
“Do not say that again.”
“Rocco, I know you love her?—”
“You know nothing about how I love my wife.”
The room goes silent.
My wife. Not the problem. Not the woman in the footage. Claudia hears it. Good.
“She told me the truth,” I say. “Twice. I failed her. That failure is mine. But the lie is not.”
Claudia stands. Slowly. Careful.
“You’re blaming me because you can’t bear to blame yourself.”
I laugh once, tired. “No. I blame myself beautifully. Ask anyone. I can blame more than one person in a day.”
“You are spiraling.”
“Maybe.”
“This is exactly what Vittorio feared. Serena makes you emotional. Reckless. She pulls you away from the family when you need to be clear.”
Vittorio’s words. Or hers. Hard to tell with snakes.
“And what do you make me?” I ask.
She pauses. “Strong.”
The answer she believes is safe. My uncle’s favorite word—the thing men in my family say when they mean cruel but want applause.
“Serena was in a hospital bed today,” I say.
Claudia’s eyes flicker. “I know.”
“No, you don’t. You know she was at the hospital. You do not know she was scared. You do not know she asked me to wait outside and I did. You do not know she told me no and I obeyed.”
Her mouth tightens. That one bothers her. Interesting.
“I’m glad you were there for her,” she says.
“You are terrible at pretending.”
Now she’s angry. Bright under the skin.
“I lost my husband to this family,” she says. “I have done everything asked of me. I have carried grief with dignity while women like Serena walked in and softened men who cannot afford softness.”
Women like Serena. There. Not proof. But truth.
“Women like Serena,” I repeat.
Claudia realizes her mistake. Too late.
“I meant outsiders.”
“She is my wife.”
“She is Russo.”
“She is Castellano.”
“Only because you gave her the name.”
I cross the space between us so fast she steps back. Fear flashes over her face. Real this time. Good. Then I stop. One arm’s length away. Not touching.
I will not lay a hand on her. Not because she deserves gentleness—because Serena asked me on a hospital curb to become something better than impulse. I don’t get to answer that by becoming a man she can’t trust in another room.
“Serena did not need my name to matter,” I say. “She mattered before me. She will matter after me if that’s what she chooses.”
Claudia looks at me like I have spoken another language. Maybe I have.
Castellano men do not say after me. Castellano men say mine. I still feel that word in my bones. Mine, with Matteo standing beside her car.
Wanting her hasn’t changed. Possession has to. I hate this lesson. I’m learning it anyway.
The door opens without a knock. Vittorio walks in. Of course he does. He never could resist entering rooms like they owe him rent.
“Enough,” he says.
I don’t turn right away.
Claudia’s shoulders drop a fraction. Relief. Another thread.
“Uncle,” I say.
Vittorio closes the door behind him. “This has gone far enough.”
Lewis shifts near the wall. Vittorio regards him with open dislike. “Leave.”
Lewis doesn’t move.
I finally turn. “No.”
My uncle’s eyes harden. “You forget yourself.”
“Not anymore.”
Vittorio glances at Claudia, then at me. “You’re tearing apart the family over a wife who humiliated you.”
“Say that again and see what it costs.”
Claudia inhales softly.
Vittorio’s jaw sets. He’s old, not stupid. For once, he doesn’t step over the line.