Then I hear Signora Ricci yell for help.
The sound cuts through the air, high and terrified and completely wrong coming from the woman who hums while she kneads dough.
Everything changes in that moment.
Enzo's casual posture disappears, replaced by something coiled and deadly. Even from my hiding spot, I can see the shift. The way his shoulders set, the way his head tilts slightly, like a predator calculating angles of attack.
Then he moves.
I've never seen anything like it. One moment he's standing surrounded by armed men, apparently at their mercy. The next, there's an explosion of violence that happens too fast for my eyes to follow completely.
The man closest to him drops first. I see Enzo's hand move in a blur, then the man is falling. A gun clatters across the stones. By the time the others react, Enzo has the weapon and is already firing his own.
The sound of gunshots echoes off the water and stone buildings, sharp cracks that make me flinch behind the tree. I want to look away, but I can't. I'm frozen, watching a man I thought I knew transform into something out of a nightmare.
Two more men fall in rapid succession. But the fourth man has his gun trained on the customs house, and I realize with horror what he's threatening.
Signora Ricci.
Enzo realizes it too. Instead of taking cover, instead of finishing off his remaining attackers from a safe position, he runs directly toward the customs house. Toward the gunman who's threatening to kill an innocent woman.
It's completely stupid and reckless. The man has a clear shot at him. There are still other threats he hasn't neutralized. But Enzo throws himself between the gunman and the building where Signora Ricci is being held, and in that moment, I realize something I never expected.
He's willing to die for her.
Not for me, not for some strategic advantage, but for a seventy-year-old baker who feeds his village and asks nothing in return. A little old lady who remembers him as a lonely child living on a hill, watching other children play.
The gunman fires. I see Enzo stumble, but he doesn't stop moving. He reaches the man and they go down together in a tangle of limbs and violence that ends with only one of them getting back up.
Enzo.
But he's hurt. I can see him favoring his left arm as he approaches the customs house, and there are other men there now. Reinforcements from the other side, maybe, or maybe some of his own people finally moving in to help.
The next few minutes are chaos. Shouts in Italian, more gunfire, figures moving in and out of the shadows. I lose track of Enzo in the confusion until I see him emerge from the customs house half-carrying a small, familiar figure.
Signora Ricci.
Even from this distance, I can see she's crying and upset but walking on her own. Enzo has his good arm around her, guiding her carefully away from the building, and the gentleness of the gesture is so at odds with the violence I just witnessed that it makes my chest tight.
He killed at least three men tonight. Maybe more. I watched him do it with my own eyes.
But he also risked his life to save a woman who bakes bread and refuses payment from strangers.
I don't know how to reconcile these two truths about the same person.
More of his men appear, surrounding them both, creating a protective barrier as they move toward the cars. The harbor is littered with bodies now, dark shapes on the stone that were living men just minutes ago.
I should go. I should get back to my cottage before anyone realizes I disobeyed Enzo's orders and came here. But I can't seem to move. I'm frozen, staring down at a scene that looks like something from a war zone, not a picturesque Italian fishing village.
This is who Enzo is.
This is what he does.
When someone threatens what's his, he kills them. Personally, if needed and without hesitation.
But he also protects his people. Even at the cost of his own safety.
I finally understand why the villagers show him such complex deference. It's not just fear. It's the recognition that he's dangerous enough to protect them and powerful enough to make that protection mean something.
