I step back and grab the cardboard we keep for deliveries. He lifts the broom and sweeps slow, firm strokes, as if he can will the night to fix itself if he goes in straight lines. I want to ask him how he got here so fast, if he slept at all. I want to ask him why it had to be my kitchen and not someone else’s. I shut my mouth and hold the box open.
We fill one, then another. He sets them by the back door. He picks up the smallest pieces with a damp towel wrapped around his hand until the sill looks almost clean. The window flakes keep sifting in with the snow, a stubborn salt.
“I need to see outside,” I tell him, already tying my coat belt.
He hesitates, then nods. “Two minutes. Stay in the center. I will take the edge.”
We slide the bolt on the front door and step onto the stoop. Cold slaps my cheeks, turning my breath white. The street is shadows and light. No one is out at this hour, not even the guy who runs before dawn and looks like he has a death wish. The church steeple’s a cutout against a dark sky. The only proof we didn’t dream this is the faint ribbon of tire tracks sliding away from the curb, curving past the lamppost, and heading toward thesquare. They’re fresh enough to be clean, not yet filled by drift. Too narrow for a truck, too thick for a compact. Mid-size SUV, Matteo says. Road grit and dirty snow are caught in the tread marks.
Matteo steps up to the top of the stoop, leans out, and scans left, then right. His eyes are moving like a scanner. They pause on a darker patch under the bench across the street, then on the set of prints that approach our window and retreat the other way. Men’s boots. Deep, then lighter, like a mind changed at the last second.
“Two,” he mutters. “One driver, one with the rag.”
I swallow. My tongue tastes like pennies. “Police?”
“Not yet,” he answers. “We will call after we stage.”
“Stage?”
“We make it safe inside,” he clarifies. “We do not leave a path for another spark.”
He turns, ushers me in, and locks the door. It isn’t politeness. He’s a man in action now. He moves fast down the hall, grabs the plywood we keep in the back for storm nights, and brings it forward under one arm like it weighs nothing. I hold the other end while he fits it to the frame. He doesn’t speak, and I don’t either. The hammer falls steady, sure.
When the board sits tight, the room feels smaller but safer. The snow sound is gone. Only the fan hum remains, faint. We stand there and look at the board as if it might give us an answer. I run my thumb along a splinter and catch myself before it bites.
“Thank you,” I say, and I mean it. The words are hard to push out past pride. Pride doesn’t put out fires.
His gaze cuts to me, unreadable, then softer for a fraction. “It’s nothing.”
“It isn’t,” I answer. “You were fast.”
“I was awake.”
Because he doesn’t sleep. My life invited men who do not respect walls, and I made a boy and then built a world to hide him. A picture and a note made that world look like a map.
I throw the deadbolt and stand with my forehead against the wood for a second. The door’s old and stubborn. The grain under my skin is familiar. I breathe and let the panic swing wide and out, then settle a notch higher as resolve.
“I can’t keep pushing you away if I want my son safe,” I admit. The sentence scrapes me raw. It’s also true. “I hate it, but here we are.”
His mouth makes a line. “We are here.”
“I have rules.”
“I expect them.”
I face him. “You stay away from his bed. You don’t bring your men into his room. You tell me if you move anyone closer. You tell me if you leave the block.”
“Yes.” His voice sounds drained.
“We’re in this together. You’ll do nothing without my permission.” I keep the steel in my voice where it belongs. Control is its own kind of safety.
“Fine,” he says. “Your rules keep the boy breathing. I can live with that.”
“And you don’t turn my bakery into a war room.”
His eyes hold. “I will not. But I will make it harder to walk in with fire.”
I nod. My knees feel loose, the way they did right after I had Marco, and nobody tells you that your body’s your own again, but not really. I go to the sink, wash my hands to give them something to do, then dry them on a towel I don’t remember picking up.
