“I know.”
“I hate that it’s happening at all.”
“I know that too.”
We stand like that for a beat, two people who are not built to share power learning a new shape because a boy upstairs slept through a fire.
“Christmas Eve,” I say, the words tasting like a deadline.
“Christmas Eve,” he repeats calmly. “We hold steady till then. After that, we move out.”
“Until Christmas Eve,” I whisper, as if the words could hold the room together.
“Until Christmas Eve,” he says, quiet, final. The distance between us hums with everything we don’t say.
18
MATTEO
Imake three long loops through town while the ovens cool, drift past the square twice, and cut along the river once. Lila knows how to reach me. If she pulls the rig, I am on the back step before the sound dies. By ten, the sidewalks are empty. Frost threads the cracks in the pavement, and the streets settle into quiet. I take one last circle around the block, park beneath an apple tree stripped bare, and walk to the bakery.
I knock once and step inside. The room hums with the low sound of the fridge and smells faintly of soap and vanilla. Lila sits at the table, glasses low on her nose, an old accounting book open before her. The board across the front window turns the bakery into a dark box with a warm heart. She turns a page with the tip of one finger, eyes tracing neat columns of numbers as if they still make sense in a world that no longer does.
A strand of chestnut hair slips loose and brushes her cheek. She looks up over the rim of her glasses. The lamplight softens her hazel eyes to the color of toffee. Her mouth moves toward a smile but stops halfway, caught between thought and hesitation. The mug between her hands sends up a thin ribbon of steamthat curls toward her face, touching it like a whisper. Something shifts in my chest before I can stop it. I clear my throat. The sound feels too sharp in the hush.
“Any chance of a warm cup for me?” I ask, aiming for easy.
She tilts her head, that half-smile still there. “If you think you’ve earned it.”
It almost feels like coming home. Only I am a guest here, and we both know it.
I take off my jacket, roll up my sleeves, and wash my hands and face at the sink. The water runs cold and wakes me. Then I pull out a chair and sit. Lila rises without a word, moving with the practiced calm of someone who grew up behind a counter. She pours oolong, toasty and faintly floral, and sets it beside me with a plate of small things she must have kept from the day, brown butter biscuits that flake at the touch, a slice of apple cake soft from butter and spice, two slices of hearth bread glossed with honey. The smells of cinnamon and warm fruit fill the room, chasing off the cold that presses against the windows.
I eat slowly, more for the quiet than the hunger. The tea warms my hands. The sugar steadies the edge inside me. When I glance up, she is watching, her eyes moving from the mug to my hands. The knuckles are still rough, the skin marked.
She speaks softly, not accusing, not afraid. “Those lines,” she murmurs, chin tipping toward the script along my inner forearm, “what do they say?”
“La fortuna aiuta gli audaci,” I answer. “Fortune favors the bold.” I turn my arm so the ink reads true, then touch the bands on my bicep. “Debts paid. Not in money. Lives. Promises.”
Her eyes flick to my chest, then away, a flush she does not give to many men. “And the crest?” A lion stands on its hind legs, one paw on a sword, the other raised. Beneath it, a narrow banner I no longer honor.The colors have faded with age. The gold is now more bronze than bright. It looked like pride once. Now it is more like memory.
“Family,” I admit. “Not romance. A warning label.” I tap the old scar along my ribs. “Knife when I was young. I learned to keep my distance and my feet.”
She presses a thumb along a white line across my knuckles, not quite touching. “How young is young?”
“Too young to choose,” I tell her. “Old enough to obey. Naples. Work that looked like errands until it was not. I was efficient. That made me useful. Vincent trusted me with things that needed clean hands and a steady head.”
“Clean,” she repeats, amused and sad. “You hit like a storm and still call it clean.”
“I do not involve civilians. I do not make a mess I cannot own.” I hold her gaze. “It is a code. I kept it before I knew the word for it.”
Silence sits with us, easy for once, and the board on the window turns the lights into a small circle around the table. She tucks her hair, though nothing is loose. I tell myself not to watch her mouth. I fail.
“Do you ever think about stopping?” she asks, voice low.
“I think about being done with some kinds of nights,” I answer. I leave the rest in the air where it belongs, then let the edge drop from my voice. “I think about kitchens that smell like this.”
Her smile is small and real. “You make it sound simple.”
