The SUV swings right, then right again into a street I think I recognize and then doubt. My sense of direction got knocked crooked with everything else. We’re moving fast but not crazy; controlled speed.
“House has it,” Nico says into the comm. “Gate prep?”
“Open and clear,” a voice I don’t know answers, the house side. “Drive is empty.”
“ETA four,” our driver says, first words out of him.
“Three,” Nico corrects, and the driver shaves a corner like a blade and makes the number true.
I realize I’m holding my breath like I did in the alley. I force myself to let it go. I breathe in again.
“Call Papá?” Caterina asks Nico.
“He’s on,” he says, and I catch the tiny click of the comm.
He says nothing unnecessary. “We’re inbound.”
A pause I can feel more than hear. Then: “Copy,” Luca’s voice, threaded with steel hits me square in the breastbone. “Gate is open. I’m at the door.”
I don’t realize I’ve made a sound until Caterina squeezes my hand again, hard. “Almost,” she says.
“Two blocks,” the driver says.
I look past Caterina’s shoulder, out the passenger-side window. The sky is still impossibly blue.
Cars shine. People walk dogs and check phones, and carry iced coffees that sweat down their palms. The air looks the same for everybody else as it did twenty minutes ago. For us, it is not.
We roll through a yellow light that was probably red by the time we cleared the middle. The second SUV is behind us, a long black shadow on our tail that makes me feel contained in a way that isn’t suffocating for once.
“Last turn,” the driver says, and takes it in a single smooth motion that glues my shoulder to the door and then peels me off again. We straighten. The hedges I know are at the end of the block, the iron of the gate beyond them, the slice of drive that points to the front door.
“Gate,” Nico says.
“Clear,” the house says back.
We roll in. The iron swings on its hinges and then is behind us, shutting out a city full of noise.
The SUV stops in front of the steps, and the engine idles hard. For a second, I can’t get my fingers to listen to my brain. Then my seat belt releases, and the click is loud in the quiet space of my mind.
Nico has the back door open before I can reach for it. “Inside,” he says, and it’s softer now but no less immediate.
I slide out first, then Caterina, and we climb the steps fast. The air at the front of the house smells like rosemary and sun-warmed stone. I don’t let myself think until the door is open, and then there he is—Luca, waiting.
And then we’re over the threshold.
Luca is there before the latch even clicks. One breath, I’m in the doorway; the next, I’m folded into him, Caterina too, his arms a hard band around both of us. He smells like clean cotton and something familiar and comfortable, and for a second, my body just sags, shock catching up, relief sucking the bones out of me.
“You’re here,” he says into my hair, into both our shoulders. “You’re here.”
I nod against him because I can’t make my mouth work. The quiet of the foyer wraps around us like it can erase the alley,the crack of the shots so close to my face, the smear of paint on a steel door. I feel his chest drag a breath. His hand finds the back of my head and stays there, like he can anchor me by touch alone.
Caterina holds on for one more beat and then eases back, a palm on my arm before stepping back. The house seems to exhale around us—low voices somewhere, a door shutting softly. The ordinary sounds of safety.
My mind comes back online too fast.
The image hits, bright and specific: the outline of the door in my peripheral vision, the spit of paint at my cheek. The way my hip banged the seat belt anchor. The way my hand flew to my stomach when I was on the floor of the alley.
My throat tightens until it burns. I step back.
