“You’re still going out.”
His thumb swept slow circles along my hip.“Yes.”
“I hate it.”
“I know.”
“Will you come back before dawn?”
“I’ll come back,” he said, and didn’t give dawn the dignity of a promise.
“Don’t become him.”
He touched his forehead to mine.“I won’t.”Then, quieter, truer: “I’ll try.”
“I’ll taketry,” I said, because that was what loving men like him meant—you held on to the trying and let the winning come later.
He rose, straightened his shirt, gathered his tie.When he turned to go, I caught his hand.“Wait.”
He did.He always did with me.That was the difference.
“Be careful.”
“I will,” he answered, and even if it was the oldest lie, it was also the oldest spell, and I let it work.
He left with the soft surety of a man who has made peace with danger.
I pulled his shirt tighter and found my way upstairs.Catrina’s door was closed.In our bedroom, I didn’t turn on the light.The bruises faded to the color of late violets; the cut tugged when I moved my arm wrong.
Sleep flirted.It didn’t commit.Not long after, the digital clock on the bedside table washed the room in green.2:11.I laid still and listened.Nothing.And then—something.Not footsteps inside, but a sound carried through walls and rain: the faint crunch of tires on wet gravel far beyond the gates, then the soft, unmistakableclickof a cigarette lighter giving birth to flame.
I slid out of bed and crossed to the window.The lawn stretched away in clean lines, the driveway a long black ribbon.Beyond the iron, the street was mostly empty.Then I saw it: not a car—just a small, stubborn ember hovering at shoulder height in the dark, flaring, dimming, flaring again.Someone standing still, smoking and watching our house.After a minute, the ember dropped.The shape moved, a darker shadow peeling from shadow, and vanished down the block.
I should have called Enrico.Instead I stood there and let the fear gather, then thin.It wasn’t bravery.It wasn’t foolish.It was the decision that I would not be prey to my own imagination, not tonight.
Still, when I turned from the window, something on the balcony caught the corner of my eye.I eased open the door.Rain ticked off the iron railing.There, tucked where the balcony meets the gutter, a small thing waited—white against dark.An origami crane.
It slumped from the rain, wings softened, but the folds were careful, precise, almost loving.I stared at it until my skin prickled.The paper wasn’t plain.Faint ink bled up through the whiteness—columns of numbers and a stamped seal.
By morning I could pretend it hadn’t been there.But I reached anyway, slid it into my palm.
I went back inside and closed the door.The crane sat on the bedside table.I lay down and listened for Enrico’s key in the lock or for the hum of the car returning.
I did not sleep.I did not cry.I did the most dangerous thing a woman in my world can do.I made a plan.
30
ENRICO
My desk was littered with files, reports, and one single photograph—the image of a black sedan, its license plate blurred by motion, caught on a surveillance camera near the docks.Marco stood across from me.His shirt was rolled at the sleeves, forearms streaked with faint bruises from the fight that should have killed us all.He broke the silence first.
“They moved clean.Whoever took the girls knew what they were doing.Professional.Not the usual street rats.”
This wasn’t new information.Was this supposed to make me feel better?“And yet they were stupid enough to leave a trail.”
Marco frowned, leaning in.“The car?”
“Same make, same damage on the rear fender, spotted at the docks three nights ago—and again outside Father’s old property on Via del Leone.Someone’s resurrecting ghosts.”
