LORENZO
The garden is the only place I can be right now. Not inside. Not anywhere near the guest wing where she’s sleeping. Not in my room, where the silence presses in and my hands won’t stop remembering what they held an hour ago.
I’m on the bench by the fountain. The jasmine is blooming, heavy sweetness thick enough to taste. Mama planted these bushes. The fountain murmurs beside me. Water over stone. I’ve been listening to it for hours, hoping it will drown everything else out.
It’s not working.
My phone buzzes. One of the crews, reporting movement near the Benedetti docks. I type two words. Watch. Report. Put the phone face-down on the bench.
Not even the job clears my head tonight.
Her pulse jumped under my thumb like a second heartbeat. I tore myself away, and I almost went back.
My mother’s voice in my head. The name she used to call me. Back before the funeral. Before I became this.
Cazzo.
The beads dig into my palm. I squeeze harder.
I need to know what she looks like when she wakes up.
I turn them between my fingers the way Mama used to. Isabella never met the boy she loved. She only knows what I’ve become.
Footsteps on the garden path. Quiet but not hiding. Gia rounds the corner of the hedge. Scrubs still on, dark circles carved under her eyes. One of the soldiers from the Tchoupitoulas job, probably. She’s been stitching someone up.
I should be inside. I’m not.
She sees me on the bench. Notes what I’m holding. She doesn’t comment. Just crosses and sits beside me. Near enough to feel her presence, far enough so she’s not touching me. She learned that boundary years ago.
No one touches me. Except Isabella. Isabella fisted her hands in my shirt and I let her. Needed her to.
Gia doesn’t fill the silence. Just exists beside me, breathing, present, waiting.
“You’re up late,” she says.
“So are you.”
“Nico’s guy. Shoulder wound reopened.” She shrugs. “He moves too much.” A pause. “You’re different, Renzo.”
My hand stills.
“Since she got here.” Quiet. Observing, not accusing. “You’re more present. Really here.”
“I’m the same.”
“You’re not.” She turns to look at me, and her eyes see too much. “When I was stitching up Dante last week, you asked how he was doing. You haven’t done that in years. You used to just stand there like you were waiting for a debriefing.”
“He’s our brother.”
“That’s my point. You’re treating him like one again.”
“Don’t.” The word comes out harder than I intended.
“Don’t what?”
“Whatever this is. Don’t.”
“Renzo.” My name. The one only family uses. The one Mama said when she wanted me to listen. “I’m not attacking you. I’m letting you know what I see.”
