Not anymore.
The only thing that matters is getting home.
* * *
In the car, the city looks the same. Gray. Indifferent. Busy. People walking past cafés with no idea how close they are to blood.
My hand finally twitches to my ear. It rises. Touches.
Then I pull my phone. Call Lucia. It rings once. She answers on the first breath.
“Turo?” Her voice is tight, controlled, trying to be calm for Nico even if she stepped into a hallway to take the call.
“You were right,” I say immediately.
A pause. Then I hear the exhale she’s been holding like oxygen was a luxury.
“They tried?” she whispers.
“Yes,” I say. “They sprang it exactly how you saw it. Staff vectors. Flowers. Exits.”
Another breath. “You’re okay?” she asks, and the question carries everything she can’t say in front of our son.
“I’m okay,” I answer. And then, because she deserves truth, not softened, not minimized, I add quietly, “I’m okay because of you.”
Her silence is thick. I can hear the faintest sound in the background. Nico’s voice, small and distracted, asking something about cars.
Lucia’s breath shakes once. “Turo…”
“Lucia,” I say, firm. “It could have been a massacre. Twenty of my men. Me. All in that room. They designed it to wipe us out.”
I swallow. My throat tightens around the image of what could have happened.
“But we flipped it,” I continue. “Because you saw it first.”
Her voice is soft. “I just… I knew the setup was wrong.”
“You didn’t just know,” I say. “You saved my life.” A beat. “And you saved theirs,” I add. “My men. Our people.”
Her breath catches. I can imagine her face. Eyes wide, mouth tight, trying not to cry because crying feels like inviting fate to take more.
“You’re coming home?” she whispers.
“Yes,” I say, and this time the promise feels like a weapon I can enforce. “I’m on my way.”
Another pause. Then, quieter, “Nico asked.”
My chest tightens. “What did he ask?”
“When you’d be home,” she says. “He said it like… like he was trying to be brave.”
My jaw clenches, hard enough to hurt. “I’ll be there,” I say. “Soon.”
I stare at my phone for a second. Then I look out the window. Lucia is my secret weapon. Not because she’s violent. Because she sees the world the way predators do, but she learned it through survival, not ambition.
And no one saw it coming.
