2
LORENZO
The compound is quiet when I gear up. Late enough that most of the family has gone to bed. Nonna Rosa’s kitchen light is off. Dante’s study is dark. Good. I don’t want to explain where I’m going. I don’t explain things. People who explain themselves surrender pieces of themselves they can’t recover.
The armory is in the basement, past the wine cellar and the storage rooms that hold more weapons than vintage Bordeaux. I take what I need. Glock, suppressor, two extra magazines. Knife at my ankle. Zip ties in my back pocket.
Ghost is a hacker, not a fighter. This should be simple. Should be.
My fingers press against my pocket. The rosary is there, worn smooth. Mama pressed them into my hands the last time she was lucid, fingers cold and paper-thin, eyes already looking somewhere I couldn’t follow.Renzo. My gentle boy.
I don’t pray anymore. But I carry her beads.
Footsteps on the stairs. Gia. She moves like Mama used to, light and quick, always rushing somewhere.
“Renzo.” She stops in the doorway, arms crossed, still in her scrubs from the clinic. Dark circles under her eyes. She puts inmore hours than any of us. Dante with his ledgers and his late-night calls. Marco with his training, pushing himself until his knuckles bleed. Nico with whatever masks he wears when he thinks no one’s watching.
“You’re going out.” Not a question.
“Yes.”
“It’s almost midnight.”
I holster the gun. Check the knife. “Yes.”
“Does Dante know?”
I don’t answer. She already does. If Dante knew, she wouldn’t be asking.
She sighs. Crosses the room. I brace myself the way I’d brace for a blow.
She hugs me. Her arms come around my waist and her head presses against my chest and I stand there. Still. Arms at my sides.
One. Two. Three.
She’s warm. She smells like antiseptic and the lavender soap Nonna Rosa stocks in all the bathrooms. Her arms tighten, squeezing like she can force connection through pressure alone.
I don’t pull away. That would hurt her. I don’t lean in either.
Four. Five. Six.
Nonna Rosa keeps albums somewhere, buried in closets, of a boy who smiled and reached for people and didn’t count the seconds until contact ended. That boy died a long time ago.
Seven.
She lets go. Steps back. Searches my face the same way she’s been doing for years.
“Be careful,” she says.
“Always am.”
“You’d tell me if something was wrong.”
The words sit between us. She wants them to be true. I let her believe they are.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
She doesn’t believe me. Mama’s eyes in Gia’s face, brown and too knowing. But she lets it go the way she always does.
