I stared at it. The words looked like they’d been written by two different people. “Gone to walk perimeter” was the battered, vigilant man who made every decision for us. “Don’t freak out. Love you.” was the Dante who made scrambled eggs three ways and called me beautiful when he thought I was asleep.
I tucked the note in my pocket, pressed my palms flat to the counter, and realized I was shaking more than I wanted to admit. The house felt safe enough, but the memory of running—city streets, bridge wind, Marco’s half-collapsed body—hovered at the edge of every moment. I hadn’t realized how much ofmyself was built around panic until it was gone, replaced by this blank, lakeside quarantine.
I started unloading groceries, needing something heavy and repetitive to keep me grounded. Cans of stew stacked in the cabinet. Gatorade in the fridge. Protein bars on the counter—four flavors. Dante secretly hated “Mixed Berry” but bought it anyway because it was always left behind. I lined up the prenatal vitamins—eight bottles, because “you never know how long you’ll be on the run from organized crime”—then sat back, winded, and let Marco’s voice from the den anchor me.
“—I’m just saying,” he drawled, “they should let the rabbit eat the damn cereal for once. Guy’s been trying for, like, seventy years. Where’s the justice in that?”
I poked my head around the corner. Marco was hunched over the TV, blanket around his shoulders, face lit blue by the cartoon. He looked marginally less dead than yesterday. Just enough color in his cheeks to make him look like an underfed vampire instead of a trauma ward escapee.
“You ever think,” I said, “that maybe the rabbit doesn’t even want the cereal? Maybe he’s just chasing the idea of wanting it. Like, it’s not about the sugar at all.”
He turned, eyebrows up. “Jade, are you high?”
“Not while pregnant, no.” I settled into a wobbly faux-leather chair, tucking my foot under me. My stomach, restless and heavy, made the seat creak. “But life on the run makes you philosophical.”
He nodded, then winced. “You’re not wrong.”
He eyed my hands where I fiddled with the safety seal on the vitamins, then let his mouth flatten into something serious for once. “You good?”
The question just sat there. He didn’t mean it like most people did, all surface and soft-pitched. He meant: Am I about to watch you break down? Because he was about to break down. I saw it in the shine over his eyes, the sweat at his hairline. His pain was real, but the fear—the fear was old, older than us, maybe older than the Moretti name itself.
“I’m functional,” I lied. “Thanks for surviving.”
A snort. “It’s my second-best skill, after running my mouth.”
“Dante loves you. He needs you to take care of yourself.”
“I know,” Marco said, small and unguarded. He spun the remote in his hand, thumb worrying the battered rubber, then muted the cartoon. “He’s always been that way. Like it’s his job to keep everyone else moving even if he’s barely got the energy to lift his own arms.” He hesitated, glancing at me like he wasn’t sure if I was the right audience. “He looks up to you, you know. Not just the science stuff—he said you were the only person he ever met who could tell him to shut up and actually mean it.”
A smile threatened my lips, but didn’t quite make it. “Is that a compliment or an insult?”
He shrugged one shoulder, careful not to disturb the wound. “Hell if I know. It’s Moretti for ‘I love you.’”
If I let that land—if I let myself believe it, even for a second—it would break something in me I’d spent the last three days desperately trying to keep together.
I blinked twice, swallowed the grit in my throat, and reached for a bottle of water.
“You’re bleeding through your bandage.”
Marco grinned, feral and weirdly proud. “Looks like I’ll live, after all.” Then, voice dropping: “Thanks for yesterday. I was out of it, but I caught most of what you were doing. You would’ve made a hell of a trauma surgeon.”
“I’d have been a disaster in medical school. All the drama, none of the fun,” I said, twisting the cap off his Advil and shaking two into his palm. “I prefer cells to people.”
“Hey, I’m people,” he protested, but his pout was so over-the-top it actually made me laugh.
A tired, exhausted laugh, but real. He popped the pills and chased them with water, slumping back into the couch like a cat in a sunny spot. His eyes closed, and I thought he’d dropped off, but then his voice emerged again, thin as a thread: “You know Dante’s not going to stop running. Not ‘til he’s sure you and the baby are safe.”
This time I let the smile come, but it felt heavy. “I know.” The house settled around us. Marco started snoring again, the cartoon rabbit still failing in thirty-second loops on the TV.
An hour passed. I spent it at the window, watching the sky. The ducks had vanished with the sun, leaving only a scum of icewhere the lake lapped the yard. I wondered if they ever looked at the sky and knew, even for a second, that a hawk was coming. Or if the only thing that mattered was the moment—the next crumb of bread, the next glide under a dock, the next heartbeat.
Marco stirred when I got up. He put his hand over his eyes like he could block out the sun.
“Did he ever tell you about the first time he saved my life?”
I shook my head.
“I got beat up in sixth grade, real bad. Broke my nose, chipped two teeth. Dad didn’t care, said it built character. Dante showed up at the hospital after school, hands all scraped to hell. He’d found every kid who touched me and made them eat gravel or worse. Even the girls.”
