Page 33 of Blood Orange Christmas
“Dante,” I say, “be careful.”
He looks at me for a long moment. “I’ll try.”
“That’s not good enough.”
He almost smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Then I’ll do better.”
He steps closer, close enough that I can smell the wine on his breath, the faint smoke of the kitchen still clinging to his shirt. “Keep Marco with you,” he says. “If anyone knocks, don’t open the door. No matter what name they use.”
I nod, but it feels like something in me is tightening, pulling at the center of my chest.
“I don’t like this,” I whisper.
“Neither do I,” he says softly. “But I can’t lose anyone else tonight.”
He turns toward the door, stops for just a second, and glances back. His gaze meets mine, steady, searching. “Lock everything behind me.”
Then he’s gone.
The sound of his footsteps fades through the corridor, and the house settles into its own heartbeat again—slow, steady, too loud in the quiet.
The dishes are still warm on the table. His glass has a small fingerprint on the rim. I pick it up without thinking, trace the mark with my thumb, and then set it down again.
Outside, an engine starts somewhere beyond the gate. The sound grows softer, swallowed by the hills. I stand there until it’s gone, watching the empty doorway.
15
SERENA
The engine fades into the hills and the house holds its breath like it’s bracing for a slap. Plates still warm on the little table. His glass smudged with a thumbprint that looks like a decision. I walk the rooms the way you check burners—kitchen door. Pantry latch. Scullery’s narrow door I never liked. I touch every window catch.
Marco should be napping.
“Ten minutes,” I told him after lunch, kissing hair that smelled like soap and flour. He saluted with the red car and slid under the quilt while Rosa took her usual post in the armchair by the window, tablet balanced on her knees, tea steaming beside her. “Ten minutes,” she’d said, smiling like the world still had rules.
The quiet is wrong. Not the good kitchen-after-service quiet with its clean hum. Not radiator creaks practicing. It’s the kind where saints in the hallway lift their painted hands and won’t say why. The fountain has swallowed a word and refuses to give it back.
I glance at the nursery monitor. The feed is frozen—Marco mid-laugh, mouth open, motionless. The red light that should blink has gone dark.
“Rosa?” I call, already moving.
The corridor outside our room tastes like cooled stone. Her chair is tipped a little off-angle, the tablet face-down, tea spilled in a pale stain across the rug. Rosa sits slumped sideways, breathing shallow but steady, her lashes trembling. I touch her wrist—pulse slow, syrup-thick. The air smells faintly of almonds and over-steeped herbs.
“Rosa.” I shake her shoulder once, firm. Her head lolls. Her lips try for a word that doesn’t come.
“Harrison!” My voice cracks through the corridor like glass. He appears before the echo dies.
“She’s been drugged,” I say, already easing Rosa down onto the rug, sliding a cushion under her head. “She’s alive but out cold—get Gabriella, call medical, keep her breathing.”
He crouches, two fingers to her throat, nods once. “Breathing. I’ve got her.”
I stand, my own pulse spiking. “Marco was with her.”
The words turn the air to ice. I shove the door open.
The quilt is rucked on one side like a small body wriggled out fast. Elephant facedown in the middle of the bed, one ear folded like he tripped and didn’t get up. Lightning McQueen gone from the sill. Shoes missing from under the chair. The red scarf he loves—thick wool, white stripes at the ends from some market—doesn’t hang on its peg.
The quiet tips into a roar.
