Page 36 of Blood Orange Christmas
“See the little cars?” the younger croons, fake-sweet. “Do you like cars?”
“Where’s your mamma?” the older asks, and there’s nothing sweet in it. It knows its job.
“Inside,” Marco says, matter-of-fact and breathy. He’s been moving fast. “She told the saints we have to be polite.”
“Polite,” the younger repeats, chuckling into his wrist. “He’s a prince.”
Harrison tilts a tiny no. Don’t break. Don’t run. Wait for the thing we can use.
I press the heel of my hand into my sternum. Count backward in fours the way you do with risotto. One, two, three, four—stock, salt—when the spoon changes. My fingers dig in my pocket for the red thread and find a sugar packet from lunch instead. I tear without looking. Sweet dust jumps into the damp air. Pippo sneezes, then snaps at a smell only he understands. His nose swings left hard, decisively.
Harrison sees it and nods. His hand sweeps. Up and around, higher ground, my body behind his whether I like it or not. I want to fight the plan. He’s already moved.
We creep. Brush whispers at my thighs. Leaves try to tattle. The ground tilts the way Umbria always tilts—reminding you that hills are old bones. Rocco’s shadow slides along a fold of earth, adarker dark close to the drop. He carries weight like he can fight and climb at the same time. I move like a line cook in a tight service—elbow tucked, three steps ahead of the spill.
The ravine opens without permission. One more step and it would’ve been air. Water gleams far below like a knife someone forgot to wipe. The opposite wall is close enough to throw a stone and far enough that the stone would lie out loud about what it hit. A goat path hugs the edge, narrower than fear.
They’re there. Twenty yards ahead, paused where the path fattens under a scraggly fir. The older wears a brown jacket that wants to be expensive and a hat that thinks it’s local. The younger has a haircut he paid for and shoes someone else will clean. Marco stands between, one small hand in the elder’s, red scarf looped twice, end tucked under his arm. His face has the set he gets when he’s being brave for me. He isn’t crying. He is very aware.
“Hold,” Harrison whispers.
Something else is wrong and takes a second to say its name. The path shows three kinds of soles, the neat tread by the men, the zigzag sneakers, and a third—a flat, soft pattern, light and quick, that cuts away up-slope and disappears. The hair lifts on my arms.
“There’s another,” I mouth. Harrison nods.I know.
The elder tips his head toward the slope, listening to a voice in his pocket. His eyes tick up the way people do when a phone lies and they think the sky will tell the truth. The younger turns his head too far when a stone rolls in the brush.
Up-slope, a shadow unlaces from a pine—lean, patient. He’s been watching. He’s been waiting. He is not with the idiots at the edge. He is the job.
He looks toward the house. He looks toward me. He smiles the smallest wrong smile.
“Now,” Harrison breathes, too quiet to be a word. Rocco shifts his weight, sliding down a seam in the hill. I can feel the body math start—angle, momentum, gravity paid in coin.
I almost break. I could run. I could throw my whole stupid love over the edge like a net and hope. Harrison’s palm is there again, the whole of a “no” built in muscle. “Two minutes,” he says, breath only. “Dante is on the road.”
Two minutes used to be nothing. Two minutes used to be risotto waiting. Two minutes is a life.
“Marco,” I say, a thread. He hears me. His head turns. His eyes find mine.
“Brave red car,” I say, so soft, even the snow can’t hear me. “Reverse.”
His hand twitches. The older man feels the twitch and squeezes hard. That’s when the shadow up-slope moves—slow, then quick. He drops like a second thought becoming a bad one.
I’m already moving because my body is bad at watching its child be a lesson. Harrison doesn’t stop me. He matches me and makes sure if I fall, I fall on him.
The shadow reaches first. He doesn’t touch Marco. He hits the elder’s wrist, sideways and low. There’s a sound—I know it from the butcher’s slate when someone uses a knife wrongly. The elder yelps. The grip loosens.
“Reverse,” I breathe again. My boy takes one careful step back like he’s carrying soup.
The younger fumbles at his waistband for a gun that thinks it’s braver than he is. Rocco’s on him before the second half of the thought—twist, clatter, the weapon vanishes into brush like it remembers it’s not invited.
Two minutes. One minute. I can taste copper.
The shadow—third man—turns his head just enough that I see his face. Nothing you could sketch without moving your hand fast. The kind you forget if you want to. He smiles again. He isn’t after ransom. He’s not even after panic. He wants us to watch. He wants a message to live past today.
He steps back. He’s gone up-slope before snow remembers his weight.
“Don’t,” Harrison says into his radio, because every guard on the ridge wants to chase. “We hold the kid first.”
