Page 39 of Blood Orange Christmas
“He’s the reason we’re here,” I say. “Not on their payroll. He has his own.”
“Name?” Harrison asks.
“I earn it,” I say.
Serena wipes her palm on her skirt. Blood tracks along the old crescent scar at her wrist. I catch her hand. The tremor finds her fingers now that walls are close. I want to break anything that remembers she has hands.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her because some debts you say out loud until your mouth believes you’ll pay. “I left you with a war while I chased a ghost. You put a knife in a man so our boy could breathe. I’m sorry.”
She looks like she wants to throw the apology back and keep it both. “Take him,” she says, nodding to Marco. “He needs a furnace. I’m out of heat.”
I lift him. He comes up heavy in the way that makes a man grateful—wool and boy and future. He locks his arms around my neck and parks his cheek in my collar like he has been saving that spot. His breath warms the place my throat remembers being used for lies. I like this job better.
“Papa,” he says into my coat, testing the word and liking the taste. “You came fast.”
“Not fast enough,” I say, because truth buys more truth. “Never again not fast enough.”
“Back to the house,” Harrison orders, already splitting the air into lanes. We move as a unit that has practiced on older nights. Pippo posts at Marco’s knees, tail a flag that meanstry me.The ravine keeps talking about water and time. The fir shakes itself like an old man pushing up out of a chair.
Under the arch, light does kind things to faces. Gabriella meets us with a blanket and a mug that breathes soup. She wraps Marco tightly and hands him back when his fingers refuse to unclasp my coat. Pippo flops across his feet like a doorstop with a badge.
The Moretti cousins gather in a picture of concern. I see calculation under pearls, offense under a perfect cuff. Camilla stands off with two phones in clear bags and a look that meanslater, I inventory sins. You pay.The saints lift painted hands. Serena tucks her shaking knife hand into her apron like a secret and lifts her chin until the tremor remembers who owns it.
“Split them,” I tell Harrison, meaning the two men. “Different rooms. No names. No bathroom without a friend. No priest. I talk first.”
“Study and map room,” he says. Rocco steers the bleeding one toward the map room where wood remembers borders. Another guard ghosts the younger into the study where stories learn not to lie.
“Luca,” I say into the radio. “West road. Quarry to ridge. I want Paolo, or bone, or the name of the man who thinks he gets to keep him.”
“On it,” Luca answers. He sounds like a saint from the wrong book—dried blood on his lip, grin sharp enough to slice paper.“Van with no real plates. Chatter smells rented. He’s not with them. Yet.”
“Buy their courage back,” I say. “With interest.”
“With interest,” he says, already moving.
Camilla slides a sealed envelope under my palm. “Gate drop, just before the lights went wrong. No prints. No crest.” Inside, a neat hand that learned to behave at church—Il cuoco rimane.The cook stays. Under it, smaller,Tonight is rehearsal.Paper smells like money and cameras. I don’t show Serena.
“Later,” I tell Camilla.
“Later,” she says, which meansI already know.
Marco shifts, tilts back to study me like a plate he plans to use every day. A finger traces my jaw like a coastline. “You’re my papa,” he says again. It isn’t a question this time.
“Yes,” I say, and if the word cracks, it’s the kind that lets light in. “Yes, Marco.”
He nods, solemn, contract signed. Cheek down. Breaths even. Sleep negotiates with his lashes and wins.
I turn to Serena because I owe her arteries. “I’m sorry,” I say again, feeling it land where it should. “I chased a ghost and left a real door for someone else to hold. I’ll fix it. I’ll pull the root and burn it where the men who watered it can see. There isn’t a second time.”
She doesn’t bless me and doesn’t burn me. She steps into the small country we make—boy, blanket, dog, chest—and presses her forehead to mine until the house remembers its real job is keeping weather out.
“Then keep your promise,” she says. “And keep your hands where they belong.”
“On you,” I say. “On him. On the lock.”
Behind us, the work continues—Harrison’s ledger voice taking names, Rocco’s boots teaching respect, Camilla’s lists turning to law, Gabriella’s soup breathing a prayer no priest can own. Snow finally commits and starts falling honestly, laying a clean lie over footprints, making vines look soft. By noon, it’s gone. Umbria teaches what you count on and what you let pass.
I listen to the hiss at the windows and make a promise that feels like steel warming in my hands. “This is the last time,” I say into Serena’s hair, into Marco’s wool, into the dog’s ridiculous ear. “The last time I let them near you. The last time I let them near him. The last time I choose the wrong war.”
