Page 150 of The Hitman's Secret Baby
"I'm trying."
"Try harder."
The last thing I feel is the jolt of the cab taking a sharp turn, the weight of the phone slipping from my fingers, and the sound of her voice still in my ear as darkness rises around me like water in a well. I let it take me.
29
ENZO
Light presses against my closed eyelids like a tide trying to drag me back into something softer than death, but heavier than sleep. I do not want to wake at first.
Not because I am afraid of what I will find, but because I am afraid of what I might not.
I expect pain, and it greets me.
A dull throb spirals beneath my ribs, wrapping itself around every breath like a reminder carved into bone.
My mouth is dry, my lips cracked. My fingers twitch against linen sheets that feel like they belong to someone else.
There is an antiseptic smell in the air, and lavender too faint to hide the sterility beneath it. A ceiling fan hums above, not quite turning fast enough to forget the silence of the room.
A woman squeals.
It is not a sound I associate with this house. She drops whatever chart she was holding and bolts from the room so fast I wonder if I imagined her entirely.
Footsteps echo outside the door before I can make sense of them. I try to sit up, but my body protests, all fire and ache stitched into every muscle.
I grit my teeth and manage to lift my head just enough to scan the room.
I know this place. Even in the haze of pain and memory.
It is the room I used to sleep in before I became what Luca made me.
Before the jobs took me far from home.
Before the walls of this house began to speak in whispers I could not always understand.
The armoire is the same.
The walls, pale cream with molding that has never been repainted. The chair in the corner still bears the imprint of old leather and forgotten conversations.
The door opens slowly, but the presence that fills the space is well-known to me.
Luca does not rush.
He never has.
He steps inside like he owns time itself, and maybe in this house, he does.
His eyes are sharp, but there is something beneath them I do not recognize.
Not pity.
Not concern.
Something quieter, deeper.
Like he watched the end draw near and refused to believe in it.
