Page 154 of The Hitman's Secret Baby
He grows tomatoes in the back garden. I paint sometimes.
We take walks in the early evening, the sky split open with pink and rust, Gabriel racing ahead on his bike while Enzo's hand brushes mine like it always has, quietly, without ceremony, like something that belongs to us.
Sometimes, when the nights come too quiet and the wind picks up through the olive trees, I find him sitting alone on the porch, eyes far away. He still thinks about the men he left behind. The things he did to survive. But he never apologizes for them. I never ask him to. We earned this silence. We bled for it.
I wake before either of them.
It happens often.
There is a kind of peace in the quiet, in the way this house breathes when it still holds sleep. I pad across the terracotta tiles barefoot, careful not to disturb the creaking boards in the hallway, and stop at the doorway to Gabriel's room.
He is curled sideways in bed, tangled in his sheets, his hair a wild halo, the stuffed lion still clutched in his arms though it is more thread than fabric now. He is taller than he was, a little sharper in the angles of his face, but he is still our boy. Still the child who clung to me in the dark when the world was closing in.
I press a kiss to his forehead and pull the blanket higher over his shoulder. He doesn't stir.
Downstairs, the kitchen holds warmth from the bread I baked last night.
There are herbs drying near the window, strung up by Enzo in a line of curling green.
I make coffee slowly, the old way, with the stovetop pot that hisses as it boils.
The sound of it, the scent, the way it fills the corners of the house—it settles me in a way nothing else ever has. I pour two mugs, one dark and strong for him, one with milk and a little sugar for me, and then carry them back upstairs.
The bedroom is quiet when I return. The sheets are half-flung across the bed, the window wide open, the wind curling the curtain like it wants to be part of the dream.
Enzo lies sprawled on his back, bare chest rising and falling with the kind of calm that still makes my throat ache. His scars are soft now, pale like whispers against his skin. I sit beside him and brush my fingers down his arm. He stirs, turns his face toward me, and blinks slowly.
"You're up early," he murmurs, voice rough with sleep.
"I always am."
"Is he still asleep?"
"Like the dead."
Enzo's mouth tilts into a smile as he sits up and reaches for the coffee. He takes a sip and sighs like it means something more than caffeine.
I watch him, every movement familiar and unhurried. There is a streak of silver near his temple now, and when I tease him about it, he just shrugs and says it took years to earn. He is not the same man I met on the marble floors of that estate, but he is still him. Still mine.
"What are you thinking about?" he asks, watching me over the rim of his mug.
"How quiet it is here," I say, tucking my legs beneath me. "How different everything is."
His hand finds mine. His fingers still feel like fire, like memory. "It isn't so different," he says. "You're still bossy. Gabriel still refuses to eat olives. And I still want you more than I know how to say."
I laugh softly, but my chest twists, because it is too much sometimes, the way we are happy, the way we are safe. After everything.
"I used to think we'd never get here," I whisper. "That it was too far. That we'd burned too many bridges."
"We built new ones."
His thumb brushes along the inside of my wrist. "We paid for this peace," he says quietly. "But we earned it."
I nod, swallowing against the emotion that catches there. "And you," I say, voice trembling, "you really don't miss it? The estate? The blood? The silence?"
"I miss espresso that doesn't taste like it was brewed in a tin can," he says dryly. "And I miss the look on Luca's face when I called his bluff."
"But the rest?"
