His thumb on my knuckles. That's the last thing I think about before I fall asleep and the first thing I feel when I open my eyes — the ghost of it, the phantom pressure of a touch so small it shouldn't have registered and yet my hand remembers it the way skin remembers a burn.
We stood in his study with a deal between us and blood on his knuckles and his thumb traced one slow line across my hand and I let him. I let him and I didn't pull away and now I'm lying in bed staring at the ceiling wondering what that makes me.
Then the cramping hits and everything else disappears.
Not the usual morning nausea — the gentle, rolling kind I've learned to breathe through. This is sharper. Lower. A cramping that grips something deep in my abdomen and twists and I'm out of bed and gripping the edge of the bathroom sink before my brain catches up to what my body already knows.
Something is wrong.
I breathe through my teeth. The cold porcelain bites my palms. The cramping pulses — tightens, eases, tightens again — and my other hand goes to my stomach and presses flat and I'm whispering "please" to a body that may or may not be listening.
Please be okay. Please be nothing. Please be stress, exhaustion, the fact that I haven't slept properly in three weeks and my blood pressure is probably doing things that would horrify a medical professional.
The nausea passes. The cramping doesn't.
I find Marta in the kitchen. She takes one look at my face and sets down the pot she's holding. "What's wrong?"
"I need a doctor. A clinic. Somewhere with equipment — an ultrasound." My voice is calm because panic won't help the baby and calm is the only currency I have right now. "Do you know somewhere close?"
"I can call Don Morrante's physician. He can be here within the hour…"
"No." Too fast. Too sharp. Marta's eyebrows lift. I soften my voice but I don't soften the answer. "I need a proper exam, Marta. Equipment. A screen. I need to see that the baby is okay."
She watches me the way she always watches me — measuring, careful, the scrutiny of a woman who has worked in this house long enough to know when someone is making a decision that can't be unmade. "Does Don Morrante know?"
Dante is in a meeting. Behind closed doors. I heard voices when I passed the study — low, clipped, the cadence of men discussing money or territory or both.
I could knock. Could interrupt. Could stand in his doorway and explain that I need to leave the estate because my body is doing something terrifying and I need someone with a medical degree to tell me my baby is alive.
But the cramping tightens again and I press my hand harder against my stomach and I remember the last time I asked a man for permission to go to a hospital. Nico's living room. Hardwood floor. My knees hitting the ground and his eyes watching me like a dog performing a trick and the word no landing in my chest like a closed fist.
I won't ask. I won't kneel. I won't stand in a doorway and beg for something my body needs.
"I'll be back before lunch," I tell Marta. She opens her mouth. I'm already walking.
The east gate. The eleven-minute gap. I've timed it so many times the rhythm is muscle memory — wait for the first guard to round the corner, count to forty, walk.
The morning air is cold. Four blocks to the main road on legs that aren't steady and a cramping that comes in waves and my hand never leaving my stomach.
I hail a taxi with the other hand and give an address across the city because going to the hospital where my father is recovering feels like too many collisions in one building.
The clinic is small. Clean. A doctor with kind eyes and steady hands who doesn't ask why a woman in designer clothes walked in off the street without an appointment looking like she hasn't slept in a month.
He examines me. The ultrasound wand is cold against my skin and I grip the edge of the table and stare at the ceiling and my jaw is clenched so hard my teeth ache.
"There." He turns the screen toward me. "Heartbeat. Strong and regular. Early term. Everything looks good."
The sound hits me before the image does — a rapid, wet thumping that fills the small room and my chest and my eyes and suddenly I'm crying. Not quietly. Not the controlled tears I've been rationing in hallways and elevators.
This is the kind of crying that comes from a place that has been clenched shut for weeks and just let go. The baby is alive. The heartbeat is strong. The one thing in my life I can't negotiate or strategize or survive my way through — it's okay. It's there. It's real.
The doctor hands me a tissue. Waits. Then, gently: "The cramping is stress-related. Your blood pressure is dangerously high for how far along you are." He pauses. Chooses his words.
"Whatever is happening in your life, Mrs. Morrante, your body is keeping score. You need to rest. Truly rest. Not the kind where you're lying down and your mind is running. The kind where you actually feel safe."
Safe. The word sits in the room like a foreign object. I can't remember the last time my body felt safe. Nico's house wasn't safe. Dante's house is safer but safer isn't safe — safer is a relative term, the way less broken isn't whole.
I nod. Thank him. Wipe my face. Walk out into the afternoon sun with the ultrasound photo in my pocket and the heartbeat still echoing in my chest and for three seconds — just three — the world feels manageable.
Then I notice the man across the street.
Dark coat. Standing still. Watching the clinic entrance with the particular stillness of someone who has been there a while. He wasn't there when I went in.
I know this because I checked — the Nico training, the survival instinct, the constant scanning of exits and faces that I do now without thinking about it the way I breathe without thinking about it.
I walk. He walks. I speed up. He speeds up. Not running — matching my pace. Stride for stride. The way a predator matches prey when it isn't hungry yet. When it's enjoying the distance closing.
Doctor said to calm down, but how can I calm down always being in danger?
My phone is in my hand but my fingers won't cooperate. The adrenaline is making everything too fast and too slow at the same time — my heart hammering, my legs moving, the street narrowing around me.
I turn a corner. He turns a corner. The ultrasound photo presses against my thigh through my pocket and the baby's heartbeat is still in my ears and this man is behind me and getting closer.
The thought that arrives is so clear it cuts: I just heard my baby's heart for the first time and someone is following me home.
His footsteps are getting louder. The street is getting emptier. And the east gate with its eleven-minute gap feels like it belongs to a different lifetime.