POV: Marco
Happiness is not soft the way I remember it.
It has edges now. Weight. A way of pressing against old scars instead of soothing them. I feel it most clearly in the mornings, when the house wakes slowly and Daniel’s voice carries down the corridor, not crying—just announcing himself to the world. Those sounds should feel like absolution. Instead, they sharpen my attention.
I sit at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee that has gone cold twice already, watching Carmen move through the room with practiced ease. She doesn’t rush. She doesn’t hover. She checks Daniel’s bottle temperature with a careful wrist, kisses the crown of his head once, and hands him to Alessandra without ceremony. It’s seamless. Controlled.
Domestic calm, executed with the same precision she applies to strategy.
I try to let myself enjoy it.
I really do.
But even as I smile back at Daniel, even as I feel the unfamiliar pull of contentment settle somewhere near my ribs, part of my mind stays elsewhere—tracking, comparing, listening for rhythms that don’t belong.
The first inconsistency arrives quietly.
A routine security digest flashes on my tablet while Carmen steps into the adjoining room to take a call. It’s nothing dramatic. No alarms. No flagged threats. Just a notation: Rotation C adjusted by twelve minutes due to transit delay.
Twelve minutes isn’t nothing.
It’s not enough to cause panic. It’s not enough to justify escalation. But it’s enough to irritate me, the way a loose thread irritates your skin long before it unravels.
I tap into the detailed log.
The delay is cleanly explained—vehicle rerouted due to construction, checkpoint cleared without issue, no anomalies detected. On paper, it’s flawless. That’s the problem. Flawless reports are usually written after the fact, not lived in real time.
I mark it and move on, telling myself I’m projecting. This is what peace does to men like me—it leaves too much room for memory to roam.
Later that afternoon, I walk the grounds with Luca. The sun is high, the air warm, the kind of day that pretends nothing bad has ever happened here.
“Feels strange,” Luca says, hands shoved into his jacket pockets. “No fires to put out.”
“Strange doesn’t mean safe,” I reply.
He smirks. “You’re becoming Carmen.”
I don’t deny it.
We pause near the west wall. A guard nods as we approach, posture relaxed but not sloppy. Good training holds even when adrenaline fades. I scan anyway, habit etched into bone.
“How are the rotations?” I ask Luca casually.
“Clean,” he answers without hesitation. “Why?”
“No reason.”
That’s the truth. Not yet.
I don’t tell Carmen about the delay. Not because I don’t trust her—but because I know how her mind works. Once she feels a thread, she will pull it until something snaps. I don’t want to inject noise into a space we’re still learning how to inhabit.
Happiness with teeth requires care.
That evening, after Daniel is asleep and the house settles into its softer nighttime rhythm, Carmen and I sit together on the couch. She leans back against me, weight familiar, grounding. I rest my chin lightly against her hair and let myself breathe her in.
“You’re tense,” she says quietly.
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
I consider lying. Decide against it. “A little.”
“Why?”
I hesitate, then choose my words carefully. “Old instincts.”
She turns slightly, studying my face. “Instincts don’t come from nowhere.”
“No,” I agree. “They come from repetition.”
She nods once, accepting that without pushing further. That’s new. She trusts me to bring her what matters when it matters.
I hope I deserve it.
Later, alone in my study, I pull up the security feeds myself. I watch them on mute, eyes trained on movement rather than sound. Patterns reveal themselves when you remove distraction.
Nothing overt.
And yet.
There’s a guard who lingers half a step behind formation. Another who clears his throat at the same timestamp every hour. These aren’t crimes. They’re habits. Habits can be exploited.
I cross-reference the names. Backgrounds are clean. Too clean.
My jaw tightens.
This is how it starts. Not with explosions. With comfort that invites sloppiness and reports that discourage questions.
I close the feeds and sit back, staring at the ceiling.
I don’t tell Carmen.
Not yet.
Because happiness deserves a chance to exist before it’s armored into something else. Because fear, once shared, multiplies. And because if I’m wrong, I don’t want to poison the calm we’ve earned.
But I make notes.
Quiet ones.
Before bed, I check on Daniel. He sleeps sprawled like he owns the world, utterly unbothered by history or consequence. I rest a hand lightly on the edge of the crib and feel something shift in me—protective instinct sharpening into something colder.
Happiness has teeth now.
And I’m not naïve enough to think they won’t be tested.
So I stand there a moment longer than necessary, committing the sight to memory, and promise myself this:
If the calm breaks, it will not be because I ignored the first crack.
Not again.