From ashes to fire

House rules

*Livia*

Nico comes up the stairs two at a time.

He stops in Teo's doorway, eyes finding me first, then the phone in my hand. Elio appears behind him a few seconds later, one hand already reaching for his earpiece.

"What happened?" Nico asks.

I hold the screen toward him.

He does not take the phone until I nod.

His gaze moves over the photograph. The gate. Teo's window. Enzo's message sitting beneath it in clean black letters.

Nico reads it once.

The muscles in his jaw go tight.

"How recent?" he asks Elio.

"Message timestamp is two minutes ago," Elio says. He takes out his own phone. "I am pulling exterior feeds."

Teo gets off the bed. All the lazy charm drains out of him. "He took that photo today?"

"Looks like it," Nico says.

My skin crawls.

I look toward the window. The glass is shut. The curtains are open. Outside, the bare branches shift in the thin afternoon wind. From here, I can see a strip of the front drive, one iron bar of the gate, and nothing beyond it.

Someone stood close enough to see this room. Someone took a photograph of the house.

Nico turns toward me. "Did you receive anything else?"

"No."

"Did you answer?"

"No."

"Good." The word comes out hard.

My head snaps up. "Do not."

His expression stills.

"Do not tell me good like I am a dog who didn't piss on your carpet."

Teo makes a soft noise in his throat and looks toward the ceiling.

Nico's eyes darken. "I meant you did not give him information."

"And I knew that before you approved of it."

"Liv."

"No. You keep doing this." My hands shake, so I curl them into fists around the phone. "You ask me a question. I answer it. Then you issue a judgment like I am one of your men waiting for a pat on the head."

His face closes off. It is almost impressive how quickly he can turn himself into stone.

"I am trying to establish risk."

"Then establish it without talking to me like you have custody."

The word hangs between us.

For one horrible second, nobody moves.

Nico looks down at the floorboards. When he looks at me again, his voice is lower.

"Fine," he says. "Did you answer him?"

"No."

"Thank you."

The difference is small. It leaves me feeling worse somehow.

Elio clears his throat. "Exterior camera feed had a blind spot near the east hedge for three minutes. Someone cut the power line to the unit. The gate cameras stayed live."

"Get Dario on it," Nico says. "Nobody leaves the grounds until we know who got near the house."

The air turns cold.

I stare at him.

"No."

Nico turns.

"You do not lock everybody in because Enzo sent a photo."

"I lock down the property because someone breached it."

"Teo lives here. Rosa lives here. The people in the kitchen live here."

"They will be safe inside."

My chest tightens so fast I almost cannot pull in air.

Safe inside.

The words have a lock in them.

At Bellwether, they had used that word every day.

You are safe here, Livia.

You will feel safer once you stop fighting the process.

We cannot let you leave while you are in this state.

The room shifts sideways and I press the edge of my thumb into the old coin at my wrist. One hard press. Then another.

Nico takes a step toward me.

"Liv."

"Don't touch me."

He stops.

Teo watches me from beside the bed, his face gone quiet.

My breath comes too shallow. I hate it. I hate my body for giving him proof that he has found the exact place to hurt me.

"I said I would marry you," I manage. "I did not agree to live under your orders."

"You are not under my orders."

"You just told Elio nobody leaves."

"Because Vitale has eyes on this house."

"And you think I don't know what happens after men decide that means I cannot leave?"

Nico's face changes.

The fury does not leave him. It turns inward, controlled until it looks almost like pain. "I am not Enzo."

"I know that."

"Do you?"

I laugh once, dry and ugly. "That is the problem. I do know you aren't him. You are worse in a different direction."

Teo lets out a low whistle.

Nico's gaze flicks toward him.

"Don't," Teo says. "She is not wrong."

"Nobody asked you."

"Somebody should have."

Elio steps into the doorway, phone at his ear. "We have a partial plate from a van parked two blocks over. It was gone before Dario got to the corner. No visual on the driver."

Nico does not take his eyes off me.

"Tell the guards to remain on alert," he says. "No lockdown."

Elio's brows rise a fraction. "Copy that."

The relief that moves through me is quick and bitter. Part of me know it is probably silly, but I can’t help it. I do not thank Nico. I should not have to thank a man for allowing people to leave their own home.

He looks at my clenched hand.

"What do you need right now?" he asks.

The question is careful. Too careful.

I want to say a different life. I want to say a mother who is not a target, a bedroom without iron bars in the windows, a ring that does not make my finger feel trapped.

Instead, I say, "I want to leave the house."

Teo's eyes widen.

Elio lowers his phone from his ear.

Nico does not move for a beat. "Going where?"

"Outside."

"That is not an answer."

"It is the only one you get."

His jaw tightens. "Liv, someone has been watching the perimeter."

"Exactly. I am tired of looking at the world through locked windows while men make plans around me."

"You think walking into the street proves something?"

"I think I need to know whether the gate opens when I use the key you gave me."

Nico's eyes go flat. "You are testing me."

"Yes, I am."

He looks away first, toward the open window and the bare branches beyond it. His thumb finds the rosary beneath his shirt. Once. Twice.

Then he says, "Elio goes with you."

"No."

"Liv."

I shake my head, "I am not agreeing to a bodyguard following three feet behind me."

"That is not negotiable."

I feel the old fear rise, hot and sick.

"Then neither is this. I leave alone, or I leave anyway and make your people chase me down the block. Pick the version that embarrasses you less."

Teo rubs a hand over his mouth, clearly trying not to smile.

Nico looks at me with the full weight of his attention. It is unnerving. He looks like a man calculating routes, guns, windows, the distance between every bad outcome.

"You have no phone with emergency services programmed," he says.

"I have Shah's number. Elio's number. The driver."

"That is not enough."

"Nothing has been enough for three years." The words slip out before I can stop them.

My throat burns.

Nico's expression shifts again. The hard part of him stays in place, but something beneath it gives way.

"Five minutes," he says.

I stare at him.

"Five minutes outside the side gate. Elio remains inside the property. He does not follow you unless you call, you are in immediate danger, or you do not return after five minutes."

"Six."

His brows pull together.

"Six minutes," I say. "I am not a prison-yard dog."

Teo makes a strangled laugh.

Nico looks like he might tell me no out of principle.

Then he says, "Six."

I nod. "Fine."

The word comes automatically. My body has already begun its inventory.

Doorway. Hall. Stairs. Side entrance. Gate key in my pocket. Phone in my hand. Windows. Cameras. Elio behind me, pretending not to watch too closely.

Nico sees me looking.

"Do you want your coat?" he asks.

The question is almost ordinary.

"I have one."

"You are wearing a shirt."

"I will survive six minutes of cold."

He walks out before I can tell him to stop.

Teo looks at me. "He is going to get you a coat."

"I noticed."

"He does not know what to do with women who yell at him."

"I do not yell."

Teo looks toward the open door. "Right."

Nico returns with a dark green wool coat folded over one arm. It is too big for me, probably one of Rosa's. He holds it out.

I take it.

"Thank you," I say, because the politeness is easier than the other things moving through me.

His gaze drops to my wrist. The bruises have darkened since the hotel.

"If you want a weapon," he says, "Elio can give you one and teach you how to use it."

The offer catches me off guard.

"I don't want a gun."

"Okay."

"I want pepper spray."

Nico nods once. "Elio."

"I have three kinds," Elio says from the hallway. "Which is a weird thing to be proud of, now that I say it aloud."

"One that fits in my pocket," I tell him.

"You got it."

He jogs downstairs.

Nico moves aside so I can pass.

The side entrance is through the kitchen. Rosa is standing at the counter, chopping parsley with unnecessary violence. She looks at my coat, then at Nico.

"You are letting her walk outside after someone watches the house?"

"I am going outside," I say.

Rosa's knife stops.

"I'll be at the side gate," I add. "Six minutes."

Rosa looks at Nico again.

He shrugs, "Six minutes."

Her mouth compresses. "Men. Both of you."

"I am not a man," I say.

"You married one yesterday. It is contagious."

Elio returns with a small black canister attached to a key ring. He hands it to me without taking it back for a lecture.

"Flip this cap," he says. "Point away from your own face. Short burst. If you use it, run. Do not wait to see if it worked."

I turn it over in my hand.

"Thank you."

"Call if you need anything."

"Six minutes," Nico says.

I look at him.

"Yes," he says, catching himself. "I know."

The side gate opens onto a narrow stretch of sidewalk lined with old maples and brownstone walls. The afternoon is gray and sharp. Cars hiss over damp pavement at the corner. A woman in a red knit hat walks a stroller past the opposite side of the street. A delivery cyclist curses at a van blocking the bike lane.

Normal noise.

I stand just outside the gate.

Behind me, the metal clicks shut.

Every muscle in my back locks.

I do not turn around.

The sidewalk is open in both directions. No guards at my shoulder. No dark sedan waiting at the curb. I can see the edge of the Moretti house through the bars, one camera tucked beneath the roofline, Elio's patterned shirt moving past the kitchen window.

Six minutes.

I walk.

One block toward the corner. My sneakers slap softly over wet concrete. The green coat smells faintly of laundry soap and rosemary. I pass a florist's closed metal shutter, a dry cleaner with a blinking OPEN sign, a narrow grocery where crates of oranges sit beneath the awning.

My chest hurts by the time I reach the corner.

Nobody stops me.

Nobody calls my name.

I could keep going.

The thought comes with a rush of relief so sharp it nearly drops me to my knees.

I could turn right, catch a bus, move through the city until the Moretti house is only another ugly memory. Enzo's men might find me in an hour. They might find me tomorrow. Nico's men would follow, maybe far enough back that I would not see them.

But I would still be moving because someone else had decided I had nowhere safe to stand.

A white ribbon is tied around the handle of the grocery store door.

It is narrow, satin, perfectly clean despite the wet street.

I stop.

The grocer, a tired man with a gray beard, comes out carrying a box of bottled water. He sees where I am looking.

"That yours?" he asks.

My mouth goes dry.

"No." I look down the street.

A black van turns at the far corner and disappears.

The grocer shifts the box in his arms. "You okay, miss?"

Fine.

The lie rises so smoothly it scares me.

"Fine," I say.

Then I turn and walk back toward the gate before the six minutes are up.

Nico is waiting inside the bars.

He does not open the gate until I hold up the ribbon.

His face goes still.

"Where did you get that?"

"At the grocery store."

He unlocks the gate and lets me in. His hand comes up as if he might take the ribbon, then stops in the air.

"May I?"

I look at him.

The question costs him something. I can see it.

I put the ribbon in his palm and his fingers close around it.

"Elio," he says, voice low. "Get the camera team. I want every feed from the block, every storefront, every traffic camera."

Elio is already moving.

Nico looks at me.

I wait for him to say I told you so. I wait for an order, for a guard at my door, for the gate key to disappear from my pocket.

Instead he says, "You were right to go outside."

The words hit harder than praise should.

"I found his message."

"You found proof he has people near us."

"He wanted me to find it."

"Yes."

I look at the ribbon in his hand, white against the black of his suit.

"He is going to keep doing this."

Nico's gaze lifts to mine. "I know."

My fingers close around the pepper spray in my pocket.

The gate stands open behind us for one more second before it shuts.

This time, I watch it close.