Page 97 of Caterina
I wasn’t asking either of them.
So now I’m here, in a dark room that shares a wall with hers, staring at the ceiling and listening.
There is a certain kind of quiet in a house full of people trying not to make noise. It is not silence. It’s layered restraint.
Footsteps down the hall. Low voices somewhere below. A door closing softly two rooms away. One of the babies crying for less than ten seconds before being soothed.
A murmur. A floorboard. Nothing urgent.
Through the wall to my right, nothing.
Caterina’s room.
No pacing. No drawers opening. No movement I can hear.
Either she is asleep, which I doubt, or she is lying still and staring at the ceiling the same way I am.
That thought settles in me with an irritation I refuse to examine too closely.
She should sleep.
She nearly got killed tonight. She ran barefoot through a service corridor and up a stairwell while men shot at her. She saw blood. Death. The inside mechanics of the threat her family had been trying to soften around her.
She should sleep.
So should I.
Neither of us is likely to.
I shift my left hand over the bandage and feel the tight pull of tape under my palm. The wound throbs in time with my pulse. Not unbearable. Not enough to ignore either. The pain is useful in some ways.
Keeps me awake. Keeps the body honest. Reminds me not to make sudden moves unless I have to.
I’ve worked through worse.
I told Caterina that earlier and saw exactly when she understood I meant it.
I also saw what happened when she looked at the scars.
That is another thing I refuse to examine too closely.
There are a lot of things tonight that I am putting in that category.
The way she looked at me when she realized I had been hit before the stairs and kept going.
The way her hands shook when she unbuttoned my shirt.
The way she sat beside me while Elena cut away the dressing and did not look away from the wound, even when her face went pale.
That matters.
I don’t want it to.
She is my client.
That line still exists. Absolute. Nonnegotiable. It did not vanish because she was brave tonight or because she looked at me like the blood on my shirt meant something more than injury.
If anything, the line matters more now.
