Page 15 of Beautiful Ruins
And curiosity, in my line of work, was far more volatile than fear.
When the door closed again, I stood and crossed the room, the soles of my shoes tapping against the marble floor.I stopped at the window and looked out over the perfectly manicured grounds, lights blinking in the distance as the city settled in for the night.
Life went on out there.Loud.Oblivious.Untouched.
I’d learned a long time ago that the city didn’t mourn.It barely noticed.You could lose everything—your wife, your unborn son, your future—and traffic would still crawl forward the next morning.Coffee would still be poured.People would still complain about weather and prices and delays, unaware that the wrong man had survived and the right people hadn’t.
The explosion hadn’t even been meant for her.That was the part that never loosened its grip.It had been meant for me.
I could still see it when I closed my eyes.The flash.The violence of it.The sound that wasn’t just sound—it was pressure, force, intent.The way the air itself had turned against them.One second she was alive, annoyed with me for being late, one hand on her stomach as she told me to hurry up.
The next, she was gone.
So was my son.
Survivor’s guilt was too soft a phrase for what followed.Guilt suggested reason.Balance.What I’d felt had been feral and bottomless.A need to punish myself for being alive when they weren’t.A reckless hunger for danger that bordered on suicidal.I’d driven too fast.Drunk too much.Walked into rooms knowing there might be guns and not caring if one of them found me.
The guilt alone would’ve killed me eventually.
My cousin Marcello had known that.He had dragged me out of it by the collar, figuratively and otherwise.Put structure back into my days.Gave me work again.Purpose.Something to aim my anger at that wasn’t myself.He hadn’t tried to soften the grief.He’d sharpened it.Told me if I was going to live, I’d better make it mean something.
I owed him my life.
What stayed with me—what never loosened—was the obsession.
Explosives.
I learned everything there was to know about them.Not just how they were built, but how they failed.How they were hidden.How they were disguised as normal, everyday things.Cars.Doors.Phones.Gifts.I studied blast radii and triggers and timers.I memorized patterns.Learned the signatures men left behind without meaning to.
Knowledge didn’t bring them back.But it kept me alive.And it gave me purpose.
I never got into the same car twice.Ever.I picked vehicles at random, sometimes switching keys at the last second just to throw off anyone watching.I kept a mechanic on retainer—one I trusted with my life—who maintained every car personally, locked down parts, logged everything.No one touched my vehicles without my knowing.No valet.No borrowed rides.There were no exceptions.
I’d learned that lesson the hard way.
I turned from the window and went back to the screens.
She was still in the kitchen, and she looked too comfortable for someone who should be terrified.
I watched her tilt her head, studying the room like she could feel the weight of the house pressing back.She wasn’t wrong.Places like this absorbed things.Secrets.Violence.Trust.She should have felt it crawling under her skin.
Instead, she looked… almost comfortable.
That was new.
Most people shrank under surveillance, even when they didn’t know they were being watched.She didn’t.She expanded.Took up space.Claimed it without permission.It was irritating.Magnetic.Merciless in a way I couldn’t immediately define.
She caught sight of her reflection in the darkened glass of a cabinet and paused, expression sharpening.For a split second, something harder surfaced.Self-awareness.Then it was gone, replaced by that same infuriating calm.
I leaned back against the desk, folding my arms.
I didn’t trust calm.
Calm was either earned or manufactured.
Curiosity gathered in my chest, the same way it had when I’d first started dissecting bombs, peeling them back layer by layer just to see what made them tick.That need to understand.To know every wire.Every motive.Every possible outcome.
She’d already slipped past the perimeter I guarded more viciously than any compound or convoy.She had my attention.And in my world, that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.
