Marked By The Consigliere

Lilia held Camilla a little tighter. Her fingers moved through her daughter's dark curls out of habit more than anything else, something to do with her hands while the rest of her came apart. The curls were soft, the way they always were after a bath, and she focused on that — the smallness of them, the warmth of her daughter's weight against her chest — because if she let herself think about anything else she was going to fall to pieces right there in the nursery.

The room was dim. The wallpaper was that pale floral print she'd picked out months ago, back when the biggest thing she had to worry about was whether it was too yellow in certain lighting. It looked almost pretty in the low light. Soft and peaceful and completely indifferent to the fact that her entire world was caving in.

Emilio hadn't moved from the window. He stood with his back mostly to her, shoulders locked up tight, the streetlight outside catching the sharp line of his jaw. He'd been standing there long enough that the silence between them had stopped feeling like a pause and started feeling like something heavier — the kind that sits between two people when there's too much to say and no good way to say any of it.

"Emilio." She kept her voice low so she wouldn't wake Camilla. "Amore. We can't keep doing this."

He turned. His eyes found hers and for just a second she saw it — the pain he was always working so hard to hide — before he pulled it back behind whatever wall he kept it behind.

His gaze dropped to Camilla. His expression shifted, softened briefly, then closed off again.

"They know, Lilia." His voice came out low and rough. "She's not safe here."

Her stomach turned. Her free hand moved to her stomach without her really deciding to do it.

"Then we leave," she said, pushing firmness into her voice even though she could feel herself unraveling. "We go somewhere far. Somewhere they've never heard our names."

Something crossed his face. Not quite a smile. Hollow and humorless.

"There's nowhere far enough. You know that."

Camilla stirred against her shoulder, a small murmur of protest. Lilia swayed gently and felt the tears starting to build, that slow pressure behind her eyes she'd been fighting off all night.

"So what are you saying?" Her voice came out smaller than she wanted. "That we just give up? Let them tear apart everything we've built?"

He crossed the room slowly, like each step cost him something. She could see it up close now — everything he was carrying, everything he was working himself up to say.

"I have to leave, Lilia." His voice cracked on it. "It's the only way I can keep you safe. Keep both of you safe."

The bottom dropped out of her stomach.

"No." The word came out before she'd even finished thinking it. "Don't do that. Don't stand there and tell me leaving is somehow the right thing. She needs her father here. I need you here." Her voice broke and she hated that it did. "You don't get to leave and call it love."

He looked away. Just for a second, like her face was something he couldn't hold eye contact with.

"I will still protect you," he said quietly. "That doesn't stop just because there's distance between us."

A tear slipped down her cheek.

"How, Emilio? How do you protect a family you've walked away from?"

He stepped closer and brought his hand up to her face, his thumb brushing the tear from her cheek, his touch so careful it almost made everything worse.

"My men will be there," he said. "Around you, around this house, wherever you go. You'll never be without anything, I swear it. But if I stay — if I'm here beside you every night — I make you a target. I make her a target. And I would rather lose you than be the reason something happens to you."

She closed her eyes and leaned into his hand even though part of her didn't want to give him that.

"And what about the other one?" she whispered.

His hand went still.

"What?"

She opened her eyes. "I'm pregnant, Emilio. I found out three days ago and I've been waiting for the right time and there hasn't been one." Her voice gave out for a moment. "I can't do this alone. Not with Camilla, not with a new baby. I can't."

He just looked at her. She watched the news move through him, watched the hardness slip, watched him look for a moment like the man she'd fallen in love with before any of this.

His hand dropped slowly from her cheek to her stomach, pressing there lightly, like he was making it real. Then he pulled her in — one arm around her back, Camilla nestled between them — and pressed his forehead to hers.

"Nothing is going to happen to you," he said, his voice low and unsteady. "Not to you, not to Camilla, not to this baby. I swear it."

She cried into his shoulder. He held on and didn't say anything else, just held on.

Outside, the sky was turning that early pale gray, light creeping in slow around the curtains. She felt the shift in him before he moved — the way holding on quietly became letting go.

She let him pull back. She made herself look at his face.

And she saw it. Right there behind his eyes, plain as anything. The goodbye that had probably already been decided before he'd ever come home tonight.

She'd known, she realized. Some part of her had known all along.

Whatever he'd promised, whatever either of them had said in that dim little room, something had already changed between them.

And they would both be carrying this night for a long time.

C A M I L L A

The smell of freshly brewed espresso wafted through our cozy kitchen as Isabella scraped the last of her scrambled eggs onto her toast, barely glancing up from her phone. Mom, leaning against the counter with her cup of black coffee, watched her with a quiet, weary smile.

"Bella, are you actually going to eat that, or just stare at your screen until we're late?" I teased, leaning over to ruffle her hair.

"Ugh, Camilla, stop," she huffed, shoving my hand away, her dark curls bouncing as she pulled back. "I'm reading something important."

I smirked, slipping into the seat beside her. "Right, online drama is definitely crucial to your morning routine."

Mom's soft laugh cut through the light bickering. She set her mug down and reached over to tuck a loose strand of hair behind my ear, her touch warm and familiar.

"You two bicker like old women," she sighed, her dark eyes crinkling at the corners. "But I wouldn't t