Chapter 313: Reality
CASSIAN
I didn’t make the calls from the house. I couldn’t risk the noise of a ringtone or the low rumble of my own voice carrying through the thin plaster walls to where Julian was sleeping.
Every three or four days, I’d get in the car and drive five miles down the coast road, past the olive groves, until I found a petrol station or a corner kiosk that sold cheap, plastic throwaway phones.
I bought them with cash, used them once, and dropped them into the deep rubbish bins behind the shops before I ever put the car back in gear.
It was an old habit, the kind of muscle memory that stays in your hands when you’ve spent your life hiding from people who have the money to listen to the air.
On those mornings, I sat in the driver’s seat with the engine idling, the plastic phone pressed hard against my ear, looking out through the dusty windscreen at the blue water.
The sea looked different every time, but the voice on the other end of the line was always exactly the same.
"They’re looking north," Marceli said. His voice was tiny through the cheap speaker, dry and rattling like pebbles in a tin can.
"Don Aldo sent three guys up to Milan because someone thought they saw Julian at a train station. You went south. Smart."
"How long," I asked. I kept my hand tight on the wheel, my eyes fixed on the horizon where the fishing boats were small black dots.
"Don Aldo is old," Marceli replied, and I could hear the faint scratch of his lighter on the other end, three hundred miles away.
"He’s angry. His boy is still eating through a tube, so he has to stay angry to keep his people from thinking he’s gone soft. But he’s also tired. And I have things on him. I found the ledgers from his docks in Genoa. Be patient."
"Julian’s—" I started, then I stopped. My throat felt thick, clogged with the salt air and the weight of the words I couldn’t say out loud. I looked down at my own knuckles, white against the black leather of the steering wheel.
"We can’t do this indefinitely."
There was a long pause on the wire. Marceli didn’t ask for details. He’d known Julian since Julian was a skinny kid running errands in the lower wards; he knew what the city did to people like him, the way it crept into their bones and stayed there.
"He’s not well," Marceli said, and it wasn’t a question.
"He will be," I said. I forced the words out, making them hard, making them sound like a promise I could enforce with my bare hands.
I needed to believe it. If I didn’t believe it, there was no point to the miles we’d driven or the blood we’d left behind.
"If we have enough time."
"Then I’ll buy you time," Marceli said simply. "Trust me."
I ended the call without saying goodbye and sat there in the silence of the car. The plastic phone felt greasy in my palm.
Trusting Marceli was like leaning my whole weight against a rusted iron railing over a cliff; you knew it might hold you for a second, but you also knew what happened if the metal finally gave way.
It was the only thing I had left to spend, and it felt heavier than any debt I’d ever carried. I rolled the window down, threw the phone into the tall grass by the side of the road, and drove back toward the town.
When I unlocked the front door of the house, the light was pouring through the open shutters. Julian was sitting at the wooden table, the old film camera in his hands.
He had the lens off, and he was using a tiny little screwdriver he’d borrowed from the landlord to tighten the small brass ring around the glass.
"Hi," he said, not looking up.
"Hi," I said.
He set the screwdriver down, his fingers lingering on the metal casing of the camera, and then his eyes drifted up to my face. He didn’t blink.
He just looked at me for three long seconds, his gaze sharp and heavy, checking the line of my jaw, the way I was holding my shoulders, the tiny twitch in my left eyelid.
He had spent too many years looking at men who were lying to him not to notice when the air in the room changed.
"Where’d ya go?" he asked. His voice was casual, too casual, but his eyes stayed small and focused on mine.
My tongue felt dry. I froze for a heartbeat, my hand still resting on the iron key in the lock, before I forced my face to stay flat.
"Just down at the bakery," I lied, the words tasting like ash in my mouth. "They didn’t have the bread you like yet. The ovens were slow today."
I walked across the tiles before he could ask another question, leaning down to press my lips against his forehead.
His skin was cool and smelled like the lemon soap from the bathroom, and under my mouth, I felt the small muscle in his brow relax just a fraction as he let out a long, slow breath.
His birthday was three days away. I knew the date because I knew every number that belonged to him... the day his mother died, the count of the scars on his ribs from surviving in the streets.
I didn’t say anything to him about it, because Julian hated grand things.
If I brought him something wrapped in expensive paper or made a fuss over the date, he’d just look at me like I was trying to buy something from him.
He didn’t need a party or a speech; he just needed to know that someone was paying attention when he thought nobody was looking. He needed to be seen.
I made a small list in my head while we walked through the town.
