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Valentino does not remember the exact moment when the kitchen door closed behind him.
One moment there had still been the grey tiles, the blood, the sound of Marc’s broken breathing rattling in his ears, and the next he was outside in the dark, the air cold enough to bite into the wet heat on his skin. The garden is still. The old oak tree sways just a little in the wind, branches moving against the faint light from the patio lamp, and for a second the entire house behind him looks painfully ordinary.
It looks like they could still be inside, the two of them, Marc might’ve been complaining about the floor being cold again, Valentino not holding the knife in his hand and not having used it.
He stands there longer than he should, the cool air filling his lungs too quickly. For a moment he thinks he might throw up, he presses the heel of his hand against his mouth and forces himself to breathe slowly. It's not working, as if his body has decided that if he keeps breathing this fast he may manage to outrun the fact that his husband is inside bleeding on the kitchen floor.
His fingers are still locked around the knife handle. He does not remember taking it with him, but there it is, the weight of it hard in his palm, the metal tacky with blood. The metallic smell clings to his clothes. Even through the fabric he can feel the warm wetness spreading along his side after Marc’s knife had slipped between his ribs.
He should deal with that. His stomach burns where Marc caught him, and the injury becomes real only when he looks down and sees the dark stain spreading through his shirt in a ragged line.
He wants to go back in.
He knows he can. The thought lands with brutal clarity, followed instantly by the answer he gives it. No. Not because he does not want to, because he wants it so badly it nearly bends him in half, but because if he goes back now and sees Marc still breathing, if he sees those brown eyes again, even only for a second, then there will be no way left to do anything except stay.
And staying would be worse. Staying would mean watching Marc die or watching him live with what they have become. Staying would mean the whole house collapsing around him while he stood in the middle of it pretending there was still a version of tonight that could be undone.
He forces the knife out of his grip and lets it fall into the grass, disappearing into the dark. He wipes one hand against his trousers, then the other, but the blood only smears further. The house remains quiet behind him, too quiet for the crime that has just happened within it. He steps toward the garage, then stops. Something feels wrong.
He cannot place what it is.
So he keeps walking.
The driveway gravel crunches under his shoes with every step, far too loud in the hush of the night. He fumbles with the keys once, then again, because his hands are not listening to him properly, and when the car unlocks he nearly has the absurd urge to laugh. The sound does not come. He opens the door, lowers himself into the driver’s seat and just sits there, both hands on the wheel, staring at the dashboard as if it might explain the world back to him.
The air in the car is stale, a little warm, faintly scented with leather and the cheaper coffee Uccio had spilled in the passenger footwell last week. It should have been comforting. Instead it makes him feel violently sick.
He turns the ignition. The engine starts with a low murmur, steady and indifferent. Valentino stares straight ahead through the windshield, where the front of the house is reflected in a faint wash of glass and darkness. Upstairs their bedroom window is black. The kitchen light remains on. Of course it does. Marc had always hated unnecessary darkness when he was alone in the house. That was one of the stupid little things Valentino knew about him that had never meant anything.
The car rolls away from the house and onto the empty road, and only when the trees swallow the driveway behind him does Valentino realize he is shaking. He needs a destination. His mind reaches for one automatically and lands on Uccio’s number before anything else can. It is the kind of reflex that comes from years of surviving each other. Valentino taps the phone on, the screen lighting his face in cold blue, and the missed calls stare back at him before he even has the courage to open the thread. Uccio’s name. Twice. Probably a third coming in about a minute.
He does not remember whether he has the strength to hear another voice, but he calls anyway. Uccio picks up right away. There is no greeting. Only, “He found out,” in the low, immediately concerned tone of someone who has known Valentino too long to be fooled by silence. He swallows, his throat feels raw.
“Need you to stop sounding so smug,” he says, and the sentence is supposed to come out harsh but it lands flat, voice cracking. Even to his own ears the voice is wrong.Too airy, he needs a drink, for the next 30 years maybe.
There is a pause on the line, and when Uccio speaks again the concern is gone from it, his professionalism taking over.
“Where are you?”
“Driving.” Valentino shrugged, then immediately regretted it because it made the pain worse and Uccio couldn't even see him anyway.
“Still haven't answered the question.”
Valentino looks at the road, black and empty in front of him. The lane markings blur in and out beneath the headlights as if they are not entirely real. Marc used to stare at those headlights whenever they were on the way back, another thing Valentino had ruined.
“Heading south,” he says after a moment, he zoned out for a minute while driving, Marc wouldn't have let this happen if he was here–
“Toward the city.” Uccio interrupted, how rude.
“Yes.”
“Alone.”
Valentino's jaw tightens, his thoughts drifting back to Marc, Marc, Marc.
“Obviously.”
“You’re bleeding.”
It is not a question. Valentino glances down at his side and finds the stain has grown larger, darkening the fabric in a shape that seems almost absurdly neat from a distance. “A little.”
Uccio sighed.
“I said a little.”
“You sound like you’re lying to me.”
He wants to answer with something teasing, to deny, and maybe call Uccio a bastard, but his mouth does not seem to want to obey. Instead he keeps driving. The road is empty enough that he can let one hand slip from the wheel for a second and press it against his face, just under his eye, as if that might clear the pressure there.
Uccio waits for him. It is one of the things Vale hates most about him, Uccio never breaks the silence first.
“Marc knows.”
Valentino can barely get the words out, he didn't wanna believe it himself. Uccio does not answer immediately. When he finally does, his voice is lower than before. “How much.”
“I don’t know.” Valentino presses his palm against his eyes, “Enough?”
“Vale.”
“I'm not the only one who lied for six years”
Valentino snapped, suddenly feeling defensive, it's true, it's all Marc’s fault. If only Marc hadn't eavesdropped on Valentino's call to Uccio, he wouldn't have to kill Marc, and they'd be in bed right now. And then, the next morning they'd have breakfast together, it's Marc’s turn to cook–
“Did you do it clean?”
He nearly laughs.
“You really know how to ask a grieving husband questions."
“I know how to talk to a hitman. Tonight you happen to be both.”
The car passes under a streetlamp, and the white light briefly reveals the blood drying along his sleeve and the white edge of his knuckles on the wheel. He stares at his own reflection in the rearview mirror and does not recognize the face looking back. “He is dead.”
The answer sounds convincing, he needs it to be that way. But Uccio hears the hesitation in it anyway. “You don't believe that.”
Valentino says nothing. Did he, he was the one who pushed the knife down so deep he heard a jarring sound when the metal touched the marble floor.
“Did you check?”
“No.”
“Vale.” Uccio sounds tired. Of him, specifically. Valentino might’ve been offended if it was any other day.
“I shot him. I stabbed him. He's dead.” The words come out harsher than intended, almost angry, as if anger might be strong enough to hold the shape of what is collapsing inside him. “He was not moving when I left.”
That, at least, makes Uccio go quiet in a way that tells Valentino the other man is no longer pretending this is a simple problem. “Why didn't you confirm,” he asks eventually, it's unlike Valentino to leave the target unverified. Vale’s eyes stay on the road. “I couldn’t.”
“And now?”
The question lands directly in the middle of his chest. And now. The answer is not one he can say out loud. Now he wants to turn the car around. Now he wants to slam it into a wall. Now he wants to go back and find Marc still breathing and hate him for surviving. Now he wants Marc to be dead because that would be merciful and he wants him alive because it would be worse and maybe that is the truest thing left in the world tonight. Now he wants to fold in on himself and disappear into the same floorboards Marc is lying on.
Instead he says, “I do not know.”
It is the first honest thing he has said in hours. Uccio exhales, slow and rough. “All right. Listen to me carefully.”
The car rolls to a stop at a red light. The waterfront stretches out beyond the intersection, dark water reflecting the distant city lights. Valentino stares at the surface of the river. For a moment he remembers another evening years ago. Marc standing on the pier beside him. Wind in his hair. Laughing about something ridiculous.
"You want me to go back"
"You know the rules, Vale." Of course he does, immediate evaluation and to assure no witness left if identity is exposed, he just never thought it'd happen to him in 40 years of his career.
"And If you go back there now and he is alive, you do not touch him again.”
That draws a harsh laugh from Valentino, one that hurts his ribs, he presses his palm against the wound through the fabric of his shirt. “Is that your solution? Tell me not to stab my husband twice. Very helpful.”
Uccio ignored that, “How bad is the wound.”
Valentino thinks of the knife disappearing into Marc, blood rushing out, the ugly red bloom on the neck, the stubborn way Marc had still looked at him afterwards, as if even now he could win by sheer force of will.
He felt those eyes burning with hatred then, “I don’t know.”
There is another pause, “Are you alone in the car?”
No, I carried my possibly-dead-husband to the passenger seat after I killed him.
He didn't say that obviously, he knows Uccio just wants to keep the conversation going so Valentino won't go insane, drive the car off on some random bridge and die. "I am."
Uccio, in one of those rare instances where he sounds almost uncertain, continues, “You need to breathe before you make any more decisions tonight. I don’t want you doing anything stupid.”
“I’m driving.”
“That was not the stupid thing I meant.”
Valentino barked a laugh, “You sound like him.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what.” Valentino looks ahead at the road and realizes he has missed an exit.
“Acting like this is funny.”
That should matter. It does not. It is only after the next junction that he notices where he is driving at all, and even then the awareness is remote, as if he is watching himself from a distance. The city lights are beginning to thin out ahead of him, replaced by the darker stretch of industrial roads that lead back toward the offices and the old warehouses where people like him are meant to exist without being noticed.
Marc used to hate this part of town.
No.
That might not be right, he thought Marc was one of those people who can sense energies or whatever, he remembers a few nights where he just couldn't sleep, afraid of Marc having a bad feeling about him.
Maybe Marc had hated every part of this town that asked him to pretend he was normal. The thought presses into him so sharply that Valentino's breath catches. He hears his own inhale over the phone and Uccio hears it too.
“Vale.”
“What.”
“You’re drifting.”
Valentino blinks, then realizes he is far too close to the lane divider. He corrects the steering in a small, abrupt movement.
“I’m fine.”
“Don’t insult me.”
“What else do you want me to say?”
“I want you to tell me what happened.” The car keeps moving. The lines on the asphalt move beneath him in a steady rhythm, white, broken, then black again. The repetition is the only thing stopping his mind from tearing itself apart.
“The call.”
“And then?”
“And then he looked at me like I made the sun explode.”
That sentence slips out before he can stop it, and for a moment even he is surprised by how much it sounds like Marc in his head. The image of those eyes, wide and furious and hurt in the same breath, stabs through him so suddenly he nearly swerves again.
Uccio does not comment on the phrasing. “Did he know beforehand?”
“I don’t know." He feels like a broken doll, repeating the same phrase over and over.
“Did he say anything before you left?”
The answer should be simple. There were too many words. Too much shouting. But one thing sits in his mind more clearly than the rest, and he hates that it is this one. Not the fight, not even Marc’s accusation.
Why?
The word comes back to him in Marc’s voice, raw and hoarse from the lack of air caused by Valentino's hands around his neck.
Valentino recalled what that feels like, it feels like a distant dream, one that he wants to forget. “He asked why,” he says. Uccio is silent, seemingly choosing what to say next.
“He asked why I never told him, I asked him the same thing.”
“That sounds about right.”
The engine hums steadily beneath him. The road now is almost completely empty. A row of warehouses looms to the right, dark and abandoned, their windows blacked out. Somewhere a truck changes gears and the sound echoes over the concrete like a distant warning. Valentino notices that his hands are steady now, which feels worse than if they were shaking. It means the part of him trained to function when everything else collapses has taken over.
That part has always been efficient. It has also always been a liar. He thinks of Marc again, already haunting Valentino it seems, the way his breath had sounded thinner and thinner. He should know by now. He should be able to tell whether a man lives or dies from that distance. Instead he had left because the fear of being wrong felt more unbearable than the possibility of being alone.
“What are you thinking,” Uccio asks. Valentino nearly says nothing. Then, because the silence is too large and because the road in front of him looks like it has been hollowed out, he answers, “Pecco.”
The name comes out soft. Uccio does not interrupt. The road stretches ahead, and suddenly he is no longer in the car but back at the dining table, Marc’s laughter still somewhere in the air, the two of them pretending the world had not already started to end around them. Pecco had texted earlier. Some questions about dinner, about whether he and Marco could come by on the weekend, about some nonsense that would have made Marc roll his eyes and pretend to be annoyed while secretly being delighted.
How am I supposed to tell him?
The thought lands so hard it nearly makes him black out. Not if. Not when. How. He sees Pecco’s face in fragments, the same stubborn tilt of the jaw that both his parents share when they are trying to hide something. Their son, their child, the one who had grown up around the house while all of them pretended their lives were ordinary. The one who has no idea what has just happened because people like them do not bring catastrophe to dinner and then call it family.
He hears himself say it before he can stop it. “What am I going to tell our son?” Uccio is very quiet. The words hang between them, far too honest to take back. Valentino's view of the road starts to get blurry and realizes that his eyes are burning. He is not crying. Not yet. He is far too far gone for something so neat.
The car passes another exit. Valentino misses that one too, although this time only by a little. He corrects the wheel and keeps driving. “I don’t think I want to,” he says after a while, and now the voice is thinner again, stripped down by exhaustion.
Uccio is silent for so long that Valentino briefly thinks the call has been cut out. “Should I request someone to go over and,” Uccio sighed for the thousandth time. "verify."
That is the part he cannot answer. If Marc is alive, then there is a chance they can do this another way. Another chance that the next time Valentino sees him, Marc will be livid, still breathing, still all the things that would be unbearable and miraculous at once.
If Marc is alive, then Valentino has to decide whether to go back. If Marc is alive, then he has to decide whether to save him or kill him or beg him for something he has no right to ask for. If Marc is alive, then the world is not finished with them yet.
He closes his eyes for a second and keeps driving by instinct, it's a miracle he hasn't ended up in a ditch yet. “No,” he says finally, “I don’t want to know.”
Uccio’s voice turns rough around the edges. “You know that's going against the rules.” Valentino swallows. “Really, Vale?”
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” Uccio says, and now there is a hint of impatience in his tone, “that you are not thinking straight enough to make any choices about Marc.”
Valentino looks down at his bloodied sleeve. The fabric has gone stiff in places. His side hurts whenever he breathes too deeply. The night outside has become a long smear of lights and blackness and road signs he only half registers.
“You think I will choose him over the organisation.”
“I think you might try to follow him.” Valentino’s hand tightens on the wheel so hard that his fingers ache. “Do not talk like that.”
“I’m talking like that because I know you.”
Valentino says nothing, what can he say? Uccio continues, quieter now. “You just lost the person you built your entire life around. Forgive me for being cautious.”
That sentence lands with more force than anything else tonight. Valentino stares ahead, and for a moment there is no road at all, only the house and Marc playing chase with Pecco in the backyard, under the shade of the oak tree that Valentino and Marc planted when they first moved in. His chest feels unbearably full.
Everything is the same back there, he knows. Table still set. The glasses on the wood. The pasta that has long since gone cold. The hoodie Marc stole from his chair upstairs. The bed they shared. The life that had looked so perfect because they had built it together through years.
“Uccio,” he says, and his own voice surprises him by how small it sounds. “If I do not make it to tomorrow—”
“Don’t.”
“Listen to me.”
There is a beat of silence. Then Uccio says, much more softly, “I’m listening.”
Valentino opens his mouth and finds that all the things he wants to say are suddenly impossible. That he is sorry. That he does not know how long he can keep driving with this hole in his side and this other, larger one in his chest. That if Marc is alive he will not know whether to beg or run. That if Marc is dead then there is not enough of the world left to explain what to do with the rest of himself. But his thoughts drifted to his reminding world. “What am I supposed to do about Pecco?”
Uccio breathes in sharply, and when he answers his own voice is rough, almost angry in the way people get when they are trying not to sound wounded. Uccio loves Pecco even though he dislikes Marc. “You do not tell him anything until you know what the hell is happening.”
“What if I never do.” The car begins to climb a slight incline, the road opening up toward the area where Uccio’s apartment sits above a private garage and a shuttered office space. Valentino has driven there enough times that the route lives in his muscles. He hardly notices taking the turn until the familiar brick building appears on the left.
Uccio must hear the shift in the engine, because he says, “You’re here.” Valentino pulls to the curb and lets the car idle. “Stay in the car until I come down.”
“I’m not a child.”
“No,” Uccio says. “You’re worse.”
Valentino huffs a laugh despite himself, but it dies quickly. The building is dark except for the low strip of light above the garage door. The window on the third floor is lit. Uccio is probably awake in his kitchen, one hand still on the phone, the other already reaching for the things he always keeps ready in case someone arrives bleeding at his door.
It occurs to Valentino, with strange detached clarity, that he may have just driven all the way here with a dead man’s blood on his clothes and his own life unraveling in the car seat.
“Vale.”
“What.”
“When you come in,” Uccio says, and there is something careful in his voice now, something that sounds almost like pity even though he would never call it that, “leave the knife in the car.”
Valentino looks down and realizes the blade is on the seat beside him, for a moment he just stared at it.
“I never took it.” Didn't he drop it, he remembered it hitting the grass. He does not remember picking it up.
“You absolutely did.”
Valentino reaches over, after a moment of staring at it as if it belongs to someone else, he sets it on the floor mat.
“I'll be down in a minute.”
The silence stretches.
Then Uccio adds, very quietly, “I’m sorry.”
Valentino closes his eyes. For a second he almost says thank you, but there is no place for thank you on a night like this. “I know,” he answers instead. And because he cannot stop himself, because some part of him is still trying to pretend that words can contain the shape of disaster, he says, “If someone verify,”
There is a pause on the line.
“So I should send someone over?”
“Yes.”
“When they..confirm about him,” Valentino says, the name scraping on the inside of his throat, “you tell me immediately.”
Uccio does not answer right away. When he does, his voice is low and bleak in a way Valentino has almost never heard from him before. "We both know that's not what you want."
Valentino closes his eyes again, and this time when he opens them the world is still there, the building still in front of him, the phone still warm in his hand. He does not know whether Marc is alive. He does not know whether he wants the answer. But for the first time since leaving the house, he allows himself to admit the truth that has been burning in him from the beginning.
He did not leave because he was done. He left because if he had stayed one second longer, he would’ve collapsed beside the man he had just cut open.
And that, somehow, is even worse.