Page 57 of My Wedding Night Massacre

“Go,” I say.

We move.

Francesco reaches the door first. The lock takes him sixteen seconds, cleaner than projected, and he’s through with Diego right behind him, both clearing their sides without sound. Misha and I follow, the interior dark except for a single light left on in the kitchen, a child’s light, the kind left burning for a small person who might wake afraid.

Luigi had the fixed guard handled before we breached. I hear nothing from the rear of the building, which means it went clean. We move through the first room, a small sitting area, a child’s plastic cup on the low table, a board book open face-down on the floor. I step around both and keep going.

Four rooms. We clear the first two fast, and a bedroom recently used, a bathroom, both empty. The third door is closed.

I get there first because I need to be the one.

I push it open.

Small room, child’s bed against the far wall, a nightlight in the corner casting just enough glow to see. Denis is sitting up in bed, the blanket bunched in his lap, his eyes wide and fixed on the doorway.

He doesn’t make a sound.

I stop. I don’t advance. Instead, I get down to his level, one knee on the floor, hands visible, nothing looming or sudden. I stay there and let him look.

He looks.

His eyes are grey in the low light, mine in his face, running over me with focused attention I recognize because I’ve seen it in mirrors my whole life. He’s assessing. He’s doing it the way I do everything, slowly but surely, without rushing to a conclusion. He’s two years old, and he has no language for what he’s doing, but he’s doing it.

I wait.

He hasn’t screamed. That’s what I’m noticing. But a different scream ends this. The scream from the outside that brings the noise and the noise brings the rotation guard back early, and we don’t have the time for that. Denis wasn’t the one who screamed. It’s true that he’s frightened, but I also think that he’s deciding.

The scream that comes from the outside is followed by a shot. The sound fills the house like a crack splitting something open. Denis’s mouth opens, and what comes out is silent, pure terror without sound, his whole small body shaking.

The silent screaming is worse than any noise would be.

“Francesco,” Misha’s voice, clipped, behind me in the corridor. “Left side.”

Return fire. Something heavy hits the floor. I don’t turn because Denis is in front of me, and if I leave this doorway, he’ll be alone with the sound of a gunfight. A two-year-old alone with that sound will be traumatized.

“Hey.” I crouch low to get to his eye level. “Hey. Look at me.”

He looks at me. The tears are running, his chin’s trembling, but the silent scream has stopped, and he’s looking, those grey eyes finding mine in the dark room, doing the same assessment he was doing before the shot interrupted it.

I don’t move toward him. I stay on my knee. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”

He stares at me. His hands are white-knuckled on the blanket.

From the corridor, two more shots, then silence. Misha’s voice again, one clipped instruction, then nothing. The house goes quiet in the way houses go quiet after violence, a specific stillness that isn’t peace.

Denis’s chin is still trembling. He hasn’t looked away from me.

“Nadia,” I say, loud enough to carry into the corridor. “I need Nadia in here.”

A beat. Another door further down the corridor. Footsteps, quick but controlled. Then Nadia appears in the doorway behind me, her face white, her eyes going straight past me to Denis. He sees her, and the sound he makes isn’t a word; it’s a syllable that means her, just her, and his arms are already out.

I step aside.

She crosses the room and picks him up in one motion, his legs going around her waist, his face buried in her neck. She holds him tight, one hand on the back of his head, her eyes on me over his shoulder, clear and steady.

She nods once.

“We move,” I say.