Chapter 27: Test of Fate
The plus sign wasn't gentle. It wasn't a faint suggestion or a maybe. It was a brutal, definitive blue line cutting through the result window, stark against the white plastic. An absolute.
Catalina stared at it, her breath caught somewhere between her ribs and her throat. The early sun sliced through the small window, hitting the stick so the line seemed to glow. For a second, the world didn’t just stop; it inverted. The frantic mission to Locarno, the ghost in the shadows who had their kids, the bullets they’d dodged and the ones they’d have to face today—all of it receded, blurred, transformed into the backdrop of this one, shocking fact.
Dominic’s eyes were locked on it too. His face, usually so controlled, went completely still. A muscle flickered in his jaw.
Then, movement.
Catalina’s fingers, still wrapped around the plastic, clenched. Her knuckles bulged, white and bloodless. A raw, silent force gathered in her chest, a pressure too immense for her body to contain. It erupted in a violent snap of her arm.
“Fuck!”
The word ripped from her, a guttural scream that echoed off the tiny tiles. She hurled the test at the wall above the sink. It struck the cracked mirror with a sharp crack, splintering the glass into a spiderweb before clattering into the porcelain basin.
The sound seemed to break the spell holding Dominic. He was moving before the pieces settled, crossing the small space in one fluid motion as her legs gave out. He caught her as she folded, sinking with her to the cold floor. Her fists pounded once, twice against his chest—weak, frustrated blows—before she collapsed into him, her face burying into the hollow of his neck.
She didn’t sob. She shook. Deep, seismic tremors that came from a place of pure, overwhelmed horror. Her tears were hot and silent, soaking into the collar of his shirt.
He held her. One arm banded around her back, the other cradling the back of her head, his fingers tangling in her dark hair. His own breathing was ragged, his heart hammering against her cheek. He stared over her shoulder at the broken mirror, his reflection fractured into a dozen distorted pieces.
“Okay,” he murmured into her hair, his voice low and rough. “Okay, Cat. Breathe.”
“How?” she choked out, the word muffled against his skin. “How is this okay?”
He didn’t have an answer. Not a real one. The logic of their world had just been vaporized. He just held her tighter, his palm flat against her spine as if he could physically keep her together.
After a minute, or maybe ten, the violent shaking subsided into a numb, hollow tremble. She pulled back just enough to look at him. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her face pale and streaked. She looked more frightened than he’d ever seen her, even in the worst firefights.
“The kids,” she whispered, her voice shredded. “We’re going into a goddamn warzone today. Bullets. Explosions. And I’m…” She couldn’t say it.
“Pregnant,” he finished for her. The word felt alien in his mouth, heavy and terrifying. He cupped her face, his thumb wiping a tear from her cheek. “I know.”
“We can’t do this. Not now.”
“We don’t have a choice.” His grip on her face tightened, just a little, demanding her focus. “Listen to me. We survived border crossings in Mexico with half the Federales on our tail. We outran that hit squad in Buenos Aires when the Charger blew a radiator. We’ve been shot at, hunted, and buried alive that time in Dubai. And we’re still here.”
She stared at him, her blue eyes wide and swimming.
“This?” He gestured vaguely at the sink, at the invisible new life it implied. “This is just another race. A different kind. We’ll win it, Catalina. Same as we win every other impossible fucking thing.”
It was a lie. It had to be a lie. This wasn’t a race. It was a fundamental, biological upheaval. But she needed the lie. He could see her clinging to it, her gaze sharpening, the paralyzing fear receding enough to let the old, familiar steel show through.
“We have to get to Locarno,” she said, more to herself than to him. “We have to get our kids back.”
“Right.” He helped her stand, his hands steadying her elbows. Her legs held. “First, we get through the checkpoint. Then we get the cars. Then we find him. And we get our family back.” He paused, his eyes dropping to her stomach for a fleeting second. “All of it.”
She nodded, a jerky, decisive movement. The mechanic was slotting into place over the scared woman. “I need… I need to clean up.” Her voice was steadier.
“I’ll get your gear.”
He left her there, staring at the broken mirror and the pieces of the test in the sink. When he returned from the bedroom with her boots and jacket, she was sweeping the glass into a dusty hand towel with calm, methodical strokes. She didn’t look at him. She tied the towel into a neat bundle and set it by the trash can.
They dressed in silence, pulling on layers against the mountain cold. Every movement felt amplified, significant. When she zipped her jacket, his eyes tracked the path of the zipper over her torso. When she knelt to lace her boots, he watched the careful bend of her waist.
Downstairs, the chalet was a tense, coiled spring.
Letty had the front door open a crack, peering out at the misty morning. Mia was methodically loading magazines at the table, her movements quick and efficient. Elena stood by the cold hearth, her arms wrapped around herself. She watched them descend the stairs, her gaze instantly cataloging Catalina’s pale face, the new silence between the twins.
“Well?” Letty asked, not turning from the door.
Dominic picked up his own bag from the floor, hefting its weight. “We’re clear. Let’s move.”
Mia looked up, her eyes narrowing. “Clear on what?”
“On the plan,” Dominic said, his tone leaving no room for further questions. “We stick to it. Cat and I take point in the Bronco. Letty, you and Mia are the hammer in the Rover. We draw their attention, you come in hard from the upper trail once they’re focused on us.”
“And Mom?” Catalina asked. Her voice was flat, all business.
Elena straightened. “I’m not staying here alone. I’m coming with you.”
“No,” Dominic and Catalina said in unison, the old twin reflex kicking in.
“It’s not a discussion,” Elena said, her voice firmer than they’d heard it in days. “Those are my grandchildren out there. I’m not waiting by the fire. I can drive. I’ll stay in the car. But I’m coming.”
Letty finally turned from the door, assessing Elena with a cool, appraising look. “Can you handle a gun if you have to?”
Elena met her gaze. “I’ve handled worse.”
A beat of silence passed. Dominic exchanged a look with Catalina. A flicker of communication passed between them—the risk, the burden, the unstoppable force of their mother’s will. He gave a single, curt nod.
“You’re with Letty and Mia,” he said. “You do exactly what they say. No arguments.”
Elena nodded, her jaw set.
The outside air was knife-cold, smelling of damp pine and imminent snow. Their breaths plumed in the gray dawn light. The two vehicles sat in the gravel clearing, frost gleaming on their dark paint. The old Bronco, beat-up but reliable. The Range Rover, a tank with windows.
Catalina paused beside the Bronco’s passenger door, her hand on the cold metal. A fresh wave of nausea, subtle but insistent, curled in her gut. She closed her eyes, breathed through it.
Dominic was beside her instantly, his shoulder brushing hers. “You good?”
She opened her eyes, looked at the mist-shrouded road winding down the mountain. Somewhere down there, men with guns were waiting for them. Somewhere beyond that, their children were waiting too. And now, inside her, something else was beginning.
“No,” she said truthfully. Then she pulled the door open. “But I will be.”
She slid into the seat. He walked around the hood, his boots crunching on the gravel. When he dropped into the driver’s seat, the familiar scent of gasoline, old leather, and him filled the space. He keyed the ignition. The engine turned over with a growl that vibrated through the frame.
In the side mirror, Catalina saw the Range Rover’s lights flick on. Letty behind the wheel, her face a mask of concentrated calm. Mia in the passenger seat checking the action on a pistol. Their mother in the back, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, staring straight ahead.
Dominic caught her looking. He reached across the console, his calloused hand finding hers. He didn’t lace their fingers. He just covered her hand with his, a solid, warm weight. A promise.
He let out a long, slow breath, his gaze fixed on the road ahead. “Alright,” he said, to her, to himself, to the unborn thing between them. “Let’s go see about this checkpoint.”
The Bronco’s tires crunched over the frozen gravel, turning onto the thin ribbon of road that snaked down the mountain. Mist clung to the treetops, swallowing the world beyond the first bend. Inside the cab, the heater whirred, pushing lukewarm air that did nothing to melt the ice between them.
Catalina watched the skeletal trees blur past her window. Her hand, still under his on the console, felt both foreign and familiar. The plus sign burned behind her eyes, a ghostly afterimage superimposed on the gloomy forest. Every jolt of the suspension over a pothole felt like a question.
“Dom,” she said, her voice barely audible over the engine’s rumble.
He glanced at her, his profile sharp in the gray light. “Yeah?”
She didn’t look at him. She stared straight ahead, at the disappearing road. “I’m not scared of the checkpoint,” she began, then corrected herself. “I am. But that’s not… it’s not the only thing.” She swallowed, the sound dry in her throat. “I’m scared for the reaction of the others. About baby number four. The new… the new pregnancy.”
There it was, laid bare in the space between the cracked dashboard and the rifle propped against his seat. Not the fact of it, which was terror enough, but the exposure of it. The judgment.
Dominic was silent for a long moment, his eyes back on the road. His thumb moved, a slow stroke across her knuckles. “Letty already knows,” he finally said, his tone practical. “She’s known since Buenos Aires. She doesn’t care.”
“She’s not the one I’m worried about.”
“Mia’s got other things on her mind.” He downshifted as the road curved, the gears growling. “Her kids are out there too.”
“And Mom?” Catalina’s question was a razor, slicing through his logic. “She saw us last night. She asked us point-blank. What do you think happens when she finds out this is the result?”
The Bronco bounced over a rough patch. Dominic’s grip on the wheel tightened, his knuckles pale. He exhaled, a plume of steam in the cold cab. “She’ll process it. Same as she processed the rest. She didn’t kick us out. She’s coming with us.”
“That was before another life got tangled in it.” Catalina pulled her hand from under his, pressing her palm against her stomach. “This changes the math for her, Dom. A grandchild from… from this. It makes it real in a way we haven’t been.”
A sign, weathered and faded, announced the old mill in one kilometer. The checkpoint would be just beyond it. The mist was thinning.
“Then we don’t tell her,” he said, the words quiet and final. “Not yet. Not until we have the others back. One war at a time.”
She nodded, the motion stiff. It was a temporary shield, flimsy as tissue paper, but it was all they had. The responsibility settled onto her shoulders, a physical weight alongside the fear. She was the vault now. The keeper of the secret.
Ahead, the broken silhouette of the mill’s waterwheel emerged from the fog. Dominic slowed the Bronco, letting it roll almost silently. He killed the headlights. The world became shades of gray and green.
“There,” Catalina whispered, leaning forward.
Just past the mill’s crumbling stone foundation, the road widened slightly. Two black SUVs were parked nose-to-tail, blocking most of the pavement. Four men in dark tactical gear stood silhouetted against the lighter gray of the road, their breath visible. One held a long rifle loosely at his side.
Dominic brought the Bronco to a full stop, still hidden by a thick stand of pines.
Dominic killed the engine. The sudden silence was a presence in the cab, thick and humming with tension. Through the skeletal pines, the shapes of the men shifted, dark against the gray road.
"Four visible," Catalina murmured, her voice low and steady. All business now. "Two by the lead SUV, one talking on a comms, one with the rifle near the tailgate. Could be more inside."
"Yeah." Dominic's eyes scanned the geometry of the roadblock, the steep embankment to the left, the dense tree line to the right. "We stick to the script. We go slow, get their eyes on us. Letty will have the angle from above."
He touched the comm unit in his ear. "Sister Two, you set?"
Letty's voice crackled back, calm. "In position. Ready when you are."
A twig snapped somewhere in the woods behind them, too loud. Both of their heads turned. Catalina's hand went to the pistol on her hip.
From the backseat, a small, sharp sound cut through the quiet. A gasp, choked and wet.
Dominic glanced in the rearview mirror. Their mother, Elena, was turned in her seat, staring through the side window toward the Range Rover idling further back in the trees. But her gaze wasn't on Letty or Mia.
It was locked on Catalina.
The morning light was clearer now, filtering through the mist and the bare branches. It lit up the cab, highlighting the sweat sheening Catalina's pale forehead, the tightness around her mouth.
"Eyes front," Dominic growled, a low command meant for both of them.
Elena didn't obey. She leaned forward slightly, her voice a bare whisper but sharp as broken glass. "You're green, mija."
Catalina froze. She didn't look back. She kept her eyes fixed on the armed men fifty yards away.
"It's just the nerves," she said, too quickly.
"It's not." Elena's words were flat, absolute. The pieces were clicking into place in her mind with a terrible, silent certainty. The private conversation in the kitchen, the torn clothes, the way they moved around each other like a single organism. And now this. The morning sickness she'd heard through the thin floorboards, the pallor she'd written off as fear.
Dominic felt the shift in the cab's atmosphere, a new layer of ice forming over the existing tension. "Not now, Ma."
"When?" Elena's whisper turned fierce. "When you're bleeding out on some Swiss road? When the social services take another baby because you two can't keep your hands off each other?"
Catalina flinched as if struck. The vulgarity, the directness, the image—it hung in the air like gunpowder smoke.
The man with the comms device ahead pointed toward their general direction. He was receiving information. Their window was closing.
"Catalina." Dominic’s voice was a guttural command, pulling her focus back from the precipice of her mother's stare. "You with me?"
She took a sharp, deep breath, pushing everything—the secret, the shame, the life fluttering invisibly inside her—down into a locked box. Her eyes cleared, hardening into the cool blue of a gunsight. She gave a single, sharp nod.
"Then we go." He fired the engine back to life, the Bronco's rumble feeling like a declaration of war.
He didn't wait for an argument from the backseat. He put the truck in gear and let it roll forward, slowly emerging from the cover of the pines onto the open road.
The change was instant. The two men by the lead SUV straightened, hands moving to their weapons. The one with the rifle brought it up to a low-ready position. Their postures screamed professional alertness, not bored checkpoint duty.
Dominic kept the pace achingly slow, a Sunday driver lost in the mountains. He rolled down his window as they approached, the cold air biting into the cab.
"Guten Morgen," the nearest man said, his German accent clipped. He took a step toward Dominic's window, his eyes scanning the Bronco's interior, lingering on Catalina, flicking to the backseat. He held out a hand. "Papers, please."
Dominic moved slowly, deliberately, reaching for the glove box. His other hand rested on the gear shift, ready.
From the steep, tree-covered embankment above and to the right of the checkpoint, the world erupted.
It wasn't the crack of a single rifle. It was a sustained, roaring BRRRT of automatic fire chewing into the road directly in front of the lead SUV. Dirt and asphalt geysered into the air. The men dove for cover, shouting.
The distraction.
Dominic didn't hesitate. He slammed the Bronco into first and stomped on the accelerator. The tires screamed, grabbing gravel and lurching them forward.
But the man with the rifle had reacted faster than anticipated. Instead of diving, he'd dropped to a knee, bringing his weapon up. He wasn't aiming at the hillside. He was aiming at the Bronco's grill.
"Down!" Dominic yelled.
The shot came. A harsh, flat BANG. The Bronco's windshield spider-webbed instantly, a milky cataract blooming from a single point on the passenger side. The glass held, but the world beyond turned into a fractured mosaic.
Catalina had already ducked. She came back up, her own pistol out the window before the echo of the rifle shot died. She fired three times in quick succession, not at the shooter, but at the front tire of the trailing SUV. The sound was deafening in the enclosed space.
The tire blew with a violent pop-hiss. The SUV sagged.
"Go, go, go!" she screamed.
Dominic wrenched the wheel left, trying to steer around the now-crippled vehicle. The Bronco's bumper clipped its fender with a sickening grind of metal. They were almost clear.
A new sound cut through the chaos—the deep-throated roar of the Range Rover's engine. It burst from the upper trail in a cloud of pine needles and dirt, a two-ton projectile of dark green steel. Letty had timed it perfectly.
The Rover didn't brake. It slammed into the side of the lead SUV at an angle, the sound of the impact a sickening, metallic shriek of tearing steel and breaking glass. It shoved the blocking vehicle sideways, creating a narrow, mangled gap.
The Bronco shot through it, scraping paint and snapping off a mirror. Then they were past, the open road ahead.
Dominic kept his foot down, the engine screaming. In the side mirror, he saw the Range Rover reverse from the wreckage with a squeal of tortured suspension and accelerate after them. One of the men was up and firing, the shots pinging harmlessly off the Rover's heavy flank.
They were through.
For a hundred yards, the only sounds were the roar of the engines and their own ragged breathing. The adrenaline was a live wire in the cab, buzzing in their teeth.
From the backseat, there was only silence. A cold, heavy silence.
Then Elena spoke. Her voice was not loud. It was quiet, drained of all its previous anger, hollowed out by a sudden, dreadful understanding.
"You're pregnant," she said.
It wasn't a question. It was a verdict. She’d seen Catalina flinch and go pale at the sudden acceleration, the lurch of the vehicle. She’d seen the sheen of cold sweat at her temples as they'd crashed through the gap. It wasn't just car sickness. It was the same too-familiar morning weakness she'd seen twice before.
Catalina stared straight ahead at the splintered windshield, her knuckles white on the pistol grip still in her hand. She didn't deny it. She couldn't. Her silence was confession enough.
Dominic’s eyes flicked between the road and his sister's rigid profile. His jaw was a hard line, his hands welded to the steering wheel.
Elena leaned forward between the seats. Her face, reflected in the shattered glass, was a mask of pure, unadulterated grief. When she spoke again, the words were for both of them, a final, despairing whisper that filled the speeding car.
"My god. What have you done?"