Chapter 28: Mother's Wrath
The silence in the Bronco solidified, turning from an absence of sound into a physical thing. It was cold and dense, pressing against their eardrums, thick with everything Elena had just seen. Dominic kept driving, his eyes nailed to the fractured view through the bullet-crazed windshield. The road unfolded ahead, a gray river cutting through the pines, but he didn’t see it. He saw only the reflection of his mother’s face in the mirror, her eyes wide with a kind of horrified clarity.
Catalina didn’t move. She sat perfectly still in the passenger seat, her pistol now resting uselessly in her lap. A thin trickle of blood escaped the corner of her mouth where she’d bitten down during the impact. She didn’t wipe it away.
Elena slumped back into the seat. The fight seemed to have drained out of her completely, replaced by a profound, weary shock. “Pull over,” she said, her voice hollow.
“We’re not safe here,” Dominic replied, his tone mechanical.
“I said pull over, Dominic.”
He glanced in the rearview again. Her expression was flat, empty. The anger had burned out, leaving only ash. He signaled, though there was no one behind them but Letty in the Rover, and guided the Bronco onto a narrow gravel pull-out overlooking a steep valley. The engine ticked as he shut it off.
The Range Rover rolled in behind them, crunching to a stop. No one got out.
Inside the Bronco, the only sound was the faint hiss of the cooling engine. The mist had mostly burned away, revealing a harsh, blue-white sky.
Elena spoke first, her words directed at the headrest in front of her. “How many times?”
Catalina closed her eyes. “What?”
“How. Many. Times.” Elena leaned forward again, her voice gaining a brittle edge. “The first one … Mina… I asked. I begged you to tell me who. You both looked me in the eye and lied. Said it was a drifter. A racer passing through. Was it him then, too?”
Catalina’s silence was her answer. It stretched, taut and damning, filling the cold space between the seats. She opened her eyes and stared at her blood-smeared reflection in the side mirror.
“Yes,” she whispered.
The word was so soft it was nearly swallowed by the wind outside. But it landed in the cab with the force of a collision. Elena recoiled as if slapped. Her breath hitched, a sharp, pained sound.
“And the second?” she pressed, her voice cracking. “Little Leo and Stella the new borns”
“Yes.” This time it was Dominic who answered, his voice gravel and resignation.
Elena made a sound. It was a low, animal noise of pure anguish, torn from a place deeper than her throat. Her hands, which had been trembling before, now fluttered uselessly in her lap before clasping together as if in prayer. Or to keep from breaking something.
She looked from her son’s stony profile to her daughter’s bleeding lip. The truth was a physical thing in the car now, a fifth passenger that had curled itself around their throats. “All three?” she whispered, the words shredded. “Mina… Leo… the baby Stella…?”
“Yes,” Catalina said, the word finally freeing itself. It held no defiance, only a vast and weary shame.
“My grandchildren.” Elena said it slowly, tasting each syllable as if it were poison. “My beautiful, beautiful grandchildren. They are… they are…” She couldn’t finish. She covered her mouth with her shaking hand, her eyes screwing shut against the images suddenly flooding her: Mina’s smile, so like Dom’s. Leo’s serious brow, an echo of Cat’s. Stella’s tiny fingers.
A dry, racking sob shook her frame. She bent forward, forehead nearly touching the back of Catalina’s seat.
Dominic watched it happen in the rearview mirror. A part of him detached, observing the collapse like it was happening to someone else’s family. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “We didn’t plan it,” he said, his voice hollow. “It just… happened. The first time, in Barstow, after the refinery job.”
“Don’t,” Catalina warned him, her eyes pleading.
“No. She wants to know.” He turned his head, looking past Catalina to his mother’s crumpled form. “It was just once. We were kids. Scared and stupid and riding a high from not getting caught. We swore it would never happen again.”
“But it did,” Elena croaked, not lifting her head. “Again and again. And you lied. To my face. For years.”
The accusation hung there, undeniable. The empty place at the head of the table in the chalet’s kitchen took on a new, cruel meaning. It wasn’t just Dominic’s absence. It was the ghost of this secret, sitting there every night.
“We were protecting you,” Catalina said, but the words sounded feeble even to her.
Elena’s head snapped up. Her grief had crystallized into something sharper, colder. “Protecting me? You filled my house with… with this.” She gestured between them, a jagged sweep of her hand. “You let me love those children without knowing what they were. What you are.”
Dominic flinched. “What they are is your family. Our kids. That doesn’t change.”
“It changes everything!” Elena’s voice rose, cracking with the strain. “Do they know? Does Mina have any idea why her blood work might one day…”
“Stop it,” Catalina snapped, a flicker of her old fire returning. “You don’t get to use them as a weapon. Not now. Not ever.”
A sharp rap on the driver’s side window made them all jump. Letty stood outside, her face a mask of impatient worry. She mimed rolling the window down.
Dominic did, the cold air rushing in like a shock.
“We need to move,” Letty said, her voice low and urgent. Her eyes darted past him, taking in the tear-streaked wreckage of Elena’s face, Catalina’s bloodied mouth. She didn’t ask. “This isn’t a scenic overlook. They’ll be mobilizing back there.”
“We’re coming,” Dominic said, his voice regaining its command.
“Ma?” Catalina turned in her seat, reaching a hand back. It was a gesture of peace, of need.
Elena looked at her daughter’s outstretched fingers. She looked at the hand that had held her, braided her hair, patched up her knees. The same hand that had touched her brother in the dark. A fresh wave of revulsion and heartbreak washed over her, so powerful it stole her breath.
She did not take the hand. “Just drive,” she whispered, turning her face to the window. “Get my other grandchildren back.”
She said “my other grandchildren” with a particular emphasis, a line drawn in the sand of her own heart. Catalina’s hand fell back into her own lap, curling into a fist.
Dominic started the engine. The sound was obscenely loud in the silence. He pulled back onto the road, the Bronco lurching slightly on its damaged flank. The Rover fell in behind them, a silent guardian.
They drove for twenty minutes before anyone spoke. The landscape shifted, the pines giving way to rocky outcrops and wider valleys. The sun was fully up now, a cold, distant coin in a pale sky.
“He’ll be expecting us,” Catalina said, her voice carefully neutral. She was rebuilding her walls, brick by brick, and the first layer was the mission. “The guy in Locarno. He knew about the checkpoint.”
“He knows we’re coming,” Dominic agreed. He welcomed the tactical shift. It was solid ground. “He’ll have the kids as leverage. Probably in a public place. Crowds.”
“He’ll want the money,” Letty’s voice crackled over the comms unit they’d all forgotten was in their ears. “Or the chip. Whatever we took from Zurich.”
“He’s not getting either,” Dominic said. “We’re getting our kids and we’re leaving. Clean.”
A bitter, soft laugh came from the backseat. Elena was staring at her own reflection in the window. “Nothing about this is clean,” she murmured, almost to herself.
Catalina’s posture stiffened, but she didn’t engage. Instead, she pulled down the visor and examined her split lip in the tiny mirror. She wiped the blood away with her thumb. The cut was small, but it stung. A physical reminder of a different kind of collision.
“We need a new plan,” she said, her eyes meeting Dominic’s in the reflection. “He saw the Bronco and the Rover at the checkpoint. He’ll be looking for them.”
Dominic nodded, his mind already racing ahead, calculating. “We switch before the city limits. Find something common. Sedans.”
“There’s a garage we passed a few kilometers back,” Letty’s voice came again. “Looked like a tour bus repair shop. Had a couple of vans out front.”
“Vans are good,” Dominic said. “Anonymous.” He glanced in the rearview at his mother. She was still turned away, a silhouette against the bright window. “You okay to keep going?”
Elena didn’t move for a long moment. Then, slowly, she nodded. Her reflection was blurred by the motion, but the set of her shoulders was rigid with a new resolve. “I am here for Mina, Leo, and Stella,” she stated, her voice clear and cold. “And for the new ones with that monster. Nothing else exists right now.”
The finality in her tone was its own kind of violence. It carved a space around her in the backseat, a sanctuary of purposeful denial. Catalina absorbed the blow without a sound, turning her gaze back to the road ahead. Her hand rested, almost unconsciously, on her stomach.
The turn-off for the garage appeared, a rusted sign squeaking on its post. Dominic signaled and slowed, the gravel crunching under the tires.