Chapter 7: Defiance in Daylight
The laugh died in the woman’s throat, her smile freezing then shattering into something hard and cold. Her eyes, a moment ago crinkled with warmth, darted between Dominic and Catalina, then down to Mina, then back. The other mothers had stopped talking. The playful shrieks from the children seemed to recede, swallowed by a sudden, profound silence broken only by the metallic creak of an empty swing moving in the breeze.
Catalina felt the blood drain from her face, a cold numbness spreading from her fingertips up her arms. Her grip on the stroller’s handle was the only thing anchoring her. She wanted to yank Mina back, to run, to scream at Dominic for his careless, brazen honesty.
The woman who had crossed herself took a deliberate step backward, as if from a contagious disease. Her friend grabbed her toddler from the sandbox, brushing the grains off with sharp, furious motions. Their earlier chatter was gone, replaced by a united, icy disapproval.
Dominic didn’t move from his crouch. He kept his eyes on Mina, his large hand still on her head. But Catalina saw the muscle in his jaw flex, the slow, controlled rise of his shoulders as he took a breath. He hadn’t anticipated this raw, public revulsion. He’d imagined whispers, maybe, sideways glances. Not this visceral, immediate shunning.
“Mina,” Catalina said, her voice strained but clear. “Time to go.”
“But the slide—” Mina protested, sensing the shift in the atmosphere but not understanding it.
“Now.” The word came out sharper than she intended.
Dominic stood up. He turned slowly, deliberately, to face the small cluster of women. He didn’t speak. He simply looked at them, his expression not angry, but blank. Impenetrable. It was the look he used when sizing up an opponent at a race line, a look that assessed threat without revealing a thing. Under that gaze, the woman who had crossed herself looked away first, muttering something in rapid Swiss German to her friend.
He didn’t touch Catalina. He didn’t need to. The message in his posture was clear: Walk. I’m behind you. She pushed the stroller away from the sandbox, the wheels catching on the gravel path. The short distance to the Audi felt like a mile under the weight of their stares. She could feel them, hot and judgmental, drilling into her back.
He opened the passenger door for her, then the rear door to buckle Mina in. His movements were calm, methodical. Only when he slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine did she see his hands. They were clenched so tightly on the wheel his knuckles were bone-white.
They drove out of the picturesque town in silence. The charming chalets, the bubbling stream, the flower boxes—it all now looked like a painted backdrop, a beautiful lie.
It was Mina who spoke first, her little voice puzzled from the back seat. “Why did those ladies get mad?”
Dominic’s eyes found Catalina’s in the rearview mirror. A shared, bleak understanding passed between them. The vault had been cracked. The world had peered in and recoiled.
“They weren’t mad, mija,” Catalina forced out, her voice too bright. “They were just… surprised.”
“Because you and Daddy look the same?”
“Yes.”
“But that’s silly,” Mina declared, kicking her feet lightly against her car seat. “I look like you.”
A lump hardened in Catalina’s throat. She stared out the window at the blurring pines.
Back at the farmhouse, Dominic didn’t park in the open front. He drove around to the barn, the large doors automatically swinging open from a remote in his pocket, and pulled the Audi inside before shutting the world out again. The gloom of the barn was a relief.
He killed the engine. The silence was absolute.
“That was a mistake,” he said, finally. His voice was flat, emptied of the defiance he’d shown on the playground.
“Which part?” Catalina unbuckled her seatbelt, the click loud in the quiet. “Going out, or you answering her?”
“All of it.” He slammed his palm against the steering wheel, a single, sharp report that echoed. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I should’ve made something up.”
“And lied to her? Again?” Catalina got out, opening Mina’s door to lift her out. “She’s going to have questions, Dom. That was always going to happen.”
“Not here. Not like that.” He paced away, running a hand through his hair. “We’re exposed. They know our faces now. They’ll talk.”
“It’s a tiny town in Switzerland, not a police state. They’re just shocked.” Even as she said it, she remembered the woman crossing herself. That wasn’t just shock. That was a deep, moral condemnation.
“Shock turns to gossip. Gossip turns to curiosity.” He stopped pacing, his back to her. “Curiosity turns into someone asking questions that shouldn’t be asked. About our names. Our paperwork. The babies.” He turned around, his face grim. “We need to leave. Find another place. Deeper. More remote.”
“No.” The word came out firmer than she expected. She set Mina down, letting her run towards a stack of empty crates to play. “We are not running again. We just got here. We have a home. The babies…” She placed a hand on her stomach. “We’re staying.”
“Cat—”
“They’re just people, Dom. Judgmental, small-minded people. We knew we’d face that. We can’t outrun every sideways glance in the world.” She walked towards him, stopping a few feet away. “Your solution to everything is to build a higher wall or run to a new desert. We can’t. Not this time.”
He looked at her, really looked at her, seeing the stubborn set of her jaw that mirrored his own. “So what’s your solution?”
“We live. We act normal. We go to the damn market again next week. We smile politely. We kill them with boring normalcy. They’ll get used to us, or they won’t. But we stop acting like criminals in hiding.”
He stared at her for a long moment. The only sound was Mina’s pretend-play with the crates. “You’re carrying the most precious things in the world inside you,” he said, his voice low and rough. “Forgive me if I don’t want to use you as a shield.”
“It’s not your choice to make alone.” She held his gaze. “I’m in this vault too, remember?”
Later, after Mina was asleep, the farmhouse felt different. The sturdy stone walls, which had felt like a refuge, now felt like a citadel under subtle siege. Dominic was restless. He checked the locks on the doors and windows twice, then retreated to the barn, the sound of tools clinking a nervous, metallic rhythm.
Catalina sat by the hearth, a blanket over her legs, staring at the flames. She replayed the scene at the playground, each frame a fresh sting. The woman’s crossed fingers. The sudden, snatched-away child. The silence. It wasn’t the open hostility she’d feared; it was something worse. A silent, communal erasure. They were to be unseen, unacknowledged. A moral stain on the postcard view.
The back door opened and closed. Dominic came in, smelling of cold air and engine oil. He stood by the fire, warming his hands, his profile etched in orange light.
“I’m sorry,” he said, without looking at her.
“For what?”
“For putting that look on your face today. The one you had when they stared.” He finally turned to her. “I hated that.”
“It’s not your fault they’re ignorant.”
“It’s my fault for thinking we could just… be.” He knelt before her chair, taking her hands in his. His palms were calloused, stained with grease no amount of scrubbing would ever fully remove. “I wanted to give you normal. A playground. A grocery store. A life.”
“You have.” She squeezed his hands. “This is it. It’s messy and hard and people are awful. That’s normal, Dom. What we have…” She glanced towards the stairs, where Mina slept. “…that’s the extraordinary part. Let them have their normal. We have this.”
He brought her hands to his lips, kissing her knuckles, a gesture so tender it made her chest ache. The fire popped, sending a spray of sparks up the chimney.
“The clinic called while you were in the barn,” she said quietly. “My next appointment is Thursday.”
He stilled. “I’ll drive you.”
“I know.” She took a breath. “Dr. Adler asked if we’d considered genetic counseling. Given our… relation. To talk about risks.”
His eyes darkened. “What did you say?”
“I said we were aware. And that we’d discuss it.” She watched the conflict play across his face—the fierce protector warring with the rational man. “It might be… prudent.”
He nodded slowly, a practical decision settling over him. “Okay. We’ll discuss it.” The way he said it meant he would research it obsessively, analyze every possible outcome, and present her with a tactical report. It was how he loved.
He released her hands and sat back on his heels, looking up at her swollen stomach beneath the blanket. “They’re moving more,” he stated.
“They’re getting stronger.” She guided his hand, placing it on the side of her belly. They waited. A few seconds passed, then a distinct, rolling push against his palm.
He didn’t smile, but his entire face changed. The perpetual brood softened, replaced by a look of awed, helpless devotion. It was a look he only ever had for her, for Mina, and now for these two unseen souls. In this quiet, firelit room, with the world locked outside, the fortress felt less like a prison and more like a kingdom. Flawed, forbidden, and fiercely theirs.
“Two,” he whispered, his hand still resting where the kick had been. “Two more to protect.”
“Two more to love,” she corrected gently.
He leaned forward, resting his forehead against her belly, closing his eyes. He stayed like that for a long time, listening to a secret only he could feel. The fire warmed them. The old house settled around them. For now, the walls held.
For now, the walls held.
The chime was a sharp, foreign sound in the deep quiet of the farmhouse. It cut through the crackle of the fire and Dom’s whispered promises to her belly. Catalina froze. Dominic’s head snapped up, his body going rigid against her legs.
No one ever came here. The delivery man left packages by the gate. The realtors were long gone.
The bell rang again, insistent. Mina, asleep upstairs, didn’t stir. Dominic was on his feet in one fluid motion, his hand moving instinctively to the small of his back where a weapon would normally be. He found only the worn fabric of his shirt. His eyes met Catalina’s, hard and questioning.
“The clinic doesn’t have this address,” she whispered, her throat dry.
“Stay here.” He moved towards the front hall, his footsteps silent on the stone floor. Catalina stood, the blanket pooling at her feet, and followed him. She couldn’t just sit. He shot her a warning glance but didn’t stop her.
They reached the heavy oak door. Dominic peered through the side window, his frame blocking her view. He went very still. His shoulders, which had been taut with ready tension, slumped slightly in a confusion that was more alarming than anger.
“It can’t be,” he breathed, barely audible.
“Who?” Catalina’s heart hammered against her ribs.
He didn’t answer. He simply reached out and unlocked the door, pulling it open. The cold night air rushed in, carrying the scent of damp pine and diesel. SUDDENLY THE DOOR BELL RINGS I GO TO OPEN THE DOOR DOM STILL HUGGING ME FROM BEHIND. BEHIND THE DOOR IS STANDING LETTY.
She looked smaller than Catalina remembered, and older. The Swiss chill had painted her cheeks a raw pink. Her hair was pulled back in a messy braid, frizzy strands escaping around a face that was all sharp angles and exhaustion. She wore a battered leather jacket over a thick sweater, and her jeans were dusty. A single duffel bag sat at her boots on the step. Behind her, idling in the dark drive, was a cheap-looking rental sedan.
“Hey,” Letty said. Her voice was the same low rasp, but it sounded worn thin.
No one moved. The moment stretched, brittle and surreal. Catalina felt Dom’s arms tighten around her from behind, a reflexive shield. He wasn’t embracing her; he was anchoring them both.
“How?” was all Dominic managed to growl. The word was full of suspicion, not welcome.
“Took me three months,” Letty said, her eyes scanning them, taking in Dominic’s protective stance, Catalina’s obvious pregnancy, the warm light of the house at their backs. A faint, tired smirk touched her lips. “You’re good. But I’m better.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” Catalina said, finding her voice. It came out colder than she intended.
“Yeah, I got that.” Letty’s gaze finally landed fully on Catalina’s stomach. Her smirk faded. “Jesus, Cat. Again?”
Dominic shifted, his body a solid wall between Letty and Catalina. “You followed us.”
“I found you.” Letty corrected him, her eyes lifting to meet his. “There’s a difference. Can I come in? It’s freezing out here and I just drove sixteen hours from Frankfurt.”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She hoisted her duffel bag and stepped across the threshold, forcing Dominic to step back. She moved past them into the hallway, dropping her bag with a thud. She looked around, at the exposed stone, the rustic beams, the expensive but understated furniture. “Cozy. A real storybook hideout.”
“Why are you here, Letty?” Catalina closed the door, sealing them all inside together. The air in the house now felt charged, prickling with old history and new danger.
Letty turned to face them. She shrugged out of her jacket, moving with a casualness that felt forced. She looked drained. “I’m in trouble. The kind I can’t talk my way out of or drive away from.”
“So you brought it to us.” Dominic’s voice was flat, deadly.
“I didn’t lead anyone here, Dom. I swear.” She held his stare, her own pleading. “You guys were the only ghost I knew how to find. The only people off the grid who might… understand.”
She looked at Catalina then, directly. “I got nobody else.”
A creak from upstairs made them all flinch. Mina’s small voice floated down. “Mama?”
Catalina’s blood went cold. Dominic’s expression shut down completely, becoming a mask of calculated calm. Letty’s eyes flew to the staircase, then back to them, wide with a dawning, horrific understanding.
“You have a kid?” she whispered.
Before anyone could answer, Mina appeared at the top of the stairs, her dark hair messy from sleep, clutching a worn stuffed rabbit. She blinked sleepily at the unfamiliar woman in the hallway.
Letty stared. She looked from Mina to Dominic, to Catalina, her mind visibly working, piecing together timelines and unspoken truths. The resemblance was undeniable. Mina had Dom’s brow, Catalina’s mouth. Their coloring.
“Oh my god,” Letty breathed, the words slipping out. She looked at Catalina, a storm of betrayal and sudden, awful clarity in her eyes. “The one-night stand. That was your story. For him.”
Dominic took a step forward. “Letty.”
“No, no, I get it now.” A harsh, humorless laugh escaped her. “All of it. The sudden disappearance. The scorched-earth sale of everything. This.” She gestured around at the isolated house. “You weren’t just running from the law. You were running from… this.”
“You need to lower your voice,” Catalina said, her own voice steel. She moved towards the stairs, going to Mina. She picked her up, the child’s warm, sleepy weight a comfort and a burden.
Mina buried her face in Catalina’s neck, then peeked out at Letty. “Who’s that?”
Letty’s tough exterior cracked for a second. She looked at the little girl with something like grief. “I’m an old friend of your mama’s, kiddo.”
“Letty,” Dominic said again, the name a command.
She finally looked at him. All the fight seemed to drain out of her. “I’m sorry. For showing up. For… all of it.” She ran a hand over her face. “The people I’m in trouble with… they’re not like the cops, Dom. They won’t just put me in a cage. They’ll erase me. And if they find out I knew you, if they find this place…”
She left the threat hanging. It was worse than anything she could say outright.
The fire in the other room popped loudly. The familiar sound was absurdly out of place. They stood in the hallway, a frozen tableau: the twin fugitives, their secret child, and the one person from their old life who could burn it all down.
Dominic’s eyes were locked on Letty. Catalina could see the calculations racing behind them. Risk assessment. Threat levels. Could she be trusted? Was she followed? Letty had found them, which meant others could.
He spoke, his voice low and final. “You stay tonight. One night. You don’t leave this house. You don’t touch a phone. We talk in the morning. Then you go.”
Letty nodded, a quick, desperate jerk of her head. “Okay.”
But as Catalina looked from Dom’s closed, distrustful face to Letty’s shattered one, she knew it wouldn’t be that simple. The walls hadn’t just been breached. A piece of their old world, dangerous and unresolved, was now sitting in their hallway. And it had nowhere else to go.
The silence after Dominic’s pronouncement thickened, broken only by Mina’s sleepy sigh against Catalina’s neck. Letty stared at her boots, her shoulders slumped under the weight of her own need and their obvious distress. The cozy hallway felt like a cage suddenly, the stone walls pressing in from all sides.
“I’ll make up the couch,” Catalina said, her voice toneless. She moved past Letty, carrying Mina towards the kitchen to warm some milk.
Dominic watched her go, then turned his gaze back to Letty. The protective fury had banked into a cold, practical intensity. “You breathe a word of what you see here,” he said, his voice low enough not to carry, “and the people you’re running from will be the least of your problems.”
“I know.” Letty met his eyes, holding them. There was no defiance left, just a bone-deep weariness. “I didn’t come here to burn your life down, Dom. I came here because mine’s already ashes.”
He studied her face for a long moment, looking for lies or tells. Finding only exhaustion, he gave a single, curt nod. “Couch is there. Bathroom’s down the hall. Nothing else leaves this house.”
He didn’t wait for her reply. He followed the path Catalina had taken, his broad back a final, silent statement of the boundary she’d crossed.
In the kitchen, Catalina was settling a drowsy Mina with a sippy cup. Dominic took the child from her, his hands gentle despite the rigid set of his jaw. “I’ll take her up.” He paused, his eyes searching Catalina’s. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Yes, I do.” She touched his arm briefly. “She’s here. We deal with it.”
He nodded, accepting her logic. He carried Mina upstairs, his heavy footsteps on the creaking wood a familiar sound that soon faded.
Catalina waited until she heard the soft click of their bedroom door closing. Then she took a deep breath, pulled two blankets from a linen cupboard, and walked back to the living room.
Letty hadn’t moved. She stood staring into the dying fire, her arms wrapped around herself. Catalina dumped the blankets on the deep, plush sofa.
“Here,” Catalina said.
Letty turned. The firelight cast shifting shadows on her face, making her look gaunt. “I’m sorry, Cat. For just… showing up. For all of it.”
Catalina didn’t accept the apology. She didn’t reject it either. She simply started piling pillows at one end of the couch. “It’s a long way from L.A.”
“It is.” Letty watched her work. “Why here, of all places? The Alps? It’s not exactly your scene.”
Catalina paused, smoothing a blanket. The directness of the question hung in the air. She could lie, fabricate some story about fresh starts and clean air. But Letty had already seen too much. The truth was a currency, perhaps the only one she had left to offer.
“Because here,” Catalina said, her voice low and even, “a relationship between a brother and sister is legal.”
The words landed in the quiet room with the weight of thrown stones. Letty blinked, processing. Her eyes flickered to Catalina’s pregnant stomach, then back to her face, the full picture clicking into a devastating, clear focus.
“Jesus Christ,” Letty whispered, the air leaving her lungs. She sank onto the arm of the sofa, her tough-girl persona finally dissolving entirely. “All this time. The one-night stand story. Mina.” Her voice cracked. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth? About Mina’s father? I am your best friend, Cat. Why didn’t you tell me that Dom is her father? Your twin brother?”
Catalina finally looked at her, really looked at her. She saw the hurt beneath the shock, the betrayal that ran deeper than the danger Letty was in. It was the question that had been festering for years, now finally asked in a quiet Swiss living room.
“I don’t know, Letty.” The admission came out hollow, stripped bare. “I was scared that someone would hear. The crew. Mia. Brian. It was this… thing. This massive, awful, beautiful thing. And I held it so tight I thought if I let a single piece of it out, the whole world would see.” She shook her head, a slow, painful movement. “I was scared you’d look at me like everyone else would. Like those mothers at the playground looked at us today.”
Letty stared at her, mouth slightly agape. The fire popped. “Those bitches,” she said finally, no heat in it, just a flat statement of fact.
A half-sob, half-laugh escaped Catalina’s throat. She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “Yeah.”
“So you’ve been living here, just… pretending to be married? With his last name on fake papers?”
“We’re not pretending.” Catalina’s voice regained a sliver of steel. “The paperwork is fake. What’s between us isn’t. What we’re building here isn’t.”
Letty absorbed that, her gaze drifting back to the embers. The magnitude of their secret, of their entire constructed life, seemed to settle on her. She wasn’t just a stranger in their house now. She was a keeper of the most dangerous truth they owned.
“He’d kill for you,” Letty said softly, not looking at her. “He’d die for you. I always knew that. I guess I just didn’t know how far it went.”
Catalina didn’t answer. There was nothing to say. It was simply the architecture of their world.
Letty finally pushed herself off the sofa arm and walked to the window, peering out into the blackness. “The people after me… they’re serious, Cat. They’re not going to stop. I can’t stay. I know that. But I didn’t know where else to turn.”
“You can stay tonight,” Catalina repeated Dominic’s decree, but her tone had softened. It was no longer a sentence; it was a fragile, offered peace. “We’ll figure out the next part in the morning.”
Letty nodded, her reflection ghostly in the dark glass. “He’s gonna hate me forever for this.”
“Maybe.” Catalina picked up the other blanket, her movements weary. “But he loved you first. That doesn’t just go away.”
She left Letty standing at the window, staring out at the mountains that hid them, and went upstairs. The bedroom was dark, lit only by a sliver of moonlight slicing through a gap in the curtains. Dominic was lying on his back, one arm thrown over his eyes. He wasn’t asleep.
Catalina undressed quietly and slid into bed beside him. The space between them was cool. She didn’t reach for him. She just lay there, listening to his breathing.
“She ask?” His voice was a low vibration in the dark.
“Yeah.”
“You tell her?”
“Yeah.”
He was silent for a long time. The moonbeam crept slowly across the floor. “Now she knows everything,” he said, finally. The words weren’t angry. They were resigned. A simple assessment of their new, precarious reality.
“Now she knows everything,” Catalina echoed. She closed her eyes, feeling the twin kicks inside her, a frantic rhythm against her ribs. Their secret was no longer just theirs. It was spinning out into the world, carried by a tired, desperate woman sleeping on their couch. The walls were still standing, but a window had been opened, and the cold night air was rushing in.