Chapter 24
ROAD TRIP GAMES
Caitríona
We meet at the edge of Riverside Park where the path narrows, and the traffic drowns out the mad war drum that thumps beneath my breastbone. Matteo falls into step beside me without touching. We move like two people who have forgotten how to walk together.
“I lost them.” He swivels his head over his shoulder, scanning behind us once. “For now.”
“For now,” I echo.
“I know a place.” He keeps his voice low. “It’s safe. Ale would never think to look for you in a Gemini safehouse.”
Every muscle in me tightens. “A Gemini—so, your world.” My thoughts swirl back in time to the boy I met on the beach, the one without a last name or an empire. I still remember the shock that registered when I found out who he really was years later.
“Mine,” he mutters. “Not theirs.”
Same thing, some unhelpful part of me thinks. The rest of me counts footpaths out of the park, dogs, children, and foreign faces. “I don’t hole up where I can’t walk out.”
“You’ll be able to walk out.” His jaw ticks. “If you want.”
I hate that the if you want lands soft. I hate that I believe him. I hate him…
“Fine,” I finally murmur. “But I drive.”
He raises an eyebrow. “You drove on the left side of the road for four years, Kitty Cat. We’re crossing a state line on the right. You trying to get us arrested before Tiernan catches us?”
“I’ll manage.”
“You will. From the passenger seat.”
I roll my eyes but find myself following him all the same. We find a block where cars line the curb like possibilities. He chooses a dusty sedan with a church bulletin on the dash and kneels by the steering column with a focus that would be noble in another life.
“You need help, Rossi?” I crouch down beside him.
“Nah, I got this.”
A second later, wires hiss and spark, then the engine coughs and finally catches.
“Charming,” I mutter. “Does our getaway vehicle come with a rosary and a built-in confession too?”
He gestures to the passenger door, the hint of a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. “Get in.”
We stare each other down, just standing there, until the quiet starts to itch. I give up first because time is our enemy, and Jersey isn’t getting any closer. I slide in, duffel at my feet, and tug the hood lower. Matteo pulls into traffic like he owns it.
The drive across the bridge is merciless, yanking at every last thread of my patience.
Manhattan finally appears behind us, a steel skyline jutting up against the cloudy gray.
I touch the edge of the blossom under my jacket and press until the ache steadies my hands.
Then I angle the vent away; the lukewarm air smells like old water.
My throat stings where the blade hit and barely missed.
We ride in a silence that feels heavier than any argument. He checks the mirror like it’s a habit he learned in the cradle, and I count the cars behind us.
Halfway over the river I can’t stand the quiet any longer. “Why are you helping me?”
He doesn’t look at me. “You know why.”
That lands like a live wire. I keep my gaze on the water, black and tumultuous, much like my current mood. “Say it.”
He exhales. “Not here.”
“Convenient.”
“Necessary.”
I roll the words around in my mind. Another mile. The skyline thins and flattens. New Jersey rises across the dash, and I exhale a sigh of relief. The radio is off. The only sound is the engine and all the things we’re not saying.
He tries again first. “Do you still hate olives?”
I blink. “That’s your follow-up?”
“Trying to lighten the mood.” He shrugs one shoulder. “Yes or no.”
“Yes.” I pause. “Green ones are a crime against nature.”
He nods solemnly. “Finally, common ground.”
“And you still drown your pasta in red pepper flakes like you’re trying to cauterize your taste buds?”
“It’s therapeutic.” He glances over. “Still sneaking extra sugar into espresso when no one’s looking?”
“It’s called making it drinkable.”
“Savage.” A beat. The corner of his mouth lifts, then drops like he isn’t allowed to keep the expression. “Favorite breakfast?”
“Depends. If I’m running for my life, anything I can eat with one hand. If I’m not—” I stop. The word not feels hypothetical. “Soda bread. Warm with real butter.”
“Of course the Irish lass says bread.” He taps the wheel. “I make eggs better than any man in this country.”
I snort before I can stop it. “Eggs, huh? As I recall, you burn toast.”
“That was one time.”
“Three.” My thoughts try to whirl back in time, but I keep them firmly planted in the present.
“Let’s call it experimental char.”
The silence after that isn’t as heavy. The road opens and the sky decides to be blue in spite of itself. I watch his hands on the wheel, steady and precise, the same way he held me apart from the world once. Like we could keep the tide from pulling us under.
“Where is this place?” I ask.
“Kearny. Old brick but new locks. We bought it as a fallback for complicated clients. No Gemini insignia, no paper trail that points to me, and Ale doesn’t use it, which is the point.”
“And your men?”
“Two blocks out. If I say so.” He glances at me. “But I didn’t.”
“Because you don’t trust me.”
“Because I’m giving you what you said you wanted. A door you can walk out of.”
That shouldn’t land gentle, but it does. I hate that it does.
We take an exit that looks like everyone out here, shoulders of broken bottles, and a deli that’s been twenty different delis. He threads us through a grid of streets that all smell faintly of fryer oil. The car rattles over a pothole, and my heart leaps up my throat.
He doesn’t notice. Or he pretends not to.
“What’s the first thing you’ll do if you live through this?” His voice is casual, like we’re playing road-trip games and not outrunning two mob families.
“Change my name,” I reply. “Then I’ll buy some new sneakers. You know, Nike’s are very expensive abroad. Then, I’ll sleep for fourteen hours without dreaming I’m going to bleed out in an alley.”
“And then?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll give up this life all together. Find a job where I don’t have to carry a gun to the bathroom.” I angle my head. “What about you?”
He thinks for a second too long. “I’d like to take a train somewhere stupid. Like Maine. No plan. Read a paperback someone left on a seat and eat terrible food at all the stops.”
“Very glamorous, Rossi.”
“I’m a simple man.”
“That’s a lie.”
“Sometimes I practice,” he replies. “For the big ones.”
He pulls onto a narrower street with row houses hunched shoulder to shoulder. A mural of a girl with blue hair watches us from a brick wall like she knows every secret on the block. He cuts left again, then idles by a stoop that’s definitely seen things it shouldn’t have.
“Is this it?”
He nods. “We’ll park around back. The cameras are mine, but just in case.” He slides into an alley so narrow it barely deserves the name, then he kills the engine, and listens the way all predators do. With his full body, without blinking.
No voices. No footsteps. A dog barks two blocks over. My heart keeps its mad drummer’s tempo and then remembers it can finally slow.
Matteo rounds the car and opens my door. He doesn’t offer a hand. Good. I don’t know what I would do if he did. I shoulder the duffel and follow him to a steel door recessed into brick. He keys a code into a box that looks like it belongs to some much more modern building and the lock thunks.
“Inside.” He cants his head.
“No surprises,” I warn. “If one of your cousins pops out of a closet, I shoot him or her in the foot.”
“They all deserve it,” he replies dryly, and swings the door wide.
The safehouse smells like fresh paint over old secrets.
A wide room stretches out with mismatched furniture, blackout shades, and a kitchenette that looks too modern against the ancient backdrop.
There’s nothing on the walls. There are two doors in the back, one ajar and one closed.
He steps in first, does a quick sweep, then nods me over the threshold.
I stand just inside and listen to the quiet settle around me. It’s a strange thing, the quiet you don’t have to fight for. My body doesn’t trust it. Neither do I.
Matteo locks the door, resets the alarm, then turns and studies me like a problem with too many variables. “You hungry?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
“Fine, water,” I allow.
He moves to the sink. I watch the line of his shoulders and hate that my hands want to shake. I curl them into fists, and they obey. The cut on my throat throbs in time with the old scar across my heart. I press my palm to the tattoo under my jacket, just once.
Matteo hands me a glass, and I’m careful not to let our fingers touch. I’m terrified what that would ignite. He notices but thankfully, pretends he doesn’t.
For a minute we just stand there, two ghosts hovering aimlessly in an empty room.
“There’s a ton of food in the pantry.” He throws his thumb over his shoulder. “I can whip up some pasta.”
“Not hungry.”
“You should sleep then.” His voice is gentler than the situation deserves. “You’re practically vibrating.”
“I don’t sleep well in cages.”
“Then don’t lock the door.”
I stare at him. “You really think I’m going to stay here?”
“I think you’ll do what keeps you alive.” He leans a hip against the counter. “And I think right now that means letting me take care of you until the heat dies down.”
“You always liked to play the hero.”
“I always liked you breathing.”
The words land between us and won’t get out of the way. I look down into the glass, see my mouth set like a wound, then tip the water back and feel it hit vacant places.
“Fine,” I grumble as I set the glass in the sink. “A few hours of sleep. Then I’m gone.”
He nods like that hurts less than it does. “Whatever you need.”
I turn for the back room. My hand lifts out of habit to press at my chest and the small name it protects. I have to survive this for her.
Behind me, Matteo clears his throat and tries again at lightness, like he can stitch us back together with threadbare jokes. “Before you pass out, one last vital question.” His eyes sparkle with a hint of amusement. “Do you still refuse to watch movies with subtitles?”
I pause in the doorway. “I refuse to watch your movies with subtitles. You read the words out loud.”
“That’s a vicious lie.”
“You annotate.”
He huffs, almost a laugh. “Go. I’ll keep watch.”
“Try not to burn the safehouse down making those world-class eggs.”
A hint of something that looks a lot like hope flashes across his face. “Does that mean you’re staying until morning?”
I shrug. I shouldn’t.
“Go,” he repeats, softer now.
I close the door halfway and lean my forehead against the wood for three slow breaths I don’t deserve.
When I open my eyes, the room is small and clean and impersonal, exactly what I need.
I set the duffel down and lock the window.
Then I sit on the edge of the narrow bed and let the calm come like a tide I can’t stop.
Just a few hours. Then the tide turns.