Isabella #4
I let go of Matteo’s hand only long enough to lift both of my arms in the air and wave them around frantically.
“Stop!” I scream. “Please! Stop!”
My voice tears out of me raw and desperate. I move into the edge of the road, ignoring Matteo’s panicked cry behind me and the danger of stepping too close to the traffic. Headlights flare in my eyes, temporarily blinding me.
A set of tires screech against the road as one of the cars jerks to a stop several yards ahead, angled halfway onto the shoulder.
Hazard lights begin blinking, red and gold against the fog.
I squint through the glare and turn to grab Matteo, lifting him off his feet with a strength I do not have but find anyway.
He clutches onto me with a death grip, his little legs wrapping around my waist, arms locked around my neck so tightly, I can barely breathe.
“It’s okay,” I breathe into his hair. “We’re going to be okay.”
I run toward the driver’s side of the vehicle just as an older man pushes the door open and steps out.
He is maybe in his sixties, gray hair, glasses, a windbreaker zipped halfway up.
His face is creased with confusion and alarm, the expression of a normal man who has stopped for what he thinks is an emergency and has no understanding of what.
“Miss? Are you okay?” he calls to me.
For a fraction of a second, the question hits me so strangely, I almost laugh.
Am I okay?
I am running for my life with my seven-year-old son in my arms as men who were once tied to my family are hunting us for sport.
My uncle may be dead and the father of my child may be the one giving the orders to shoot on sight or drag us back to our prison cell, and I do not know which version of him will reach me first.
Adrenaline crashes through me as I reach out and grab the older man by the front of his shirt.
His eyes widen. “What are you—”
“I need your car.”
I shoulder-check him out of the way, shoving him back hard enough that he stumbles and has to catch himself on the side of the vehicle.
Guilt flashes through me, though it is gone before it can slow my hands.
“I need your car,” I say again, harsher this time, already leaning inside.
“What?” he shouts.
“I’m sorry.” It’s all the apology I give him before dumping Matteo into the passenger seat. He lands awkwardly with a small cry, twisting toward me immediately, one hand reaching for my sleeve.
“Seat belt,” I snap.
His hands shake too badly to force his hands to work. I reach across him and yank the belt down, clicking it into place with fumbling fingers.
The man outside recovers enough to grab at my arm. “Lady, stop! That’s my car!”
I twist away from him and climb behind the wheel, slamming the door shut and locking it before he can pull it open again. He slams his fists against the window next to me, shouting, his words muffled by the glass.
“Open the door! What the hell are you doing?”
I don’t look at him. My foot finds the brake, then I shift the car into drive. From the tree line, a flashlight beam slices through the fog, then another. One of them swings toward the road.
The older man pounds harder on the window. “Stop!”
I floor it.
The car lurches forward so violently, Matteo’s body slams back into the seat. The older man jumps away with a shout, barely avoiding the side mirror as the car tears off the shoulder and back onto the highway. A horn blares immediately and headlights swell in the driver’s side window.
Matteo screams.
“Hold on!” I shout.
I jerk the wheel, cutting into the lane too sharply.
The tires skid over wet pavement, the back end of the car fishtailing for one terrifying second before traction catches and the car rights itself again.
The highway stretches ahead, both directions unknown.
Fog curls over the road, swallowing taillights and road signs ahead of us until they appear too late to see.
My hands grip the wheel so tightly, my knuckles go white, my eyes flicking down to the speedometer as it climbs.
I do not know where I am going.
That is the first brutal truth.
The second is that I have no one else I can call.
The realization sits beside me in the stolen car like another passenger, silent and heavy, its hands folded neatly in its lap while my son shakes in the seat next to me.
Any ally my family once had would never willingly turn against Vittorio Conti.
Not unless I had something valuable to offer— territory, money, a secret, a favor powerful enough to outweigh the risk of helping Amos Russo’s daughter and inciting Vittorio’s wrath.
I have none of those things.
Once, the Russo name meant doors opening and men standing when my family entered rooms. Allies would fall over themselves in order to make promises and strike bargains over wine and food.
Back then, my family had reach and influence.
Now all that is left of it is me, a woman with a false name, stolen vehicle, and a seven-year-old trying not to cry too loudly in the passenger seat next to me.
My hands tighten around the steering wheel. Outside, the road unfurls beneath weak streetlights and patches of fog. A town rises slowly into view. I drive past all of the shops because normal places have cameras and clerks and the police called by well-meaning strangers.
A motel sign flickers ahead beyond the road. The letters pulses in and out, sickly red against the night sky. For a second, I consider it. A room with a locked door I can control and a bathroom where Matteo and I can clean up while I figure out where to go from here are incredibly tempting.
But if the Contis are following us, and I suspect they are, motels will be among the first places they check.
Beside the motel sits a self-storage facility with its gate half open and no attendant visible in the booth.
Rows of metal units stretch back behind the lot, swallowed by darkness.
The sign near the entrance is cracked, one bulb out, the whole place forgotten.
I swing into the parking lot and immediately cut the headlights.
Matteo sucks in a breath. “Mom?”
“It’s okay.”