Isabella #5
The car rolls forward slowly, tires crunching over loose pieces of asphalt.
Rows of corrugated metal units pass on either side, each with a painted number and a padlock glinting dully in the gloom.
I’ve found storage facilities always have a strange sadness to them, all those locked little rooms filled with pieces of people’s lives they couldn’t keep close but couldn’t quite throw away.
I turn down one row, then another. The deeper we go, the dimmer the lot becomes.
The lights near the entrance fade behind us.
At the far end, where the lot’s weak security lamps can’t reach, a row of larger RV storage bays sits like dark monoliths along the fence line.
I turn behind them, easing the stolen car into the narrow shadow between two parked trailers, and finally cut the engine.
I sit frozen behind the wheel, hands locked at ten and two, staring at the rearview mirror as cars pass lazily on the road behind us. Their headlights drift by like distant ships, indifferent and unreachable.
For a few stolen minutes, we are hidden.
Not safe.
Hidden.
There is a difference so vast, it feels almost comical to put the words beside each other.
Safety is doors that lock from the inside, a bed with clean sheets. The smell of laundry detergent and pancakes on Sunday mornings. Safety is our blue house at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac where neighbors wave and no one thinks twice about the single mother with tired eyes and a careful smile.
Hidden is a stolen car tucked behind a storage facility where my son sits beside me with dried tears on his cheeks. It’s waiting for headlights to turn the corner and knowing every second you remain still is one more closer to the men hunting you closing the distance.
This won’t last for long.
The thought settles like a stone in my stomach.
What do I do now?
My fingers tighten around the wheel while my mind turns over every possibility I can think of.
I need to take Matteo and disappear again.
That is the only real option. But without my uncle’s help, I have no idea how to secure new documentation.
Not forged well enough to pass through border patrol, banking systems, school enrollment, and medical files like last time.
I won’t be able to make them convincing enough to flee to another country without the Contis knowing.
I glance at Matteo and find him curled into the passenger seat, the oversized sweater wrapped tightly around him. His face is pale except for the red around his eyes, his lips parted slightly when he sniffles. He keeps looking out the windshield, then the mirror next to him, and then back again.
I close my eyes for a second, pressing my forehead against the steering wheel.
All I want to do is go back to our little blue house on the cul-de-sac.
For one weak moment, I let myself imagine the life we were forced to leave behind.
I want to return to them and forget all of this.
I want to wake up tomorrow and pack Matteo’s lunch and complain about being late.
I want him to roll his eyes when I tell him to grab a jacket.
I want people to only know me as Marina Hayes, the quiet receptionist with a tired laugh.
I want the damn past to stay dead.
Suddenly, a memory flashes in my mind so quickly, my eyes snap open.
“I need a brilliant strategist like your father was to help me make moves against them. I know he taught you well, Isabella.”
His voice returns with startling clarity.
At the time, the offer had felt like a hand reaching up from a grave to wrap around my throat and squeeze the life out of me.
Davide Bianchi is a syndicate boss with blood on his hands and enemies knocking at his gates.
A man desperate enough to track down Amos Russo’s daughter and ask for help against an encroaching family.
He knows how to move people, hide them, forge documents, shift money, bury names, and he has the resources I don’t.
More importantly, he has reason to move against the Contis. If the family pressing into his territory is tied to the Contis, then Davide does not need much incentive to help me so long as I hand over everything I know about them.
My hand reaches down to the shifter, the other traveling to flick the headlights back on. The beams cut across the storage units ahead, bouncing off the metal doors of the units.
Beside me, Matteo shifts in his seat, a small sniffle leaving him.
“Where are we going?”
I turn and reach for him carefully, wiping the tear tracks from his cheeks with my thumbs. “We’re going to go see an old friend.”
His brow furrows. “A friend like Mrs. Keller?”
Despite everything, a broken laugh almost rises in me. Mrs. Keller, known for making terrible lentil soup and knitting scarves for half the neighborhood that never quite come out right, and whose idea of danger was once a raccoon getting into everyone’s trash bins right before the holiday season.
“Sort of,” I say before turning back to the road. “You’ll see when we get there.”