Chapter Seventeen
Emery
The mid-morning sun cuts through the windshield. It’s too bright, too harsh. Like the world doesn’t care that everything’s falling apart. That we’re barely holding on.
Matteo grips the wheel, his jaw tight, his knuckles bone-white. His eyes are narrowed against the glare, but I can tell he isn’t just focused on the road.
He hasn’t said a word in minutes, but he doesn’t need to. The tension rolling off him is loud enough.
We’re heading toward the one place I never thought I’d go again. The safehouse. The one my father kept hidden, buried beneath a life built on secrets and survival. A place meant for escape. For hiding. For disappearing.
But we’re not running. Not this time. We’re going straight into the fire. Even if it tears everything apart. Even if it breaks what’s left of us to do it.
I glance over at Matteo. At the tension carved into every inch of him. The way his shoulders stay rigid, like if he lets them drop even a little, the whole damn world might collapse with them.
He’s trying to hide it.
Trying to stay steady.
But I see it.
Clear as day.
Fear.
Not for himself. Matteo would walk into fire without flinching if it meant keeping someone else safe. But this… This is different. He’s scared for me.
That hits harder than anything else has. Because Matteo’s always been the strongest man I know.
Ruthless. Unshakeable.
The kind of man who stares death in the face and doesn’t blink. But right now, the cracks are showing.
He shifts in his seat, and his eyes flick to the rearview mirror. Quick. Sharp. Like he’s expecting death to be following us in the next car back.
I reach across the console, my hand hovering for a beat before I touch him. My fingers graze the inside of his wrist. It’s light, careful, like I’m afraid I might spook him.
And all the while, the thought gnaws at me… should I tell him… about what I’ve got hidden, the secret I’ve been holding onto like a loaded gun tucked behind my spine. My last card to play if everything goes to shit.
It’s not that I don’t trust him. I do. With everything.
But I also know how he is when it comes to protecting me. How far he’d go, how much he’d destroy. And if he knew what I was carrying… if he knew what I was capable of.
Would it calm him?
Or would it break him?
He flinches, just a fraction. Barely there. But still I feel it. The tension thrumming under his skin. The way he’s holding himself together with nothing but raw willpower and grit.
I slide my hand beneath his, threading our fingers together. He squeezes my hand hard, like he’s trying to hold on to something solid. Something he’s terrified of losing.
“We’ll be okay,” I say, my voice soft, shaking.
He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t even look at me.
Just keeps his eyes locked on the road like it’s the only thing that matters.
His jaw clenches tighter, and for a second I wonder if he even heard me.
But then his thumb moves slowly. A soft brush across my knuckles.
A thank you. A promise. Maybe even a plea.
Because whatever the hell we’re driving toward, whatever nightmare waits at the end of this road, I know we’ll face it together.
The road winds through the backcountry like it’s trying to lead us off the edge of the world. It’s narrow, framed by tall pine trees that press in close on either side. The kind of road that disappears if you blink too long. The kind that forgets you the second you leave it.
Dust curls in the vehicle’s wake, catching the light in hazy, smoke-thin ribbons. Sunlight fractures through the canopy in sharp beams. The air hangs heavy and still, watchful, an unspoken warning in the trees, as if the forest itself knows where we’re headed and wants us gone.
We pass a rusted fence half-swallowed by vines. A mailbox leaning sideways on a splintered post. The deeper we go, the more it feels like stepping into a place time has given up on. Abandoned. Forgotten. But not by me.
I know these woods. I know the way they breathe. The way the wind curls low through the underbrush and carries the sound of your footsteps farther than it should.
I know the gravel turn off that disappears behind a thicket of trees, the one most people miss unless they’ve been taught to look for it.
I know the shape of the land. The dip in the road before the final bend.
The narrow trail that leads to a porch I stood on too many times, wishing it would collapse beneath me.
Matteo doesn’t know this place.
But I do, all too well. This is where the lies started. Where the man who raised me became someone else. Where the past still lingers. And now we’re heading straight into it. Not to hide. Not to run. But to finally face what’s waiting there for us. No matter what it takes.
A rundown house outside of Millstone. Tucked between dying farms and long-forgotten backroads. Where the gravel turns to dust and the silence hangs heavy.
I can still picture it. The peeling white paint. A collapsed fence out front. One shutter always hanging loose, banging when the wind picked up. A place that always felt more like a hiding spot than a home.
My father used to call it “quiet enough to disappear, close enough to stay informed.” He said it like it was a strategy, a rule, not a life. It was his backup plan. The fallback he drilled into me like muscle memory when I was too young to understand what survival really meant.
If things ever go bad, you come here. This is where I’ll be.
And now, things aren’t just bad. They’re totally fucked, all because of him.
“It’s about an hour out from here,” I say, eyes fixed on the blur of trees outside the window. “Near the train yard past Millstone. Off a gravel road with the rusted-out grain silo. You won’t see the driveway until you’re practically on top of it.”
Matteo glances over.
I pause, swallowing hard. “He used it as a safehouse…years ago.” I drag in a breath, steadying the shake in my voice. “I don’t think he ever stopped.”
Matteo nods once, his jaw flexing.
“Why there?” He asks.
“Because it’s isolated,” I say. “And, because he thinks I’m dead.” My throat tightens as I stare at him. “He’d be using it now not expecting me to show up.”
A muscle ticks in Matteo’s jaw. He doesn’t speak, but he doesn’t have to. I can feel it rolling off him in waves. Rage. Restraint. The kind of fury that simmers low, waiting for something to burn.
His whole body’s strung so tight he’s practically vibrating beneath the surface. Every breath’s a war, controlled, barely holding back something brutal.
“He thinks I’m just a memory now,” I say, my voice steady, but I feel the crack beneath it. “I was just another mess he buried to save his own skin. That’s why he’ll let his guard down. He won’t see me coming.”
Matteo looks at me for just a second, but that’s all it takes.
It’s not just anger I see on his beautiful face.
It’s heartbreak. It’s grief for everything he couldn’t protect.
It’s rage at a world that let it happen.
And underneath it all it’s love. Fierce and fucking lethal.
The kind that doesn’t back down. The kind that kills to keep you breathing.
And I know if my father so much as looks at me the wrong way…
If he breathes the wrong fucking word, Matteo won’t hesitate.
He won’t ask questions. He’ll put a bullet between his eyes and paint the walls with his blood.
Because that’s what love looks like in this world we’ve grown up in.
When it’s been pushed too far. When it’s been broken, tested, and still refuses to fucking die.
We have been driving for nearly an hour. Every passing minute, the weight in my chest grows heavier. Not just from where we are going, but from what I’m about to do.
Because I know this isn’t just about finding my father. It’s about facing the man who broke me before I even knew I was breakable. It’s about walking back into a version of myself I tried to bury so long ago.
I press my palm to my thigh, trying to stop the shake in my fingers, but it doesn’t help. The closer we get, the more my body remembers what it felt like to belong to someone who only loved me when it was convenient. To be a daughter and a liability in the same breath.
I can’t stop thinking about what happens next.
What I’ll say, what he’ll do. Or what Matteo will do. Because I’ve seen what he becomes. And I’m not sure if I’m leading him into a conversation or a war.
He hasn’t let go of my hand once. His grip is steady, solid in a way that should comfort. But I can’t stop wondering if he can feel it. The tremble in my fingers. The way my pulse keeps skipping like it’s trying to outrun what’s ahead.
The road starts to curve. The trees start to shift. A subtle change, but I feel it in my chest. Like my body recognizes this place before my eyes do.
The branches hang lower. The air feels still. Like the forest itself is holding its breath.
I know we’re close. Too close.
And no matter how tightly I hold Matteo’s hand, I don’t know if it’s enough to keep me from coming undone.
I hold my breath the second the laneway comes into view up ahead. There it is, that goddamn silo. Rusted to shit, slouched like it’s been waiting years to finally collapse in on itself. Half-swallowed by brush, forgotten by time. But still I remember it.
And just beyond it, far into the distance, barely visible through the snarl of overgrowth I see it.
The house.
His safehouse.
Small and sun-bleached. Tilted, ready to sink into the earth and vanish. Tucked so deep in the trees, it looks half-swallowed already. A place where the lies always outnumbered the furniture.
“That’s it,” I mutter, my voice tight.
Matteo doesn’t speak. He just pulls onto the dirt track, calm as sin, driving with the kind of focus that says he’s done this a thousand times. Built for this kind of quiet war. Born in it. Raised by it.