Page 46 of Accidental Alliance

We need to leave.

Maybe tonight, maybe even before sunset if I can distract Matteo long enough to pack without making him panic.

We could drive up north, pay cash to sleep somewhere cheap until I can figure out where we can go.

Perhaps to another coastal town on the other side of the country, another alias we will have to live under.

God. How will I get him to understand?

I’ve done it before, I can do it again. But now I have a seven-year-old who is too curious for his own good and will be asking me questions. The first time I ran, I had been terrified, of course.

I had vanished because I had to, and necessity had made anything possible.

This time, though, there is a boy with soccer practice and a teacher who sends home gold stars on his spelling quizzes. One who believes this home is permanent because I made it look that way.

Uprooting him now will not just mean fleeing. It will mean breaking something in him I have spent seven years trying to protect.

But… broken trust is better than spilled blood.

Davide visiting my home has opened some can of worms I still cannot fully wrap my head around. That much is obvious now. His presence alone was a signal, a stone thrown into still water.

Tracking me down has stirred attention in my direction from someone clearly involved with him.

Maybe the family moving in on his territory has been sifting through old alliances to find a pressure point and mine surfaced the second Davide knocked on my door looking for help.

Perhaps whoever is outside thinks they can scare me into not taking Davide up on his offer despite already refusing it to begin with. That would fit the logic of the world I came from. A first no is rarely treated as a final answer by men raised on never accepting no, especially not when they believe the person saying it still has value.

Any syndicate worth their salt knows threats are the only true way to get people to comply.

I cross the kitchen and head for the living room, the folding chair heavy against my shoulder. I slip it down my arm and settle it next to the dining table, my thoughts moving too fast to settle anywhere for more than a second at a time.

Cash. Our documents. Matteo’s school things. His stuffed shark. I’ll have to get in touch with my old contact about getting new papers. Leave before dark or after? Call my contact before or after we settle? Avoid the highway. Keep the route irregular. Stop for gas now or farther north?

It is a grave mistake not to notice the sudden silence that has fallen over my house.

An even graver one to forget, even for one distracted heartbeat, the sound of my son racing down the hallway toward his room.

The familiar thud-thud-thud of him yanking open his dresser too hard and the running commentary he usually provides to himself when he is in a hurry.

I have listened to those sounds so many times, they should be stitched into my entire nervous system.

It is not until I reach the threshold of the living room that my eyes finally lift from the floor.

Within one single moment, my entire world shifts on its axis. Because sitting on the couch, with men surrounding him on all sides, is a man I never, ever thought I would see again.

For a second, my body completely freezes. Every organ, nerve, even the beat of my own heart has been violently interrupted by the sight of him in my home, in my life, in the place I built specifically to keep him and his world out.

He sits in my home like he has always belonged here—one ankle resting over the opposite knee, broad shoulders relaxed beneath a dark coat, one hand draped loosely along the back of the couch as if this is a social visit and not an invasion.

The room bends around him as if the center of gravity has no choice but to shift wherever he decides to place himself.

Those dark eyes pin me in place.

They move over me slowly.

Assessing.

It is so familiar, it hurts.