The voice disappeared back into static, but the words stayed.Two targets.No exceptions.Both.It didn’t need translation.My body went numb the way it had the night my family died.Gabriel didn’t turn off the radio right away.His hand hovered over it like he needed one more second to believe the world had caught up to us.When he finally looked at me, it wasn’t fear I saw in his eyes.It was resignation.“They know,” he said quietly.Two words that tore through every fragile thing we’d built in these walls and scattered it like dust.
I sank into the chair across from him because my legs wouldn’t hold me anymore.If I’d been smart, I would’ve run into the snow the moment he raided my house.If I’d been sane, I would’ve stayed in that storm and let it take me.Instead I was here—alive because Gabriel had spared me, and hunted because he had.“They’re coming to kill you because you didn’t kill me,” I said, and it didn’t feel like a question.He gave a single nod.No excuses.No denial.Just truth.
He moved then—fast, all focus and efficiency, like a switch had flipped.Cabinet unlocked.Guns.Ammunition.Magazines checked and loaded with hands that moved on muscle memory.Hidden floorboard pried up.Stacks of cash.IDs in different names.Burner phones.His escape plan laid bare in seconds.He’d been planning to run long before I existed in his world.But now he wasn’t running alone.The realization hit quietly, without fanfare.Whatever happened next, it happened to both of us.
“What now?”I asked, though the answer was obvious.He didn’t look up as he shoved stacks of money into a duffel.“We run,” he said.“And we don’t stop.”He didn’t adduntil they find us.He didn’t need to.The truth lived in the silence between his words.The Russo family didn’t forgive.They didn’t get tired.They didn’t forget.They would hunt us until one side stopped breathing.
I stood and dressed while Gabriel finished arming himself.My hands moved quick and steady—not because I wasn’t terrified, but because terror wasn’t useful anymore.I wasn’t the woman shaking in ropes waiting to die.Whatever I was becoming, it wasn’t that.When I turned, Gabriel was watching me with an expression I couldn’t name.Not desire, not regret, not exactly fear.Something heavier.Something that said he knew he’d made choices he couldn’t undo and that he’d make them again anyway.
We packed in silence because there was no language for what this was—survivors, fugitives, broken people chained together by a choice that had rewritten both our lives.Every brush of his arm against mine sent sparks of memory through me—his body over mine, my mouth on his, the way he’d said my name like it mattered.No time for that now.Maybe no future for it either.But it existed, and it changed everything.
Chapter Ten
Gabe
The sound cut through wind and snow like a blade—mechanical, rhythmic, too controlled to belong to nature.Snowmobiles.More than one.The engines were still distant but growing louder, pushing through the storm with determined momentum.My hand froze on the zipper of the duffel I’d been packing, every muscle locking into stillness the way Victor had spent years training my body to respond to danger.For three full seconds I didn’t breathe, didn’t blink, didn’t move.Just listened.The engines swelled by a fraction—close enough that instinct did the math my brain didn’t need to.They’d found us.
Mia hadn’t heard it yet.She was across the room folding the blanket we’d slept under, smoothing the edges like small order might hold back the chaos closing in on us.She looked calm in that moment—hair messy from sleep, expression soft, movements unhurried—and the contrast between that softness and the violence heading straight for us hit me with unexpected force.In another life, in a world where I’d been allowed to grow up human instead of forged into a weapon, I could have walked toward her instead of what I was about to walk into.
“Gabe?”Her voice shifted when she saw my posture.She wasn’t reacting to the sound she hadn’t heard yet.She was reacting to me—the absolute stillness, the readiness, the danger she’d learned to read the same way I read threats.“What is it?”
“They’re here.”The words didn’t carry emotion.They didn’t have room for any.I moved before she could respond—already flipping to the mode that had kept me alive for twenty years.“Five minutes at most.”
Fear flashed across her face but she didn’t freeze.She set down the blanket and waited for direction.I felt something twist in my chest at her steadiness.Five days ago she’d been a student who had never held a weapon.Yesterday she had killed a man to save my life.Today she didn’t hesitate when I told her death was walking toward us.
I crossed to the far wall and grabbed the elk mount by the antler.It came off with the bracket, revealing the weapons cache behind it: three pistols, extra magazines, a combat knife.I grabbed two pistols and handed one to Mia.Her grip trembled when she closed her hand around it.“You’ve never fired before.”
“No,” she said, but her voice was steady.“Tell me how.”
I positioned myself behind her, adjusting her stance and her grip, guiding her aim with movements that mirrored training I’d received for far worse tasks.It shouldn’t have been this intimate, not after last night, not after what we’d shared on that cot while the world outside tried to disappear us under snow.But survival didn’t care about emotional boundaries.I forced myself to teach, not touch.“Both hands.Firm but not tense.Don’t yank.Squeeze.Trigger pull is five pounds.You pull, it fires.No safety.You understand?”
“Yes.”She raised the weapon again.Her form was rough but determined.
The engines were louder now.Victor would be on the lead machine—he always took point on close-contact elimination work.I moved to the window and scanned through a small gap in the shutters.Nothing visible yet, but the storm hid everything until it was nearly on top of you.I could feel them more than see them—predators closing in.
I dragged the table to the doorway and flipped it, bracing it into a shooting barricade.Chairs followed.The packs went behind the cover; if we lasted long enough to run, we needed everything in reach.“Get behind the table,” I told Mia.“Anyone except me comes through that door, you shoot center mass until they stop moving.”
She took position without argument, crouched low, weapon trained on the entrance.The sight of her there—cold, determined, prepared to kill—should have hardened me.Instead it carved something open.I didn’t have time to look at what that something was.
I loaded the Winchester and took position near the window.The engines cut suddenly.Silence hit the cabin like pressure, broken only by wind and the sharp sound of my own breathing.I could hear them moving in the snow outside—three, maybe four, spreading out to surround the cabin with practiced precision.Victor had taught me that formation.Now I would face it from the wrong side of the equation.
“Gabe.”Mia didn’t raise her voice.She didn’t have to.“I need you to hear me.”
I looked across the cabin.She was framed by the dying fire, gun steady, eyes locked on mine with a clarity that felt like it hit bone.She wasn’t asking a question.She wasn’t doubting.She was giving me something she thought might be the last thing she ever said.“If we don’t—”
“We will.”I couldn’t let her finish.Couldn’t let her shape her last words around death.“You shoot straight, you stay down, and we make it.”
But she didn’t look away.“Even knowing everything, I’m glad you found me that night.”
It hit harder than it should have.Harder than a bullet.There was no time to answer, no time to pull her up and tell her what that meant, no time for anything except violence.I moved to the door, pressed my back against the wall, rifle raised.Through the shutters I saw the first beam of a headlamp sweep across the snow.Victor was close enough now that I could picture his face—expression neutral, focus absolute, already imagining the report he’d give when this was over.
The engines cut out completely.Footsteps crunched through snow.Four figures taking position.Victor would want to be first through the door.Would want to pull the trigger himself.
“Thirty seconds,” I said to Mia.“Remember your training.”
“I remember,” she answered, and her voice was steady.
The cabin creaked under the weight of snow on the roof.Wind pushed ice through the shutter seams.The fire gave one final crackle.
