The motel room smelled like mildew pretending to be air freshener, like every burned cigarette that had ever drifted through the vents had decided to stay.I sat on the edge of the sagging mattress, my spine a straight line despite the way exhaustion kept trying to drag me sideways.Headlights swept across the water-stained ceiling each time a car passed on the highway, carving pale stripes through the dark and telling me I wasn’t asleep yet, that I still had hours to go before morning.Every light made my pulse jolt, because any vehicle could carry men looking to collect the bounty on our heads.Three hours since Gabe had left to finish the identities.Three hours of silence broken only by passing engines and the soft mechanical click from the gun on the nightstand when I checked the safety for the tenth, maybe the twentieth time.
The wallpaper peeled in long strips near the window, showing older designs underneath like geological layers—floral swirls buried under geometric patterns buried under something faded to the point of anonymity.A history of redecorating that stopped when the highway shifted and travelers chose cleaner motels.Now this place survived on the people who needed to disappear for a night and didn’t care about the smell or the stains or the sagging ceiling tiles.
People like us.
I heard his footsteps before the knock.Three quick raps—exactly what we’d agreed on.I checked the peephole anyway, even though his silhouette was unmistakable, then undid the lock and chain.He stepped inside, and the tension radiating from him changed the room instantly.The exhaustion in his face had sharpened into something else—something heavier, something grim.
“Got them done.”He dropped a backpack on the bed and sat in the single chair as if gravity had doubled.“Every document we’ll need.Enough to get us across.”
Relief should have hit, but his expression didn’t match his words.Something had shifted in the hours he’d been gone.His posture wasn’t just tired—it was bracing for impact.
“What happened?”
He didn’t answer immediately.Instead he pulled out one of the burner phones, stared at the screen like the headline there had been chewing at him since he left, then handed it over.“This.”
The article took its time loading in the motel’s patchy Wi-Fi.New York Times.“Alleged Crime Boss Vincent Russo Found Dead in Home Invasion.”The words blurred for a second before I forced myself to focus.Multiple gunshot wounds.Evidence of a fight.Police investigating whether the attack was targeted or a burglary gone wrong.No suspects yet.
“When?”I managed, even though the ground already felt like it was tilting.
“Yesterday afternoon.The family tried to keep it contained.”He rubbed at the bridge of his nose like he’d been doing that repeatedly for hours.“Marcus has connections.Heard things before the news hit mainstream.They think the Volkovs retaliated for something Vincent did months ago.”
I set the phone down, unable to look at the pixelated photo of the house any longer.Vincent Russo—dead in his own home.The man who’d ordered my family’s murder, who’d twisted Gabe into something lethal, who’d set all of this in motion—gone without either of us anywhere near him.
“Does any of this help us?”I asked, already reading the answer in Gabe’s face.
“It makes everything worse.”He leaned his head back against the wall, fatigue etched deep.“Vincent kept order.Cruel order, but it held everything together.Now the underbosses are circling.Everyone wants control.And the fastest way to prove you deserve a throne is to erase evidence the previous ruler slipped.”
He nodded at the phone.“Scroll down.”
I looked again.My name and Gabe’s were mentioned in the sidebar.“Persons of interest.”“Possible connection to the Grant murders.”A note about his disappearance aligning with the deaths of my family.Lines that might as well have drawn arrows straight to us.
“They’re almost done piecing the timeline together,” I whispered.
“They already finished.”He drew a different phone from his jacket—the encrypted one.“Marcus got me into some of the internal chatter.Not high-level stuff—nobody breaches that and lives—but enough.”He opened a thread and handed the screen to me.
I didn’t understand the codes or references, but I didn’t need to.My name.His name.The phrase “clean the Grant situation.”A mention of a surveillance photo.Crews advised to remain alert for two targets traveling together.
“They have a picture of us.”I didn’t mean for it to sound like a verdict, but it landed that way anyway.
“Probably from the cabin area.Maybe from the gas station when we stopped for fuel.”He slid the phone aside, shoulders tight.“Marcus says the contract went out this morning.Fifty grand each.Me alive if possible, you either way.”
Fifty thousand wasn’t the point.The point was how many people would come for a payday that size.The point was how many wanted to prove loyalty to whichever underboss would end up ruling Vincent’s empire.
“How long?”I asked, voice steady only because fear had burned itself out days ago.
“Days if we’re lucky.Less if someone ambitious gets close.”He exhaled slowly.“We can’t wait for my wounds to fully heal.We move fast.Faster than planned.Documents tomorrow.Photos for the couple identity.Then we run for real.”
I stared at the backpack he’d dropped on the bed—the weight of forged identities inside it, the weight of every future scenario, every exit route.The girl who’d hidden in the closet while her family died would have broken under the pressure of that choice.But she wasn’t here anymore.
“What do you need from me?”I asked.
He didn’t look at me like I was fragile anymore.He looked at me like an equal.Someone capable of surviving what came next.
“Sleep,” he said.“Eat something.Keep your weapon where you can reach it.When morning comes, we leave everything that isn’t essential.No nostalgia.No flinching.”
I watched him cross to the bathroom, shoulders tight, movements slow from pain.Water ran through old pipes while I stared at the stained wallpaper and the gun on the nightstand and tried to picture the version of myself who still believed safety could be found by standing still.
She was gone.
