“What kind of work do you do, sir?”His attention shifted back to me.
“Electrical contractor,” I replied.The backstory Marcus created sat clean in my memory.“Mostly commercial, some residential.Things slowed down this month, so I figured we’d take advantage of the gap.”
He nodded, glanced down at our registration, then back at the passports.Name on the car matched the names on the documents.Our luggage in the back looked modest but complete.No visible weapons, no extra passengers, no obvious contraband.Perfect on paper.Too perfect always risked drawing extra attention, so Marcus had built in small irregularities—a slightly older car, minor inconsistencies in credit histories that suggested real life rather than a spreadsheet.
Snow blew through the open window, melting on my hands where they rested on the wheel.I kept my grip loose, shoulders relaxed, jaw unclenched.Every nerve felt strung like wire.Years of training hummed at the edge of action—calculating angles, distances, how fast I could reach the gun under my seat, how many steps the guard would take before drawing his own weapon.Useless math unless everything went to hell, but my brain didn’t know how to stop running numbers.
The guard stepped away, documents still in hand.Through the mirror I watched him enter the booth, feed our passports through scanners, lift them under specialized lights.The kind that exposed cheap forgery fast.Marcus’ work wasn’t cheap.But nothing in this world came with guarantees, especially not when half the family wanted my head as a trophy and my disappearance as a statement.
Mia’s hand slid across the small space between our seats and settled over mine.The gesture looked like absent affection, something a wife did without thinking on a long drive.Her fingers were colder than mine, tremor slight but unmistakable.I curled my hand around hers and squeezed once—steady, grounding—and kept my eyes on the booth.
“We’re going to be okay,” I whispered, voice low enough not to carry.
“I know,” she answered, and even if the words were more hope than certainty, hearing them helped.
The guard came back out, posture impossible to read through the layers of winter gear and professional distance.Every muscle in my body ratcheted one notch tighter.He stopped by the window, leaned down, and passed the passports back.
“You’re all set,” he said.“Drive safe.Roads get worse up there.”
“Appreciate it,” I replied, surprised at how normal I sounded.
He stepped back, lifted a hand to signal the booth.The barrier ahead rose.I rolled the window up, eased my foot onto the gas, and guided us forward over the painted line that separated one country from another.It felt like driving across a fault line in my life.On one side: Gabriel Russo, enforcer, Vincent’s weapon.On the other: a man who might one day learn how to live without a gun in reach.
The crossing shrank in the rearview mirror until the floodlights blurred into a white smear.My hands tightened on the steering wheel until my knuckles ached.I held on for another quarter mile before I had to pull onto the shoulder, had to stop before the shaking in my arms started affecting the car.
Mia freed herself from the seatbelt, crossed the small space between us, and folded into my lap as far as the console allowed.I wrapped my arms around her and let the adrenaline drain out in ragged breaths.She laughed once, a sound that bent in the middle and came out halfway between relief and tears.
“We did it,” she said against my chest.“We actually did it.”
“First hurdle.”My voice sounded rough even to my own ears.“There’ll be more.Different checkpoints, different people, countless chances for something to go wrong.”
She leaned back enough to look me in the face, eyes still bright wet.“Give me thirty seconds where we’re not planning for disaster.Thirty seconds where crossing that line means we get a future.Please.”
I looked at her in the dim light from the dashboard and saw every version of her stacked together.Girl hiding in a closet, woman standing over a body she’d shot to save me, lover in a burning cabin, caretaker in an abandoned church, partner in a dingy motel room choosing me over every logical instinct for survival.The world had tried to break her, and she’d turned every fracture into another way to bend without snapping.
“You were my first mistake,” I said quietly.
Her brows pulled together, confusion flaring.“Thanks?”
“In Vincent’s terms,” I clarified.“Two decades of doing exactly what I was told.No hesitation.No mercy.Then I opened a closet door, looked at you, and didn’t pull the trigger.Should have killed you on sight.Protocol demanded it.He would have put a bullet in my head if he’d known what I did instead.”
She watched me carefully, waiting for the rest.
“That mistake cost me everything he built,” I continued.“Position.Safety.A clear role in a world where I never had to think about right or wrong because those decisions had already been made for me.”My thumb brushed her cheek, slow and sure.“Turned out I never wanted those things as much as I wanted you alive.Turns out I’d rather be hunted alongside you than safe without you.”
Her hand covered mine, fingers sliding into the spaces between my knuckles.“Then maybe it wasn’t a mistake,” she said.“Maybe that was the first right thing you ever did.”
Silence settled around us, broken only by the ticking engine and the faint hiss of snow against metal.My chest hurt in a way that had nothing to do with wounds or exertion.
“You’re my reason now,” I said.“Not Vincent.Not the family.Every document I forged, every route I planned, every move I make from here forward, I’m doing because you stayed when anyone sane would have walked away.”
“We’re each other’s reason,” she answered.“No one else gets to claim that anymore.”
That was what different looked like for me.Not absolution, not redemption in some storybook sense.A shift in center of gravity—from loyalty built on fear to loyalty built on choice.From orders handed down to decisions made shoulder to shoulder.
After another minute I loosened my hold, forced my hands to steady enough to drive.Mia slid back into her seat, buckled up, and kept our fingers linked in the space between us as I pulled back onto the highway.Snow thickened ahead, swallowing the road shoulder to shoulder, turning the world outside our beams into a white tunnel.
“Halifax first?”she asked, watching the dark stretch ahead.
