“Yeah,” I said.“Enough time to make our arrival look normal.Then we slip inland.Smaller places, new names if we need them.Towns where nobody asks more questions than they need to.”
“And if nowhere feels safe?”
“Then we keep moving.Pick new names, choose new towns, reinvent ourselves as many times as it takes.”I glanced at her, at the gold band on her hand, at the way she met my eyes without flinching.“Long as you’re in the seat next to me, I can live with that.”
She smiled then, a real one, small and bright enough to cut through the gray light.“For the record, I love you, Gabriel Russo.Not Marcus Chen.Not any of the other names.You.”
Heat climbed my throat, quick and sharp.I’d been called a lot of things in my life.None of them had ever felt like a blessing until now.“I love you, Mia Grant.”
Soon we’d answer to different names.Sign papers differently.Introduce ourselves at grocery stores and apartment offices as people who had never set foot in New York, who had no connection to crime families or blood on hardwood floors.But under every name we wore, those truths would remain.She would know who I had been.I would know what she had done to keep us both alive.We would carry that together instead of letting it crush either of us alone.
We drove north into a night that gave no hint of where the road ended.Headlights cut narrow paths through the snowfall, everything beyond that cone blurred into nothing.Dangerous terrain for most people.For us, it looked like cover.Each mile put distance between us and the life Vincent had scripted.Each mile gave the future a little more room to exist.
“Think we’ll ever stop running?”she asked, voice softer than the hum of the heater.
“Yeah,” I said after a beat.“Maybe not soon.Maybe not in any way that makes sense from the outside.But somewhere along the line, we’ll wake up one morning, realize we haven’t checked the windows in three nights, and notice nobody’s following anymore.”
“And then?”
“Then we get to decide who we are without anyone else’s influence,” I said.“You can go back to art, if you want.I can learn how to fix things that aren’t broken by gunfire.We can argue about paint colors instead of exit routes.”
Her laugh came out low and startled, like she hadn’t expected to find the sound again.“You picking paint colors.That’ll be a day.”
“I’d learn,” I said.“For you, I’d learn anything.”
The highway opened up in front of us, thin traffic moving in careful silence.No sirens in the distance.No flashing lights in the mirror.No sudden detours demanding we turn around.Only snow, pavement, and the hum of an engine carrying us toward something that might become a life instead of a series of escapes.
Maybe the family would stop hunting when the internal power struggle chewed through their resources.Maybe they’d never stop completely.Either way, the story didn’t end back there in a burning house or a bleeding church or a blizzard-wrapped cabin.It continued here, in this car, on this road.
We had forged names and forged papers and a forged marriage certificate.None of that mattered as much as the reality sitting between us: two hands laced together over the console, two hearts still beating despite every attempt to stop them, two people who had seen each other at their worst and chosen to stay.
Snow erased our tracks behind us, patient and relentless.Whatever chased us would have to work harder to follow.Whatever waited ahead, we’d face it as partners, not weapon and target.Not captor and captive.Not killer and victim.
“Together?”she asked, one more time, like she wanted to tuck the word into the space between heartbeats.
“Always,” I answered.
The road stretched on, long and dark and unknown.For the first time in twenty years, I didn’t dread what might be waiting beyond the reach of the headlights.I drove, she held my hand, and somewhere far ahead a small, stubborn possibility took root—a rented apartment under names nobody questioned, coffee in the morning without scanning for threats, arguments about groceries instead of exit plans, laughter that didn’t come tangled in adrenaline.
Maybe we’d never reach it exactly like that.Maybe life would shape us into something different.
Either way, we were heading there.Together.
Epilogue
Two Years Later
Mia
From the front window of our little rental, the water stretched past the harbor lights in long dark bands, gray in the morning and silver by late afternoon.Snow clung to the rocks along the shoreline, softening jagged edges.Fishing boats moved in slow lines across the bay, small dots of red and blue against winter water.Nothing about the scene belonged to the girl who once hid in a closet while her life ended downstairs, yet my reflection sat right there in the glass, mug of coffee in hand, hair pulled into a messy knot.
Behind me, the kettle whistled.My focus had drifted again.That happened sometimes.The past tugged, heavy as an incoming tide.I carried the mug back to the kitchen where Gabe leaned over the counter, head bent, pencil moving over a set of diagrams.Black ink traced clean lines across white paper, the neat planning of a man who used to schedule violence and now organized security for a marine supply company that had no idea about his previous résumé.
“You’re burning the water,” I said.
The corner of his mouth tipped up, though his pencil kept going.“Water boils.Tea burns.”
“Same difference.”
