Page 95 of Accidental Alliance

“Open the door! What the hell are you doing?”

I don’t look at him. My foot finds the brake, then I shift the car into drive. From the tree line, a flashlight beam slices through the fog, then another. One of them swings toward the road.

The older man pounds harder on the window. “Stop!”

I floor it.

The car lurches forward so violently, Matteo’s body slams back into the seat. The older man jumps away with a shout, barely avoiding the side mirror as the car tears off the shoulder and back onto the highway. A horn blares immediately and headlights swell in the driver’s side window.

Matteo screams.

“Hold on!” I shout.

I jerk the wheel, cutting into the lane too sharply. The tires skid over wet pavement, the back end of the car fishtailing for one terrifying second before traction catches and the car rights itself again. The highway stretches ahead, both directions unknown. Fog curls over the road, swallowing taillights and road signs ahead of us until they appear too late to see. My hands grip the wheel so tightly, my knuckles go white, my eyes flicking down to the speedometer as it climbs.

I do not know where I am going.

That is the first brutal truth.

The second is that I have no one else I can call.

The realization sits beside me in the stolen car like another passenger, silent and heavy, its hands folded neatly in its lap while my son shakes in the seat next to me. Any ally my family once had would never willingly turn against Vittorio Conti. Not unless I had something valuable to offer— territory, money, a secret, a favor powerful enough to outweigh the risk of helping Amos Russo’s daughter and inciting Vittorio’s wrath.

I have none of those things.

Once, the Russo name meant doors opening and men standing when my family entered rooms. Allies would fall over themselves in order to make promises and strike bargains over wine and food. Back then, my family had reach and influence. Now all that is left of it is me, a woman with a false name, stolen vehicle, and a seven-year-old trying not to cry too loudly in the passenger seat next to me.

My hands tighten around the steering wheel. Outside, the road unfurls beneath weak streetlights and patches of fog. A town rises slowly into view. I drive past all of the shops because normal places have cameras and clerks and the police called by well-meaning strangers.

A motel sign flickers ahead beyond the road. The letters pulses in and out, sickly red against the night sky. For a second, I consider it. A room with a locked door I can control and a bathroom where Matteo and I can clean up while I figure out where to go from here are incredibly tempting.

But if the Contis are following us, and I suspect they are, motels will be among the first places they check.

Beside the motel sits a self-storage facility with its gate half open and no attendant visible in the booth. Rows of metal units stretch back behind the lot, swallowed by darkness. The sign near the entrance is cracked, one bulb out, the whole place forgotten. I swing into the parking lot and immediately cut the headlights.

Matteo sucks in a breath. “Mom?”

“It’s okay.”

The car rolls forward slowly, tires crunching over loose pieces of asphalt. Rows of corrugated metal units pass on either side, each with a painted number and a padlock glinting dully in the gloom. I’ve found storage facilities always have a strange sadness to them, all those locked little rooms filled with pieces of people’s lives they couldn’t keep close but couldn’t quite throw away.

I turn down one row, then another. The deeper we go, the dimmer the lot becomes. The lights near the entrance fade behind us. At the far end, where the lot’s weak security lamps can’t reach, a row of larger RV storage bays sits like dark monoliths along the fence line. I turn behind them, easing the stolen car into the narrow shadow between two parked trailers, and finally cut the engine.

I sit frozen behind the wheel, hands locked at ten and two, staring at the rearview mirror as cars pass lazily on the road behind us. Their headlights drift by like distant ships, indifferent and unreachable.

For a few stolen minutes, we are hidden.

Not safe.

Hidden.

There is a difference so vast, it feels almost comical to put the words beside each other.

Safety is doors that lock from the inside, a bed with clean sheets. The smell of laundry detergent and pancakes on Sunday mornings. Safety is our blue house at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac where neighbors wave and no one thinks twice about the single mother with tired eyes and a careful smile.

Hidden is a stolen car tucked behind a storage facility where my son sits beside me with dried tears on his cheeks. It’s waiting for headlights to turn the corner and knowing every second you remain still is one more closer to the men hunting you closing the distance.

This won’t last for long.