117
The car moved in silence, slicing through the road like a ghost, gliding away from the filling station and into the stretch of highway that would take them into Manhattan. I could feel my pulse in my throat, thick and suffocating, my heart slamming so hard against my ribs that I thought it might give out. My hands were clammy, gripping my lap so tightly that my knuckles looked bloodless, but no matter how hard I squeezed, it did nothing to stop the sickening churn in my gut.
Valentina noticed. Of course, she did. I didn’t think there was a single thing that got past her. She let out a long breath through her nose, the sound barely audible over the hush of tires against asphalt, then she hummed lowly in her throat.
“You look like you’re about to give birth to a heart attack, querida,” she said, her voice gentle, but there was amusement in it. Her accent bled through, making the words sound softer, like velvet draped over sharp edges. “Do you want me to slap you? Maybe that will work?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. My lungs wouldn’t let me. Instead, I reached up with trembling fingers and dragged down the mirror. I regretted it immediately.
I looked like death. Not just tired or unwell, but like something that had crawled out of a grave and hadn’t realized it yet. My skin was pale, but not in a soft, delicate way—more like wax paper stretched too thin over my bones. My lips were chapped, cracked at the edges. My eyes—God, my eyes—were the worst part. They were sunken, hollow, the dark circles beneath them bruising my skin like shadows of the past eight days clinging to me, refusing to let go. My hair, once neat, now hung in tangled waves, strands falling over my face like they had given up trying to stay in place. I sucked in a breath and pushed the mirror up with a snap.
Valentina watched me out of the corner of her eye but didn’t say anything. The silence was suffocating. There was no music, no background noise, just the sound of our breathing, the car’s engine purring beneath us, and the distant wail of a siren somewhere in the city.
I couldn’t take it anymore.
“I grew up as a mafia daughter,” I blurted out. The words felt heavy, like lead on my tongue, but once they started, they wouldn’t stop. “Everything was fine. Normal, in the way that kind of life can be. But then everything changed. My father’s ex-worker—an assassin—sent people to clear out the entire family.”
I could feel Valentina’s gaze on me, but she didn’t speak. She just listened. She was good at that. Letting people unravel themselves without interruptions.
The city began to stretch around us, swallowing the car into its endless, pulsing veins. Manhattan rose ahead like a monster of steel and glass, towers piercing the sky, windows reflecting the gray of the overcast afternoon. The streets were clogged with people, the sidewalks a sea of faces—some hurried, some lost, some laughing into their phones, some clutching their coats against the biting wind. A man in a business suit sipped coffee while speed-walking across the intersection, nearly colliding with a cyclist who yelled something obscene. A homeless woman sat curled up against a graffiti-tagged wall, her hands cupped around a cigarette, the smoke curling into the air like a whisper. A group of teenagers crowded around a street performer flipping a deck of cards between nimble fingers. Life moved in chaotic rhythm, oblivious to the storm raging inside of me.
Valentina was still listening. Not saying anything. Just absorbing every word.
“It’s been eight days,” I whispered, “since he took me. Since my ex-boyfriend pulled me out of my home.”
She hesitated now. I could see it in the way her fingers tightened around the wheel, in the way her jaw tensed like she was debating if she should speak. Finally, she did.
“The kid,” she said. “The one we’re going to save. Is he…?”
“Yes.”
Another silence.
Valentina exhaled sharply through her nose. “Have you thought this through?”
I whipped my head toward her. “What do you mean?”
She kept her eyes on the road, but there was something softer in her voice now. “I mean… what’s the plan, querida? What do you do with a kid when you’re on the run? You’re not just running from the cops. You’re running from a mafia lord. Where are you going to keep him? How do you keep him safe?”
My breath caught. My chest tightened.
“He’s more at risk where he is than with me.”
I didn’t know if that was the truth or just what I needed to believe. But either way, it was all I had.
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