They would worry.
I picked at my thumb until it stung, then padded into the rental’s second bedroom and closed the door. Pretended, just for a minute, that the wood was soundproof and the world outside couldn’t hear what came next. My phone—new, untraceable, paid for in cash—sat on the nightstand. I stared at it, counting seconds, then punched in my father’s number.
He answered before the first ring finished. “Jade?”
His voice always caught me off guard, deeper and rougher than I remembered. I pictured him at the kitchen window, staring out over the dark patch of upstate New York where I’d built my old sense of home. For a second, I wanted to cry. I didn’t.
“Hey, Dad,” I said. “How are you? How’s Mom?”
“We’re worried,” he said. “It’s been a few days. With the pregnancy…are you calling from a different phone?”
“Dante and I decided to take a little vacation in Canada,” I said. “We needed to talk about wedding planning. Privately.” I forced a laugh. “Not that we don’t trust you. But, you know. Drama.”
My father didn’t buy it, but he let it slide. “Canada, huh? In February? You sure you’re not running some kind of experiment on frostbite up there?” His voice lightened, which was his way of signaling he’d play along. “I don’t blame you. His father seems kind, but intense.”
Kind. That was one word for Enzo Moretti. Not the one I’d use.
I rolled my eyes, safe in the privacy of the rental. “He’s definitely something. Can you do me a favor and keep Mom calm for, like, a week? We’ll be home soon, just… let us do our thing.” The words came out half-plea, half-promise.
He paused, and the line filled with suburban silence. “You’re not in trouble, are you?”
I hesitated. The truth hovered, twitching on my tongue, but I’d spent a lifetime glossing over crises for my parents. No way I’d start now. “No, Dad. Promise. I’m with Dante and Marco, we’re just… laying low.”
“You took his brother on a romantic getaway?”
“Hah. His brother took himself.”
“You let him crash your honeymoon?”
“This isn’t our honeymoon. And there was no letting, Dad. He just came.”
He laughed. “Okay. Well, don’t do anything reckless. And check in when you can, alright? You know how your mom worries.”
“Will do,” I promised, chewing my lip until it almost bled. “We’ll be fine, Dad. If you need me, call this number.” He grunted approval and hung up with a warm, paternal “Love you,” which I tried and failed to echo before the line went dead.
I stared at the phone, then thumbed open a browser and started searching. Not job listings or apartments—I’d already memorized the real estate grid of every city Dante mentioned, like prepping for exile was in my genes—but something different. Moretti-adjacent.
I needed to know the shape of the threat. What moved in the dark when you weren’t looking. I found forums. News stories. Reddit AMAs from washed-up Mobsters who’d been given new names out in Kansas, where “crime” meant not mowing your lawn. I read every word, cross-checking with what little Dante had ever told me. Most of it was crap—cliches, old scripts, fantasies from people who’d never been closer than the third page of a paperback. But if you squinted, you could piece together what might be true.
What was true: the Carusos, who’d chased us out of New York, were playing the long game. Turf wars didn’t end in shootouts, but standoffs. Mob families had spent the last decade adapting to a new kind of violence—slow, digital, reputation-driven. You saw it in the cryptic posts about “burner trips” and the way anonymous users dissected every “freak” accident from Hamilton to Montreal.
I found email addresses for Canadian lawyers who specialized in witness relocation. I read up on baby passports and what it tookto have a child with no legal presence at all. I mapped the nearest three hospitals, checked which had the fewest security cameras, then learned the bus routes between each, in case we lost the car or had to vanish again on foot. I considered the possibility that this was my future: safe house to safe house, growing steadily less myself until all that was left was some weird mother-outlaw hybrid, haunted by a baby who’d only ever known flight. I hated it, but I did it anyway.
I was busier in those hours than I’d been in a month, and by the time I finally logged off and put the phone back on the nightstand, there was something like conviction in my bones, even if my hands still trembled from adrenaline and sleep deprivation.
I padded into the living room. Marco was still out cold, drooling on a couch pillow and moaning at whatever fever dreams the painkillers conjured. I thought about waking him, asking if he’d ever wanted to just walk away like we were doing now. But I already knew the answer. Marco was built for the life, but he was also the only one who might actually survive outside it: reckless, adaptable, loyal to family until it killed him.
I envied that, just for a moment. I tucked a blanket tighter around his legs and left him to his ghosts.
Dante was at the kitchen table, hunched over a notepad, scribbling in a script so precise it looked like a pharmacy label. When he saw me, he palmed the page and smiled—not the full-court charm, but the smaller one I’d started to think of as his tell for real emotion. “Morning,” he said. “You hungry?”
“When did you get up?”
“When you were talking to your family,” he said. “Went to the bathroom, figured I’d let you get some rest.”
I should’ve been annoyed that he’d eavesdropped, but instead I felt so warm I wanted to fuse to the floor. “You’re creepy,” I told him, grabbing a banana just to have something to do with my hands.
He shrugged. “I’m attentive.”
