He tapped the legal pad. “I was mapping out the perimeter, some new variables. I want to take Marco to a walk-in tomorrow. He needs antibiotics, pain meds, maybe a scan to make sure the bullet didn’t leave a piece behind. He’ll whine, but he’ll go.”
“Can we afford to risk it?” I asked.
He ran a finger down a column of chicken-scratch numbers. “Not really, but if we don’t, he might die.” A beat. “Moretti boys are like cockroaches, but even we have limits.” He looked up, daring me to argue.
I didn’t. “Do you want help?”
Dante nodded, sliding the pad across the table. “Read this and see if you’d do anything different. I think better with feedback.”
It was ridiculous, but in that moment—sitting at a rental kitchen table, blueprinting a mob-adjacent medical intervention—I felt lucid for the first time in days. “You’re inviting peer review?” I teased.
He flashed that single-dimple smile—the one I’d once compared to a pothole, sudden and deep and dangerous. “I’m nothing if not a collaborative learner.”
I scanned the page, red-penning the plan in my head. Marco would need to get in and out of the clinic under an assumed name—a fake ID was easy; he’d grabbed two from the liquor store last night, still warm from the printer. The story was harder: gunshot wounds, even ugly ones, raised eyebrows. But American thugs who didn’t want to pay inflated American prices would go to Canada. That made sense.
And then there was the baby. My own plans for prenatal care were less urgent, but the thought of routine blood draws and glucose checks, of some kindly Canadian nurse who wouldn’t ask for papers, felt both necessary and hopelessly out of reach. Even if the worst was over, even if the Moretti and Caruso war froze in river ice, nothing would ever go back to normal.
“What about me?” I asked. “There’s only so long I can go without a real doctor. And if we have to have the baby up here—”
“We’re not staying forever,” Dante said. He didn’t look up from the pad, but the undercurrent was pure resolve. “Just until the heat dies down. When it’s safe, we go home. Or somewhere else. But you’re not giving birth in exile, Jade. Not unless we have to.”
“Do you promise?”
“I promise you we’re not staying here for five months, yes,” he said. “And our baby will be born on American soil.”
“Then he can be president,” I said, glib, but it didn’t make him laugh.
He looked at me, and the weight of the plan—the hope in it, the fear—settled between us. “Just do me a favor, Jade.”
“Name it.”
“When the time comes,” he said, “you run first. You don’t wait for us.” The dimple showed, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “You take the kid and you fucking run.”
I wanted to say I would. But I already knew I wouldn’t. Not without him. Not if there was any other play left on the board.
But I said yes anyway.
Chapter 8: Dante
Ilied to her.
I didn’t have a plan to get her home. Not a real one, anyway. I could barely see past the next hour, let alone the rest of the road.
That afternoon, I sat in the freezing garage, hunched on a folding chair with my boots on the concrete and a duffel bag open at my feet. Marco was inside, passed out with his painkillers and a blanket. Jade was at the kitchen table, hunched over her laptop and a legal pad, scribbling out possible moves like she was prepping for a moon landing. If you didn’t know her, you’d think she was just focused. But I could see the fear in her—how every minute she didn’t solve this was a minute she wasn’t sure she’d survive.
I kept packing and unpacking the bag, counting rounds, weighing if it was enough to get us another two hundred miles. The car we’d stolen was running out of time—frost chipping off the plates, New York peeking through. Toronto was the nextwaypoint, the only shot at a straight line south. If Jade wanted details, I’d give them. Just not the odds. I’d learned that from my father: hope was more useful as a drug than a compass.
She cracked the door, shivering, eyes glassy from the cold. “You’re going to freeze out here,” she said.
I flexed my hands, shrugged. “Just thinking.”
She lingered in the doorway, biting her cheek. That was her tell—she only did it when she was about to make a move she didn’t like. “I found a hospital in Toronto. They take cash, no ID, no insurance. Emergency work, no questions asked. There’s a pharmacy nearby, but it’s under a different address, so the records don’t match.” She hesitated, voice getting tight. “Marco needs more than urgent care. And I—I should start prepping for the baby. My 20-week scan is coming up soon…”
“Toronto’s far,” I said.
“We can make it in a day if we drive straight.” She almost made it sound easy, but her voice was all nerves. “We just need to avoid the QEW. There’s border patrol watching the Tim Hortons in Guelph, so we cut through the back roads. Sleep in the car if we have to.” She’d mapped it out, highlighter bleeding all over the margins. I nodded, partly because it was smart, partly because I couldn’t stand to make her feel less than necessary.
I stood and took her hand. “Jade, there’s no need to stress. We’re in Canada. The FBI and Carusos aren’t looking for us here.”
