It was over in minutes. Marco’s color returned from dead fish to merely hungover, and by the time Dante wrapped a length of gauze around his chest, he looked more embarrassed than anything.
“I do think this is just a graze, but you need a medical doctor, Marco,” I said. “I’m not a physician.”
He clapped my hand, sticky with his own blood. “Close enough. You’re a miracle worker, Jade.” Then he looked over to Dante, something passing between them—calling it gratitude would be overselling, but it wasn’t nothing.
Dante drew me up beside him. “We’ll get you to a doctor. But first, we get away from here.”
“So what do we do now?” I asked, trying to catch my breath.
“What we were doing before, Jade,” Dante said. “We run.”
Chapter 2: Dante
Iwas so fucking worried about my brother. So fucking worried about Jade.
There was a certain kind of quiet that came after violence. Not the peaceful kind. The kind that rang in your ears like the memory of a gunshot—dull and hollow, something you didn’t notice until it was too late.
That was the quiet I carried with me.
After what felt like hours--it couldn’t have been longer than fifteen minutes--we’d finally found the right vehicle.
Marco slouched in the back seat, one arm clamped over his gut like attitude alone could keep the blood in. Jade was next to him, hands trembling just enough that she hid them under her thighs. She hadn’t said a word since the stitches. I didn’t blame her.
The borrowed Civic rattled like a drunk at last rites. Some cousin’s cousin had stashed it behind a civic yard in Jersey, andwhen I hotwired it, the check engine light blinked like it knew exactly what kind of morning we were having.
We didn’t talk for the first few miles. The Hudson was a flat black scar behind us, the city skyline diced by chain-link and winter haze. I drove fast—deliberate, not reckless—but there was a tremor in my hands I couldn’t shake out with thought alone. In the rearview, the moon painted Jade’s face a pale blue, Marco’s a sickly greenish gray.
He wasn’t as bad as he looked—most flesh wounds bled for show—but I couldn’t stop seeing him dead, slumped like that, jaw slack and tongue lolling.
For all our differences, he was my brother. If this was how it ended, I’d never forgive myself.
“You got any Advil?” he asked, voice from the grave. Jade rummaged through my duffel, came up with two white pills sticky from the inside of an unwrapped granola bar.
“They’re chewable aspirin. I don’t know how much it’ll help.”
“Jade, at this point I’d snort cayenne pepper if you said it’d help,” he muttered, tossing both into his mouth. He crunched them audibly, face screwing up to show exactly how well the cherry flavor paired with blood and grit.
Jade gave a tight little smile, then went back to staring out her window. The world outside was all sodium vapor and fast-food signage, the kind of nowhere that peeled our lives down to headlights and not much else.
We sailed through the first toll, my stomach knotted until the bored attendant barely looked up from his phone.
The Moretti name had carried me through plenty of checkpoints in the city, but out here on the turnpike it meant nothing, just another few syllables lost in the noise. That anonymity should have been a comfort, but instead it felt like exile. About an hour north, I took the exit and pulled into a 24-hour diner, neon buzzing fitfully against shellacked frost. The road outside was blue ice, every step from the car to the door a calculated risk. I helped Marco out and slung his good arm over my shoulder; he was lighter than I remembered. Under different circumstances, I would have made a joke. Inside, the heat punched us in the face.
The place was dead except for a trucker in a corner booth, head down over his phone, and a waitress with a lip ring who gave us a half-second once-over before waving us to pick any table. We slid into a vinyl booth in the back, Marco wincing but too proud to let it show.
Jade disappeared to the bathroom with her purse, probably to sob or puke or both. The thought made me burn—guilt and something like self-hate—but all I could do was order three coffees and the greasiest thing on the menu when the waitress hovered over us.
I watched Jade through the neon glare and silver pie racks, waiting for a sign she’d bail. She didn’t.
She came back, face damp, hands shaking but purposeful. She slid in beside Marco, ignoring every rule about personal space, and pressed a wad of paper towels to where blood had already soaked through his shirt.
“Let it clot,” she murmured, and Marco squinted at her like she was a physics exam he hadn’t studied for.
“You two look like shit,” he managed, then caught his reflection in the napkin holder and nearly laughed.
“I mean, just saying.” He was trying to be brave.
Jade saw it too. She reached for my hand under the table, squeezing so faintly I barely noticed. The waitress dropped off three mugs of coffee and gave us a look that said turnover, not tip.
