“Looks like Enzo sent some people,” Dante said. “I guess there is some use to the old man after all.”
Marco howled down the expressway, every lane change a dare for the next life insurance adjuster who’d see this on traffic cam. It was almost funny—watching Dante, bark directions while Marco treated the Honda like an F1 car fueled by Red Bull and untreated ADHD.
I hunkered down in the back, thumb drive still pulsing in my fist, white-knuckling the headrest. The black SUV closed, then fell back, then closed again. They didn’t have sirens or police plates, which meant they weren’t cops, and that was the good news.
The bad news was, private contractor muscle didn’t have to obey traffic laws. Or, for that matter, the Geneva Convention.
At least the traffic in Toronto was…bad. Which meant the SUV couldn’t get a clean shot. We threaded traffic like a needle’s eye, Marco fishtailing at 120 kph while Dante watched the rearview and called out the blocks. At one point a delivery van clipped the SUV and sent it spinning into the divider. I almost screamed, but Dante just barked at Marco to take the next off-ramp.
We barreled through residential streets, then banked hard around a corner so tight that my shoulder punched the window. I braced for the sound of gunfire, but all I heard was Marco’s ragged, wild laughter, the kind that meant he was two seconds from either a panic attack or a stroke of genius.
Dante reached back, grabbed my knee. “You good?”
“My heart’s at 190 and my vision is tunneling, but otherwise, A+.”
He grinned, then clipped out: “Next left. Then right. We’ll lose them near the canal.”
Marco did his best to comply. We bounced off a curb, lost a wiper blade to a snowbank, then threaded a double-parked Porsche with two inches to spare. The Honda’s frame shook with every pothole, the CV joint screaming for mercy, but we kept moving. I saw the SUV once more in the mirror, then nothing. Either they crashed out, or they’d decided we weren’t worth the insurance claim. I didn’t want to believe the chase was over—I never did—but after a half dozen random turns and a jog through a parking structure under a half-built shopping complex, we were alone.
We sat there, the three of us, breathing so loud it sounded like the whole car was about to shake apart. Marco’s hands had stopped trembling, but only because he gripped the wheel so tight the plastic groaned. Dante finally let himself exhale.
Nobody spoke for a minute. I stared at my knees, at the raw, red creases where I’d dug my own nails into my skin. The thumb drive was slick with sweat. For a second, I didn’t know if I was going to cry or puke. Then Dante reached back, laid his hand over mine, and squeezed.
“You did it,” he said quietly. There was nothing in his tone except awe.
“I fucking did,” I said. “What did you do?”
“I got the subjects out of there,” he said. “They went in a van procured by my dad. We can get this USB stick to a friendly journalist back in the States.”
“What about the RICO charges?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Well,” he said. “That’s why I have a lawyer.”
And then he smiled, as if it was nothing.
Chapter 23: Jade
We crossed the border at dawn, tucked into the belly of a semi with Ontario plates and a forged manifest for refrigerated medical supplies. The air inside the trailer stank of ammonia and ice packs, and Marco drove like he was still being chased, which we probably were. I didn’t ask questions. I curled up beside Dante, one hand fisted in the hem of his coat, and watched the metal walls pulse with passing light.
The border itself was anticlimactic. Enzo’s people had arranged it all—paperwork, a clean path, a paid-off guard who didn’t even glance at the truck. No dogs, no search. Just a long silence, then a green light, and the sound of tires humming over American asphalt.
We stayed silent for most of the drive. Marco muttered to himself in Italian, switching between prayers and curses. Dante didn’t speak at all. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to keep me calm or if he’d finally run out of words. Every time I looked at him, hisexpression was the same—tight-jawed, unreadable. Not blank, exactly. Just...held.
We stopped outside Buffalo, in a warehouse loft two blocks off the highway. It smelled like dust and mothballs and desperation, but the water worked and there were clean clothes laid out on the bed. Enzo’s touch again.
I peeled off my sweat-soaked layers and stepped into the shower, scrubbing myself raw. When I came out, wrapped in a towel that didn’t belong to me, Dante was sitting at the edge of the bed, staring at the wall like it had something to say.
“I uploaded the footage,” I said, padding barefoot across the concrete floor. “It’s already being mirrored across three backup servers. If they try to trace it, it’ll loop through six VPNs before dumping into an offshore account with a dead journalist’s name on it.”
His eyes flicked to mine, briefly impressed. “Of course you did.”
I tried to smile, but it didn’t stick. “We did it, Dante.”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
That should’ve been the moment—where we collapsed into each other, or laughed, or cried, or just breathed like normal people. But he didn’t move. Didn’t say anything else. I sat beside him, towel still damp, legs brushing his, and waited.
After a long silence, I asked, “What happens now?”
