Page 34 of Wicked Rivals

My heartbeat raced again.

I had to do something, though I knew without a doubt that trying to escape from the car with Enzo would be nothing more than a futile attempt. Stefano could easily overpower me, even with an injured arm.

And he would threaten me again in front of Enzo.

So I kept my mouth shut and focused on my contingency plan instead.

Much like the pistol I carried in my purse, I’d hoped I would never have to put in play these mental escape routes, but tonight was the last straw.

Enzo and I would have to run now.

I had the money saved for it, locked up with the fake documents I’d had a forger make that gave us totally new identities.

And I’d had the new records updated every two years, keeping them untraceable and above suspicion.

Now that was our only way out.

I just had to get back to my apartment without Stefano catching me, grab the documents, the cash, and some clothes. Maybe two or three of Enzo’s favorite books. Then I could take my son and leave this nightmare behind without looking back.

We would abandon this dangerous life and build a safer one somewhere else.

I knew how to do this. I’d been planning it for nine years.

I just hadn’t expected it to become our reality, not really. And now that it was, I felt unprepared to actually make it happen.

What the hell would I tell Enzo?

How would I explain to my nine-year-old that he could no longer be Enzo Salera? That his new name for the rest of his life would be Angelo Salvatore, and he could never go back to the only home he’d ever known?

How would I explain the importance of never mentioning Brooklyn again, the importance of never telling a soul when or why we had moved to Arizona?

How the hell would I tell him he had to forget about our life in New York, quickly and forever, because it was the only way to ensure we would have any kind of life at all?

How could I make him understand he needed to leave behind the child he’d always been, the young man he was becoming, as we ran for our lives?

The running would never be the hard part.

I had all the logistics covered, including half a million dollars cash in a lockbox at a small bank with the hundred thousand hidden in my apartment. I knew what I had stashed in my apartment wouldn’t be enough to live on for very long.

So my new identity already had bank accounts in a different state and funds in an offshore account for good measure.

I had prayed it would never come down to it, or that if it needed to happen, Enzo would be too young to remember his old life or old enough for me to tell him the whole truth.

He was neither.

Still, it was happening, ready or not.

When Stefano’s car pulled through his estate’s iron gates and up to the house, I got out of the car and pulled Enzo with me, keeping him snuggled tightly at my side. I never once let go of his hand.

He didn’t fight me. He held my hand and just stared at everything with his mouth closed, his eyes wide.

No fear. No terror.

It wasn’t the first time I wished my son wore his emotions on his sleeve like so many other children his age. Sometimes I knew exactly what he was thinking, but those moments were becoming the exception.

Enzo’s face might as well have been etched from marble.

I’d seen his stoic expression enough to understand it, though.

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