Chapter 4 - The Road That Had No Way BackThe windshield wipers were losing the war.
They scraped frantically across the glass, clearing the rain for half a second before another sheet of water swallowed the road.
Josephine Mercer leaned forward over the steering wheel, both hands locked around it so tightly that her knuckles hurt.
The clinic van smelled exactly as she had promised.
Bleach.
Old vinyl.
Stale coffee.
And, faintly, vomit.
Tonight it smelled like something else too.
Blood.
Roman sat beside her with his injured arm pressed against his stomach, his pistol resting across his thigh. The streetlights flashed over his face in uneven intervals, illuminating a jaw clenched against pain and eyes that never stopped moving.
Sylvia lay across the back seat.
Jo had wrapped her in two emergency blankets and wedged a folded jacket beneath her head. Every few minutes Jo glanced into the rearview mirror.
Breathing.
Still breathing.
That was all that mattered.
“Where am I going?” Jo demanded.
Roman did not answer immediately.
“Roman.”
“West.”
“That is not an address.”
“It’s safer if you don’t know.”
Jo laughed once.
There was nothing humorous in the sound.
“I just drove away from three dead men while transporting your sister in a stolen clinic van.”
“It’s not stolen.”
“It belongs to my employer.”
“Borrowed, then.”
Jo shot him a murderous look.
Roman almost smiled.
Almost.
“Give me an address.”
He finally did.
An abandoned convent thirty-five miles outside the city.
Jo stared at him.
“A convent?”
“My mother bought it twenty years ago.”
“Of course she did.”
“It made sense at the time.”
“In what universe?”
“The one I grew up in.”
That silenced her.
The van continued through the storm.
Ten minutes later, Roman’s breathing changed.
Jo heard it before she saw anything.
A slight hitch.
Then another.
She looked sideways.
His face had gone gray.
“Roman.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re bleeding through the bandage.”
“I noticed.”
“Then why didn’t you say something?”
“Because you’re driving.”
“That is possibly the stupidest answer you’ve given me.”
“I’ve given you several.”
“Take off your shirt.”
Roman turned his head.
Under any other circumstances, the look he gave her might have been amusing.
“Now?”
“Roman.”
He set the pistol between his feet and began awkwardly pulling the ruined shirt away from his shoulder.
The graze along his bicep was worse than Jo had initially believed. It had carved a deep channel through the muscle. Blood soaked the makeshift cloth he had wrapped around it.
“Pressure.”
“I know.”
“Apparently you don’t.”
Jo reached across with one hand and pressed the folded cloth harder against the wound.
Roman hissed.
“Drive.”
“I am driving.”
“With both hands preferably.”
“You are impossible.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
“I believe that.”
A faint sound came from the back.
“Roman?”
Sylvia’s voice.
Weak.
Roman turned instantly.
His entire face changed.
The violence disappeared.
“Syl?”
“Where are we?”
“Somewhere safe.”
“That’s what you said before.”
Roman went completely still.
Jo felt the words land.
Sylvia turned her face toward the window.
“I want Daniel.”
Roman closed his eyes.
Daniel.
The murdered boyfriend.
The father of the baby Sylvia had lost.
Jo watched Roman struggle for an answer.
There was none.
Some injuries could not be sutured.
“I know,” Roman finally whispered.
Sylvia began crying.
Quietly.
That was worse than screaming.
Roman turned back toward the windshield.
For several miles nobody spoke.
The convent appeared shortly after three in the morning.
It stood at the end of a narrow road surrounded by skeletal trees, an enormous dark structure of stone and ivy with a weathered bell tower rising above the roof.
Jo parked beside a side entrance.
Roman was out before she could stop him.
“Don’t lift anything,” she warned.
He ignored her and opened the rear door.
“Sylvia.”
His sister looked at him.
“I can walk.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I said I can walk.”
Roman hesitated.
Then nodded.
He respected the answer.
That surprised Jo.
Together they helped Sylvia inside.
The convent was cold but maintained.
Electricity worked.
The kitchen had food.
The bedrooms contained clean sheets.
Someone had clearly prepared the place for emergencies.
Roman locked the doors.
Jo immediately turned one bedroom into another medical station.
By four-thirty Sylvia was asleep.
By five, Jo was stitching Roman’s arm.
He sat shirtless at a kitchen table beneath a hanging light.
The old convent around them remained silent.
“You’re tearing your stitches,” Jo said.
“The ribs?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll survive.”
“Stop saying that like it’s guaranteed.”
Roman looked at her.
Jo continued stitching.
His eyes remained on her face.
“What?”
“You stayed.”
She tied a knot.
“You keep mentioning that.”
“Because you keep doing it.”
Jo cut the thread.
“I stayed for Sylvia.”
“Of course.”
“And because you would probably bleed to death trying to apply your own bandages.”
“Very flattering.”
“I’m not trying to flatter you.”
She cleaned the wound.
Roman watched her.
“Why are you really here, Josephine?”
Her hands stopped.
The question irritated her because she did not know the answer.
She had spent years building rules.
Do not depend on anyone.
Do not become anyone’s responsibility.
Do not confuse gratitude with affection.
Do not mistake danger for passion.
Roman Costa violated every rule simply by entering a room.
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
Something softened in his face.
“That might be the first honest thing you’ve said to me.”
Jo tightened the bandage deliberately.
He winced.
“That was for being annoying.”
A burner phone vibrated on the table.
Roman’s expression changed instantly.
He picked it up.
Listened.
Said nothing.
Then:
“When?”
Silence.
“Are you sure?”
More silence.
Jo watched the remaining color drain from his face.
Roman ended the call.
“What happened?”
He stared at the phone.
“Someone knew about the safe house.”
“We already established that.”
“No.”
He looked at her.
“I mean someone inside my organization gave them the address.”
Jo felt cold.
“Who knew?”
“Five people.”
“Three?”
“Dead.”
“And the other two?”
Roman’s eyes hardened.
“My uncle Carlo.”
“And?”
Roman paused.
“My oldest friend.”
The name came reluctantly.
“Anthony Vale.”
Jo leaned against the table.
“So one of them betrayed you.”
“Yes.”
“How do you find out which one?”
Roman reached for his gun.
Jo immediately placed her hand over it.
“No.”
His gaze dropped to her fingers.
“Move your hand.”
“No.”
“Josephine.”
“You have been shot twice in less than two weeks.”
“Technically once. The arm was a graze.”
“That distinction will be very comforting at your funeral.”
His jaw tightened.
“Someone tried to kill my sister.”
“And you charging out there while bleeding makes her safer how?”
Roman stared at her.
Jo stared back.
Then Sylvia screamed.
Both moved instantly.
They reached the bedroom together.
Sylvia was sitting upright, eyes wide, hands clawing at the sheets.
“No!”
Roman stopped in the doorway.
Jo went to the bed.
“Sylvia.”
“Don’t touch me!”
Jo stopped.
Sylvia’s breathing came in frantic bursts.
“He was there.”
“Who?”
“Daniel.”
Her face collapsed.
“He kept asking why I left him.”
Roman looked away.
Jo sat on the floor instead of the mattress.
She made herself smaller.
Less threatening.
“It was a dream.”
“I watched them kill him.”
“I know.”
“I watched him die.”
Roman’s shoulders stiffened.
Sylvia looked at her brother.
“And you’re going to kill everyone, aren’t you?”
Roman said nothing.
“Roman?”
His silence answered.
Sylvia started crying again.
“That won’t bring him back.”
“No.”
“Then why?”
Roman looked at his sister.
“Because they’ll come again.”
“And when does it stop?”
He had no answer.
Jo realized something then.
Roman could command dozens of armed men.
He could purchase buildings and silence witnesses.
He could survive bullets.
But standing in a dark bedroom while his grieving sister asked him when violence ended, he looked completely helpless.
Jo stood.
She walked toward him.
“Outside.”
Roman followed.
The door closed behind them.
“You cannot do this the way you normally do,” Jo said.
“You don’t know how I normally do anything.”
“I’ve seen enough.”
“This is not your fight.”
Jo stared at him.
“You brought armed men to my apartment. You brought me to a warehouse. People shot at me. I crawled across broken glass to rescue your sister.”
She stepped closer.
“It became my fight.”
Roman’s eyes darkened.
“That is exactly what I was afraid of.”
“Then help me survive it.”
The sentence changed something.
Roman looked at her for a long time.
Then he reached into his pocket.
He removed a small brass key.
“What is that?”
“A safe-deposit box.”
“Why are you giving it to me?”
“I’m not.”
He closed her fingers around it anyway.
“If something happens to me, you go to First National on Lexington. Box 417. Everything you need to disappear is inside.”
Jo looked down.
Then back up.
“No.”
“Josephine—”
She shoved the key against his chest.
“I am not planning your death for you.”
His hand closed around hers.
“People around me die.”
“Then stop living like that’s inevitable.”
“You think it’s that simple?”
“No.”
Jo’s voice softened.
“I think you’ve spent so long surviving that you forgot survival is supposed to lead somewhere.”
Roman’s grip loosened.
The old convent was completely silent.
Rain whispered against stained-glass windows.
He looked at her as though she had spoken in a language he had forgotten.
“What does yours lead to?” he asked.
“My survival?”
“Yes.”
Jo opened her mouth.
Nothing came.
Roman gave a sad smile.
“That’s what I thought.”
He released her.
For the first time, Jo understood that they were alike in the worst possible way.
They were both experts at surviving.
Neither knew what came after.
At sunrise, Roman received another call.
This one lasted less than thirty seconds.
When he hung up, his expression was completely blank.
“Anthony is dead.”
Jo stared.
“How?”
“Shot inside his car.”
“So he wasn’t the traitor?”
“Maybe.”
Roman walked toward the window.
“Or maybe Carlo is cleaning up.”
“Your uncle?”
Roman looked through the rain.
“He practically raised me.”
“That doesn’t mean he didn’t betray you.”
Roman’s reflection in the glass looked like a ghost.
“No.”
His voice was barely audible.
“It doesn’t.”
Behind them, the floor creaked.
Sylvia stood in the doorway.
She looked pale but steady.
“Carlo knew about Daniel.”
Roman turned.
“What?”
Sylvia swallowed.
“He knew before you did.”
The room changed.
Roman’s face hardened.
“How?”
“I told him.”
“Why?”
“Because I was afraid you’d kill Daniel.”
Roman looked as though she had struck him.
Sylvia continued.
“Uncle Carlo promised he would talk to you first.”
Jo felt dread crawling across her skin.
“When did you tell him?” Roman asked.
“Three weeks ago.”
Roman went completely still.
The attack on Sylvia had happened days later.
The safe house had been compromised.
Anthony was dead.
And Carlo had known everything.
Roman picked up his pistol.
This time Jo did not stop him.
Because now she understood.
They were no longer trying to identify the traitor.
May you like
They had just found him.
And somewhere beyond the convent walls, Carlo Costa already knew they were coming.
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