Page 72 of Accidental Alliance

“Do you still?” he asks.

I don’t know how to answer that.

These are one of those questions children ask that unknowingly cut deeper than they will ever realize. Matteo doesn’t mean to rip open a wound like this.

His innocence has no idea the nerve it has just brushed up against. He is only trying to understand the impossible situation we have been put into.

“I don’t know what I feel,” I tell him.

It is the most honest thing I have said in days.

Matteo leans against me again, quiet.

One of his hands curls around the fabric of my sweater, the same way he used to hold onto my shirt when he was little and afraid of thunderstorms.

I run my fingers through his hair, gently untangling the strands. For a while, neither of us says anything.

“I don’t trust him,” he mumbles.

It breaks my heart to hear my sweet, bright boy already understanding that in this world, trust is not owed simply because a man stands tall or claims to be protecting you from some threat unseen on the other side of a locked door. He should not have to know that.

He should not have to sort adults into categories of safe or unsafe at seven years old.

That was the whole point of running. Of hiding and becoming Marina Hayes in a sleepy little town where the worst thing that happened was Monday morning traffic and being late to the field for his soccer practice.

“You don’t have to,” I say.

He exhales softly.

There is no real space on the cot for comfort when he curls into me. The mattress is too narrow for both of us, the blanket too thin to keep us warm in this cold, sterile room.

I curl my body around his anyway to try and keep him as comfortable as possible.

His body fits against mine the way it did when he was small, and for a while I can almost pretend he is three again, feverish and safe in my arms while the rest of the world leaves us alone.

I whisper the same bedtime stories I remember from our old life, his favorite about the moon rabbit who stole stars to make soup, and the stubborn little prince who turned himself into a bird so he could find his way home.

Matteo has heard them all a hundred times, but tonight he listens quietly without interrupting.

“The fox one, please,” he murmurs, his voice syrupy with sleep.

So I do.

I tell him about the fox who outsmarts hunters by pretending to be smaller and sweeter than she really is.

I tell the story barely above a whisper, one hand stroking through his hair while the other rests over his back, feeling the steady beat of his heart beneath my palm. By the time the fox escapes into the woods, Matteo’s breathing has gone slow and deep, his body going limp against mine.

In the background of my mind, the faint ache in my body reminds me of Elio every time I shift on the cot, a soreness that should feel only like shame and instead keeps twisting into something far more complicated.

Desire, I have found, is much crueler than hatred. At least hatred has a direction.

It knows what it wants to destroy. Desire crawls into the wreckage of what once was and stokes the embers of what should only be ash.

I hate what he has done to me. That he found us and pulled Matteo and me from the only peaceful life my son has ever known, locked us behind this steel door and somehow twisted it around to redefine it as protection.

I hate that his brother’s shadow stretches over my child, threatening him without reason. I hate that the Conti name, the very thing I ran from before Matteo had even taken his first breath, has finally found him.

Yet above all of that, my body remembers Elio like grief remembers the living.