“We needed to get out of there before they showed up.”

She gaped at him as they pulled up to a red light in town. “Before who showed up, Carmine?”

He stared straight ahead. “Them.”

Not understanding, Haven followed the trail of his gaze, her eyes falling on four sleek black sedans sitting at the same red light, facing the opposite direction. “Are they . . . ?” she started, unable to finish the question. She’d seen those cars before.

“La Cosa Nostra,” Carmine said, the Italian words flowing beautifully, but the knowledge of what they meant sent a chill down Haven’s spine. Monsters.

The light turned green, and Carmine drove through the intersection. “You might wanna get comfortable, because it’s a long drive to California.”

Intense emotion hit her, stealing the breath from her lungs. “California?”

He nodded. “We’re needed in Blackburn.”

39

Carmine glanced at Haven in the passenger seat, frowning at the angle of her neck. She curled up the best she could with the seatbelt on. Reaching over, he brushed some hair out of Haven’s face and tucked it behind her ear. He ran the back of his hand across her cheek, feeling the roughness of the red blotches from crying. She hadn’t said anything about where they were going, but her tears spoke volumes about how she felt.

They had been on the road for three days, stopping occasionally to catch some sleep, but the majority of the time had been spent in the cramped car. The sky was overcast, the weather growing worse every mile, the constant drizzle turning into a downpour. Carmine slowly navigated the heavy traffic, his nerves on edge as he firmly gripped the steering wheel.

Haven sensed his unstable mood when she awoke and waited for him to attempt conversation first. “We’re almost to the state line,” he said quietly.

She stared out her foggy window. “Have you ever been to California?”

“Not that I remember,” he said. “I always wanted to, though.”

“Do they have colleges here?”

“Of course.”

“Any I could go to?”

“Sure,” he said. “What kinda classes do you wanna take?”

“Art, maybe,” she said. “I don’t know if I’m good enough to—”

He cut her off. “You are good enough. And yeah, there are plenty of art schools out here.”

For the first time in days, something other than trepidation shined from her eyes. “Really?”

He chuckled. “Yes, really, but why California?”

She shrugged. “I like the palm trees.”

Her serious tone as she answered caught him off guard. Most people overanalyzed where to go to school, choosing places based on student-teacher ratios, reputations, and sports teams, but she chose a place because of the scenery. He found it amusing, but he wasn’t at all surprised. The little things in life mattered once again.

“Do they have them in New York?”

“Palm trees?”

She laughed. “No, art schools.”

“Oh. Yeah, of course. Art schools are everywhere.”

“Have you ever been there?”

“A few times when I was a kid. My father used to go to New York on business.”

“I saw on Jeopardy! it’s the city that never sleeps.”

He smiled. “Some people call it the city of dreams, too.”

She gazed at him. “Maybe we could go there to follow our dreams.”

“Maybe.” He laughed. “But I’m pretty sure they don’t have palm trees.”

* * *

The Blackburn city-limit sign was worn and faded, the green paint sandblasted to a dirty gray. The white writing on it was barely legible. Carmine did a double take as they passed by. “Did that say population seventeen?”

“I didn’t think it was that many,” Haven said. “I ran for hours.”

Nothing but uninhabited land surrounded the barren highway. “I believe it. We haven’t passed anything for miles.”

They drove for a few minutes before he spotted something in the distance. He slowed the car, hoping to find a gas station since the gauge hovered near empty. A hotel would be nice too, since his eyes burned from fatigue, but as he neared the structures, his hope diminished. The abandoned shells of buildings looked as though a small gust of wind could knock them down. His hair stood on end as they drove through, an eerie feeling overcoming the car.

“This is a ghost town,” he said. “Where the hell are the people?”

“Maybe they moved.”

He laughed dryly. “Or they all died.”

“Some did,” she said.

Her strangled voice told him a story existed behind those words, but it wasn’t the time to ask questions. She looked to be teetering on the brink of a breakdown, and he couldn’t risk pushing her over the edge.

Carmine continued to drive, passing another city-limit sign. They’d gone from one side of Blackburn to the other without seeing a living soul. The town was an enormous prison cell. There were no bars or chains, no physical restraints, but it was a mass of oblivion cut off from the world. There were no people, no cars, no stores, no houses . . . there wasn’t even any color.

It was like it didn’t exist.

Suddenly, so much made sense to Carmine. He knew she had grown up isolated, but knowing and seeing were vastly different things. He wanted nothing more in that moment than to pull over and hug her. She communicated, and drove, and took GED tests. She opened herself up to everything when she had literally come from nothing.

Nothing.

In the next town, they came upon a tiny motel. Carmine paid the old man at the front desk in cash and grabbed the key from him with little conversation. He grimaced at the shabby conditions while Haven shrugged. “I’ve stayed worse places.”

She had. He understood now.

* * *

Carmine was startled awake by a ringing the next morning, the shrill noise causing his heart to violently pound. Sitting up, he rubbed his eyes and grabbed his phone off the stand beside the bed.

He answered without looking, hoping it was his father calling with some news. “Yeah?”

“Have you arrived?” Corrado.

“Yeah,” Carmine said, yawning halfway through the word.

“I’ll be at the Antonellis’ today,” Corrado said. “We have some business to attend to. Can you bring the girl to me?”

Glancing in the bed beside him, Carmine met Haven’s apprehensive eyes. “Yeah.”

“Yeah?” Corrado sighed. “Is that the only word you know?”

The sarcastic ass in Carmine wanted to say, “Yeah,” but he knew it wasn’t wise to fuck with a poisonous snake, so to speak. “No, sir.”

Corrado rattled off the Antonellis’ address as Carmine scoured the room for something to write with. He found a short, dull pencil in a drawer and snatched the Bible out of the nightstand, opening it and tearing out the first page. Haven gasped and sat up as he scribbled down the address. “I can’t believe you tore out that page. It’s the Bible, Carmine!”

He rolled his eyes. “Do you really think anyone who comes here would be reading this?” he asked, holding up the Bible. “People who stay here are far from holy.”

“We stayed here.”

“Like I said, far from holy.” He chuckled. “But whatever, I didn’t tear out anything with the story on it. The page says Holy Bible.”

“It’s still wrong,” Haven said.

“Maybe, but I needed to write down the Antonellis’ address.”

She froze, her expression panicked. “Why?”

Sitting down, he brushed some wayward curls out of her face. She looked so vulnerable, and he wanted nothing more than to right every wrong and make the world better for her sake. “You wanna see your mom, don’t you?”

She blinked rapidly. “Can I?”

He ran his fingertips along her cheek. “I’ll make sure of it.”

Her eyes glassed over with tears as she threw herself at him, knocking him back onto the bed.

* * *

Carmine punched the address into the car’s navigation system, and it led them back down the same remote highway from the night before. After a few miles, it alerted them to a path cutting through the desert, and Haven tensed a fraction of a second before the navigation system announced they’d arrived. She recognized it, he realized. She could sense it in the middle of nowhere.

Haven trembled as he crept down the path, her fear so powerful he could feel it. The ranch came into view, and she inhaled sharply as Carmine parked behind Corrado’s rented sedan.

“I don’t think I can do this,” Haven said, shaking her head so frantically it made him dizzy.

Carmine grabbed her hands. “Listen and listen good, tesoro. You may wanna run as far away from this place as possible, but you can’t. Not anymore. You can’t let them control you. You can’t let them win. You’re strong, Haven. These motherfuckers tried to tear you down, but it didn’t work because you built yourself up. You’re a force to be reckoned with. You’re tough and passionate, and you can’t let these people get to you. That’s what they want.”

The anxiety in her expression was replaced with something else, a look Carmine could recognize anywhere: determination.

“So we’re gonna get out of this car, and we’re gonna go in this house, and we’re gonna tell these people to kiss our asses, because they can’t touch us. And you’re gonna go out there and tell your mom you love her, because you deserve that chance.”

Having said everything he could say, Carmine got out of the car. He groaned at the heat, the bright sun blinding him. Grabbing his sunglasses, he put them on and unbuttoned his long-sleeved green shirt. “Fuck, it’s hot.”

Haven stepped out timidly. “I remember it being hotter.”

“Well, I’m about to burn up,” he said. “It’s hot as Hell.”

“It is Hell.”

He gaped at her. “You cursed.”

“Hell isn’t a curse word.”

“Yes, it is.”

She shook her head. “It’s in the Bible, Carmine. If you spent more time reading it and less time tearing pages out of it, maybe you’d know that.”

He laughed, but a slamming door interrupted the moment. Haven went rigid as Carmine glanced at the man standing on the porch, his eyes a familiar deep brown shade Carmine knew well.

“If this is Hell,” Carmine said, “does that make him the devil?”

40

Michael Antonelli stood on his front porch, a glass of whiskey in his left hand and a lit cigar in his right. He wasn’t speaking. He wasn’t blinking. He didn’t even appear to be breathing.

Haven stared at him, stunned by how utterly unchanged he looked. It had nearly been a year, but seeing her old master in his khaki pants and polo shirt, too tight around his bulging gut, made it feel like no time had passed.

The tense silence shattered when the door behind Michael opened, jolting him back alive. Blinking rapidly, he moved out of the way as Corrado stepped onto the porch. “Carmine, Haven . . . nice to see you. Are you enjoying your trip?”