Smoke (The Carelli Family Saga #1) - Eden Butler Page 0,50

the driver’s side, my attention back on the town square and the shape I spotted outside of Maggie’s building. Dario grinned, chin a little higher, looking a lot like my brother again. “Just help me out, yeah? God knows I’ve got enough headaches.”

The parking lot outside my building was empty but secluded when I slipped into my spot five minutes later. But it wasn’t the secluded lot that held my attention when I left my car.

Through the thick limbs of a red maple tree, I made out Maggie’s Outback. It was loaded up, the back open, filled with blankets and bags and the only empty spot taken up in the back by the kid’s new car seat. Half of the shit she was meant to bring to my apartment. Most she promised couldn’t be boxed and loaded in one vehicle. She’d need help, or so she said. And now…it was loaded in one night? And she’d managed it on her own?

Nah. Bullshit.

She was packing.

She was leaving.

This town.

Her life here.

Me.

Everything clicked into place. Everything I had. Everything I could lose in an instant. I loved her. Them. I couldn’t lose her.

She moved around the trunk, stuffing a suitcase into the side, wiggling her round ass into the air as she cursed in Spanish, a few words I recognized and should have made me laughed, but the fear was back. It was doubled.

“Fuck that,” I said to the open air, worry and dread clawing inside my chest like an animal, getting hotter, deeper the closer I came to the car watching Maggie pack away her life, readying herself to leave this town and me in her rearview.

No damn way was I going to let that shit happen.

13

Maggie

My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

Those three lines repeated over and over, like a throbbing pulse; a heartbeat rising, telling me I was in danger.

I’m coming for you. I’m coming for my boy. I won’t be long.

He could be here now.

He’d take away everything I’d built.

Just because he could.

But how? How the hell had he known?

No. I wouldn’t start that again.

Vi was waiting with Mateo inside. She was trying to get him asleep. She was more nervous than me, though she tried to pretend she wasn’t.

“He’s not the first man I’ve heard make threats, honey.” She’d waved off my worry, shrugging like I couldn’t see how her foot bounced, how she kept chewing on her bottom lip. “I’ve seen worse than the likes of him.”

But I wouldn’t waste time. Not when I knew he was coming. Not when Mateo and Vi’s lives could be in danger.

The last bag was full of Mateo’s clothes; outfits that probably wouldn’t fit him in a month, but maybe I could sell them.

I’d need the money. And if Smoke knew…God, what would he do? Kill Alejandro? Start some kind of battle that got a bunch of people dead? Have Smoke spend the rest of his life in jail because of my worthless ex? I couldn’t let that happen.

No. It was better this way.

But I had to be smart. We couldn’t go to my aunt’s in the city. Alejandro would look for us there.

He knew everything about me.

He knew where I’d think to hide.

“Jesus, help me,” I said sniffling back the weak prayer when my eyes burned, and the worry felt too thick in my throat. Then, the shuffle of feet behind me had that worry doubling, morphing into fear. I turned, thinking he’d caught me, instantly relaxing when Smoke stopped next to me, his hand resting on the trunk.

He kept quiet, moving his gaze from my face, already wet, likely blotchy and full of emotion. I tried to tamp down the bubble of worry running through me, then stood in front of the trunk brimming with boxes and bags of everything we owned. The duffle in my hand was half out, half stuffed in what space remained in the trunk.

Smoke leaned in, taking it to readjust how I’d placed it. Then, he laid it flat, tucking it under a blanket at the back. He still didn’t speak, keeping whatever he thought to himself, and I wondered if he was worried, or maybe so pissed off that he was trying to get himself calm.

I was leaving. From how all this had to look to him, I had no intention of telling him goodbye. Even though I’d promised to tell him when the threat was coming, I didn’t. Instead, I was running. Fleeing. Escaping.

He gripped the top of the trunk, looking down at me,