Chapter 5 - The Man at the Gas Station
The fuel station appeared through the snow like something abandoned by the world.
One flickering sign.
Two empty pumps.
A closed convenience store with a handwritten notice taped to the glass.
BACK IN TEN MINUTES.
There was no service road visible from the highway.
No black cars.
No armed men.
No safety.
I pulled behind the building anyway.
The truck’s engine coughed once, then died.
“Great,” I whispered.
Leo looked at me.
“Is the truck tired?”
“Yes,” I said. “Very tired.”
He nodded as though that made perfect sense.
My phone buzzed.
A message from Matteo.
Do not get out. Stay in the truck.
Then another.
Tobias is coming. He is alone.
I looked at the screen.
Tobias.
The man who had found us.
The man who had warned me.
The man who could have called Matteo immediately but had given me time.
I did not know whether that made him trustworthy or simply less cruel than the rest of them.
Leo touched my sleeve.
“Mommy?”
“Yes?”
“Is that man my dad?”
My breath stopped.
I looked at him.
He had asked the question so quietly.
Not frightened.
Not accusing.
Just curious.
Children had a way of finding the truths adults tried hardest to hide.
“Why do you ask that?” I said.
“He has eyes like mine.”
Tobias had looked at him too long.
Leo had noticed.
Of course he had.
I reached for his hand.
“Your father is someone from my old life.”
“Is he bad?”
I thought of Matteo in the rain, his hand around my wrist.
I thought of him lying on my kitchen floor at three in the morning while I cooked pasta because he had not eaten all day.
I thought of the ruby ring.
The cruel words.
The way he turned away while they took Caleb to the docks.
I thought of the voice on the phone.
You always mattered.
“He has done bad things,” I said honestly.
Leo looked down at our joined hands.
“Does he know me?”
“No.”
“Will he want to?”
That was the question I could not answer.
Before I could try, headlights appeared behind the gas station.
A black sedan rolled slowly into the lot.
I tensed.
Then Tobias stepped out alone.
He raised both hands where I could see them.
I unlocked the door but did not get out.
Tobias approached carefully.
“He’s alive?” he asked, looking at Leo.
I nodded.
Tobias’s face tightened.
“I’m sorry, Hazel.”
“Save it.”
“I mean it.”
“You knew enough to ask his age.”
“I suspected. I didn’t know.”
“You knew I had disappeared pregnant?”
“No. Matteo did not tell anyone. Not even me.”
I looked at him.
“Then why are you here?”
“Because Bianca called me.”
“She’s alive?”
“She got out before the Morettis reached her.”
Relief hit me so hard I nearly cried.
Tobias looked past me at the road.
“We need to move. They will have your truck description.”
“Where?”
“Vermont. Caleb has a place.”
“You said that like you have been hiding him for five years.”
Tobias did not deny it.
“I was ordered to keep him alive.”
“By Matteo?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Tobias looked at Leo again.
Then he looked at me.
“Because Caleb had the only evidence that could destroy the Morettis. And because Caleb told Matteo something the night he was taken.”
“What?”
“He told Matteo that you were pregnant.”
The world stopped.
I could hear only the wind against the truck.
“No.”
“He did not believe him at first.”
“Did he know?”
Tobias’s silence answered.
My hands went numb.
“Matteo knew.”
“He knew there was a possibility.”
“And he still threw me out.”
Tobias lowered his eyes.
“He thought sending you away was the only way to keep you alive.”
“He could have found me.”
“He tried.”
I looked at him sharply.
“What?”
“Not right away. He thought distance was protection. Then three months passed. He realized you were gone. He sent people to look, quietly.”
My chest ached.
“You are lying.”
“I wish I was. He found the diner in Maine after you left it. He found a motel receipt in Boston. Then nothing.”
I thought of the bus east.
The diner outside Portland.
The name Hazel Brooks on every document I built afterward.
I had been hiding.
But Matteo had been looking.
The knowledge did not comfort me.
It made everything more complicated.
A gunshot cracked through the night.
The rear window of the pickup exploded.
Leo screamed.
Tobias grabbed the door.
“Out! Now!”
I pulled Leo from the passenger side.
Tobias shoved us toward the black sedan.
Another shot struck the truck’s metal frame.
“Get in!” Tobias shouted.
We ran.
I pushed Leo into the back seat and climbed in after him.
Tobias slid behind the wheel.
The car launched forward.
I looked back through the shattered glass of the truck.
Men stood near the tree line.
Three of them.
Maybe four.
They did not chase on foot.
They didn’t need to.
Another black SUV was already turning onto the road behind us.
Tobias drove north.
Leo was crying against my chest.
I held him close.
Then my phone rang again.
Matteo.
I stared at his name.
Tobias glanced at me in the mirror.
“Answer him.”
I did.
“Hazel.”
His voice came hard and fast.
“Are you hurt?”
“Someone shot at us.”
“I know. Tobias told me.”
“You knew?”
“I have eyes on the road.”
“Of course you do.”
“Listen to me. Caleb has the files. The Morettis want them. They think Leo is leverage because they know what he is to me now.”
“He is not leverage.”
“I know.”
“He is not yours to protect.”
Matteo was silent for a second.
Then he said, “You are right.”
That answer frightened me more than anger would have.
Because Matteo Lombardi had never been good at admitting anyone else had a right to decide something he wanted.
“Hazel,” he said quietly, “I will not take him from you.”
“You cannot promise that.”
“I can.”
“You have taken everything from people before.”
“I took everything from you.”
His voice lowered.
“And I have lived with it every day since.”
I closed my eyes.
Leo shifted in my arms.
“Mommy,” he whispered, “is he crying?”
I looked down at the phone.
I listened.
Matteo said nothing.
But I heard his breathing.
Uneven.
Broken.
May you like
And somewhere far away, the man I had once loved was crying for the child he had never known existed.
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