Page 81 of Poisoned Promise
I’d applaud their reaction time if it hadn’t taken us so long to run down that stairwell.
I clutch Alex to me, kissing the top of his head while we walk over uneven ground to the sidewalk.
This could be it.
Alex and I could run. Melt into the crowd and never be seen again. It’s what I should do.
But something makes me hesitate. Is leaving Felix again really affecting me this much?
“Mom?” Alex croaks and immediately starts coughing.
“It’s okay, honey. I’ll get us some help. I just need to?—!”
“Are you fucking crazy?!” An iron grip seals around my bare upper arm and I’m jolted away from Alex, finding myself face to face with Reese. “You think we don’t know what you did?!”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I gasp, wrestling with the burning urge to cough. “Let go of me!”
“No, this is the last straw. You couldn’t stay there quietly, could you? Couldn’t just let everything blow over. I was almost willing but you know what? You’re too much of a fucking threat. Felix might be blinded by you but I know the truth!”
He wrenches me backward and Alex lunges forward, clutching my arm. “Mom!”
“Alex!”
“Don’t worry kid, you’re coming too. By the end, you’ll be right with us when you see what a monster your whore of a mother is?—!”
Everything else he says falls on my deaf ears because a sleek, black car suddenly screeches to a stop a few feet away from the sidewalk and Felix leaps out with his face twisted in worry.
Relief floods through me, only to turn to ice when a tall, elegant, elderly woman follows and loops her hand around Felix’s elbow.
Caterina.
I haven’t seen her in over fifteen years but the sight of her is enough to send a pulse of nausea right through my gut like a spear. Felix turns to her and she smiles.
Then her sharp eyes lock onto me and I freeze.
“Alex.”
“Mom!”
“Alex, run.”
“What?”
“I don’t think so!” Reese lunges past me for Alex, so I lift my leg, slamming my knee hard into his crotch.
“Alex, honey!” Our eyes meet and he stares at me, fear warping his face as tears streak through the smoke stains on his cheek. “Run, Alex. You run, and you don’t look back! Run!”
There’s no way in hell she’s getting her hands on my son.
Alex stares at me with his mouth wide open, but when Reese surges up once more and punches me in the face, the last thing I see before I hit the ground is Alex sprinting into the crowd and vanishing.
Good boy.
23
FELIX
“Dove!”
