Page 3

The morning was still nice and cool, and Matty breathed it in greedily. He hated to admit it, but the fresh air was beyond decent, even with his hood pulled over his head. He could already feel it cleansing the dust from his lungs.

On the other hand, people were already out and about, and that was…less decent.

Seacliff, Maine, was a small town when it came to population, but it was adorable and coastal enough that it had an influx of tourists every summer.

A selfish part of Matty wished Sascha and Kai had left on their getaway in the winter, when the town was dead and he had the residents’ faces mostly memorized.

Plus, if they’d left in the winter, Matty would have been able to stay inside the whole time and just blame the snow and the cold.

But alas, Matty was venturing out mid-tourist-season, and it was a beautiful, sunny morning. The horror.

Luckily, the Bakeshop was never super crowded. Locals loved it, especially since it stayed open all winter, but visitors usually preferred the town’s other diners, where they could get lobster eggs Benedict and crab cake sandwiches or whatever.

Matty loitered on a bench outside until the place was fully empty of customers, then headed in, lowering his hood. It was the kind of bakery that was almost offensively cute, with little ceramic cats and doilies on the counter, supposedly put there by the ever-absent owner, Marjorie.

Matty was greeted by the familiar sight of Seth, the bakery’s head baker, all round cheeks and big smile and floral cloth headband holding back his dark curls.

“Matty!” Seth cried, like he was genuinely happy to see him. “So glad you’re here. Did Sascha tell you about the lemon bars?”

Matty nodded, a shy smile of his own on his lips. “He did.”

“Excellent. Should I pack one up for you? Or two?” Seth gave him a devilish look, lowering his voice. “Or perhaps even three?”

“Two, please. And, um, maybe a muffin I can heat up tomorrow?”

If Seth was annoyed by Matty asking it as a question instead of ordering it outright, he didn’t show it. “Sure thing! Blueberry crumble? Banana nut? Lemon poppy seed?”

“The lemon one, please.”

“Sticking with the citrus theme,” Seth said, nodding as he began placing Matty’s items carefully in a white paper bag. “Respect.”

Matty smiled a little wider but didn’t say anything back. Seth never seemed to mind that Matty was shy or awkward though. He treated him with the same warmth he gave Sascha and Kai. Like Matty was fine just the way he was. Like he belonged.

Seth rang him up, and Matty took the bag gratefully, peering inside. “Hey,” he said after a moment. “You think— It’s okay to have a lemon bar for breakfast, right?”

“Psh, of course,” Seth said, waving a hand. “There’s fruit in them. Just think of it as a sugar-dusted square Danish.”

Matty gave him a happy grin and pulled his hood back up, ducking out of the bakery with his prize.

Maybe there was something to this whole leaving-the-house thing after all.

It had been nice to see a friendly face.

Nice enough that Matty was thinking he could head down the coastal path to the little sandy cove his housemates liked so much.

It probably wouldn’t be too crowded yet.

Or, if it was, Matty could find a corner in the rocks to tuck himself away into.

He was pretty small; he wouldn’t take up too much room.

He walked off in that direction, grabbing one of the lemon bars out of the bag. Seth made the best ones Matty had ever had, tart but also overwhelmingly sweet, enough to kind of hurt the roof of his mouth. And Seth didn’t skimp on the powdered sugar—an oft-overlooked metric.

Matty would eat one on his walk and then the other at the beach, and that would be two servings of fruit right there.

He’d been pretty scrawny when Kai and Sascha had found him—living in abject misery hadn’t done great things for Matty’s appetite—but thanks to Kai’s insistence on learning human cooking and Seth’s delicious baked goods, Matty had filled out reasonably.

He would always be short, but he at least looked like his actual twenty-one years now and no longer like a malnourished teenager.

Growing out the buzz cut his stepfather had insisted on helped too; his big brown eyes no longer looked too large for his head.

Sometimes it didn’t feel real, that Matty’s stepfather was really dead. That he and his main men had been taken out by Sascha and Kai, and that Matty didn’t have to cater to that cruel man’s every whim anymore. Didn’t have to be hurt without remorse when he inevitably failed to please.

Didn’t have to worry about being given over to him .

For a second, Matty thought he’d imagined it. That the mental image of a familiar face was brought on by thinking of the past.

But Matty looked again, and in the brief moment before the man was swallowed up by a family taking over the sidewalk, Matty could swear he’d seen him. One of his stepfather’s men. Here. In Seacliff.

It couldn’t be real. As far as Matty knew, they all thought he’d died with the rest of the henchmen there that night, another of Kai’s deserving victims. And even if they knew he was alive, why would anyone think he was holed up with Sascha Kozlov, the little brother of a rival Mafia leader?

It didn’t make sense, but it didn’t stop the fear from taking over.

The lemon bar slipped from Matty’s shaking grip, landing on the sidewalk, and for a moment he was stuck there staring at it, smashed and broken on the ground.

Then he turned and bolted.

Matty ducked his head and did his best to dodge tourists on the sidewalk before giving up and running in the street. Sprinting back to the house, back to safety. He looked over his shoulder only once, to make sure no one was running behind him.

When Matty got to the house, he slammed the door behind him, checking and double-checking and triple-checking the lock before he went to the back door and did the same.

Then he went to all the windows to check their latches, even the ones on the second floor. Even the tiny circular one in the attic, which turned out to be too high to reach, so Matty just stood there for a long moment, staring at it as he tried to stop hyperventilating.

Eventually he crawled back onto the familiar living room couch, piling blankets up around himself and jumping at every little sound from the outside world.

He could have hidden in his room, but if someone made it into the house, Matty didn’t want to be stuck on the second floor with an intruder between him and the stairs.

Matty had watched too many horror movies to make that mistake.

He realized he was still somehow clutching the white paper bag from the bakery in his hand. Matty grabbed the remaining lemon bar and took the largest bite he could fit in his mouth, ignoring the powdered sugar that showered over his blanket nest.

Tart lemon. Melty-soft sweetness.

Matty let out a sigh, blowing more powdered sugar everywhere, and tried not to notice that he was still shaking.

He’d imagined the whole thing; he was sure of it. He wasn’t Luca Caruso’s stepson anymore. That was the past, and Matty was here now. In the present.

I’m okay , he told himself. I’m safe.

But Matty’s gaze darted again and again to the bookshelf, and he couldn’t help asking the same question he’d asked himself over and over, ever since the day he’d arrived here:

Safe for how long?