CHAPTER 2 — BLOOD IN THE WATER
CHAPTER 2 — BLOOD IN THE WATER
The room changed after that.
Not physically. But I felt it—the way air does right before a storm decides to become violent.
Vincent stepped back like I had struck him.
“That’s impossible,” he muttered.
I pulled the chain tighter into my fist. “What is?”
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he turned toward the window, looking down at the city like it had betrayed him personally.
“Three days ago,” he said, “my car didn’t fail. It was an execution.”
I already knew that part. The broken brakes. The river. The cold that nearly swallowed him.
What I didn’t know was why anyone would want him dead.
Vincent turned back.
“I wasn’t alone in that car,” he said. “There was supposed to be a child.”
My breath caught.
His voice dropped lower.
“She was taken before the crash. And the only thing left behind…” His eyes flicked to my necklace again. “…was that ring.”
My pulse turned heavy. “I don’t understand.”
“You will,” he said.
Then he reached into his coat and placed something on the table beside my bed.
A photograph.
Old. Worn. Folded at the edges like it had been held too many times in shaking hands.
A woman.
Smiling.
My mother.
My knees went weak even though I was lying down.
“That’s not possible,” I whispered. “She died when I was nine.”
Vincent’s voice was quieter now. “No.”
He tapped the photograph once.
“She disappeared.”
The room tilted.
All the years I thought I knew my life—poverty, survival, running from cops and men and hunger—it all suddenly looked staged. Like someone had carefully decided what I was allowed to be.
Vincent leaned closer.
“And now,” he said, “they’ve found you.”
A distant sound outside the room—footsteps. Many. Fast.
Vincent’s hand moved instantly to my wrist.
Not gentle.
Protective.
“Get up,” he ordered.
“I can’t—”
“You already have.”
The door exploded inward.
Not knocked. Not opened.
Destroyed.
May you like
Men in tactical black flooded the room.
And the first shot shattered the chandelier light.
