Page 8 of Mine to Fear
But I heard something else—the distant sound of an engine, getting closer. Headlights swept across the mouth of the alley, and Dex froze.
“Shit,” he muttered, glancing toward the street. “Shit, shit, shit.”
The car slowed, then stopped. I heard a door slam. Footsteps approached.
“Hey!” a man’s voice called out. “Is everything okay down there?”
Dex looked between me and the street, panic flickering across his face for the first time that night. He shoved the gun into his jacket pocket and stepped back into the shadows.
“You say nothing,” he snarled. “Because next time, I won’t just clip your shoulder.”
Then he melted into the darkness between the buildings, leaving me bleeding on the ground.
I did not move. I could not. The pain in my shoulder had dulled to a thick, heavy throb, and my thoughts felt slow, like they were moving through water.
I thought of all the excuses I had made for him. I thought of all the times I had mistaken charm for love and control for strength. He had shaped me into this. He had turned me into someone who lay bleeding in an alley and still wondered if it was her own fault.
The realization settled in like a bruise.
Then I heard footsteps. They were different from his.
I tried to call out. I tried to ask for help. But my voice came out as barely a whisper. The edges of my vision were going soft and gray. I was losing too much blood. I could feel it now, warm and wet beneath me, soaking into my nightgown.
My last coherent thought was that I was going to die in this alley, alone, and no one would ever know what really happened.
The footsteps stopped. A shadow fell over me.
“Don’t worry,” a familiar voice said above me. “I’ve got you.”
3KIERAN
EARLIER THAT EVENING…
The champagne tastedlike expensive nothing as I stood in the corner of the Meridian Gallery, watching clusters of art enthusiasts pretend to understand the deeper meaning behind abstract splashes of paint. I was there for business, another networking obligation that came with building Cross Security into something more than just another protection firm. My client, Marcus Webb, insisted that being seen at these cultural events was essential for the kind of high-end reputation we were cultivating.
“You need to understand your clients’ world,” Webb said during our meeting that afternoon. “CEOs and politicians don’t just hire security, they hire people who could move seamlessly through their social circles. If someone looks at ease at a gallery opening, they’re someone they’d trust with their life.”
So I put on my best suit, pasted on my networking smile, and prepared to spend the evening making small talk with people who measured success in stock portfolios and summer homes. Just another cost of building the empire I worked toward since I aged out of the foster system at eighteen.
The irony wasn’t lost on me that I grew up with nothing and spent my evenings surrounded by people who never knew whatit felt like to wonder where their next meal was coming from. But that was exactly why I pushed so hard to get here. I learned early that power and money were the only things that mattered in this world, the only things that could protect you from being discarded when you became inconvenient.
I scanned the room, mentally cataloged potential clients and business connections. Then I saw her.
Willa Winslow.
For a second, I thought my mind was playing a trick, pulling her out of memory and setting her here, impossibly present. But she didn’t fade. She stood there, real and breathing, light catching in her hair the way it used to when we lingered too long over nothing. Time had touched her, yes, but gently. Then her lips,Goodness, my mind betrayed me. I remembered the first time they brushed mine, the way the moment had felt both inevitable and terrifying.
My chest tightened.This is ridiculous, I thought, yet my body didn’t listen. After all these years, something in me was waking up, stretching, as if it had only been sleeping.
I looked away before she could catch me staring and reached for the gallery program at the entrance, needing something ordinary to ground me. The paper was thick, elegant, cool beneath my fingers as I unfolded it, skimming without intention—until my eyes snagged. Her name wasn’t Winslow anymore, according to the graceful script printed near the top. The show was titledEmotional Landscapesby Dexter Hartwell, and his bio made my stomach drop: married to one Willa Hartwell.
My throat went dry as I watched her across the crowded room, standing beside a man who must have been her husband. She wore a long-sleeved black dress despite the warm October evening, her dark hair pulled back in a sophisticated updo—nothing like the loose waves I remembered from college. Shelooked elegant, polished, like she belonged in this world of expensive art and expensive people.
But something was wrong.
I built my business on reading people, on noticing the details others missed, and everything about Willa’s body language screamed tension. The way she held herself perfectly still beside her husband. The way her smile never quite reached her eyes. The way she flinched—just slightly, but I caught it, when Dexter Hartwell placed his hand on her lower back.
I haven’t seen her in three years. Three years since Jude enlisted and moved away, taking his weekly updates about his sister with him. Three years since I made the conscious decision to stay away from anything and anyone connected to the Winslow family, because being around Willa was like holding my hand too close to a flame.
