Chapter 1 - THE BULLET THROUGH THE WINDOW
The gunshot came before I could answer Adrien.
Glass exploded across the room.
Adrien moved faster than I thought a man in a tailored suit could move.
One second he was beside the window.
The next, his body was over mine, one arm locked around my shoulders as he pulled me off the bed and onto the floor.
A second bullet tore through the wall.
“Down.”
His voice changed.
No softness.
No questions.
Command.
The man who had carried me upstairs like I might break disappeared, replaced by the man New York whispered about.
The door burst open.
Marco entered with two armed guards.
“Roof across the avenue,” he said.
Adrien did not look away from me.
“Seal the building.”
“Already happening.”
“Find the shooter alive.”
Marco nodded once and vanished.
I could barely breathe.
My ribs screamed.
Blood from an old cut had started running down my palm again where I had caught myself against broken glass.
Adrien noticed.
His eyes darkened.
“Are you hit?”
“No.”
“Lena.”
“I said no.”
Only then did he move his body away from mine.
Outside, alarms sounded somewhere below.
Men ran through hallways.
Someone shouted into a radio.
Adrien closed the heavy curtains, then returned to the photograph on the floor.
The picture of twelve-year-old me.
The scratched-out woman.
The message.
Find the girl before Viscari learns she survived.
He looked at me again.
“What was your mother’s name?”
My throat tightened.
“Evelyn.”
“Last name?”
“Marrow.”
Adrien went completely still.
The room seemed to become colder.
“What?”
He picked up the photograph.
“Evelyn Marrow.”
“Yes.”
“How did she die?”
“Car accident.”
“When?”
“I told you. I was seven.”
Adrien’s jaw hardened.
“Where?”
“Westchester.”
His gaze moved to Marco, who had just returned.
Marco heard the name.
And stopped.
That frightened me more than the bullets.
“What do you know?” I demanded.
Neither man answered immediately.
“Adrien.”
He finally looked at me.
“My father knew Evelyn Marrow.”
My stomach turned.
“How?”
“He worked with her.”
“What kind of work?”
Adrien’s face closed.
“The kind nobody wrote down.”
I pushed myself upright despite the pain.
“My mother was a school librarian.”
“No.”
One word.
My chest tightened.
“She was.”
“She became one.”
“What are you saying?”
Adrien walked to a locked cabinet, opened it, and removed an old file.
He placed a photograph beside the one from Marcus’s apartment.
My mother.
Younger.
Dark hair.
Same eyes.
Standing beside three men.
One was Adrien’s father.
I recognized him from old newspaper photographs.
Vittorio Viscari.
The second man was unfamiliar.
The third was Marcus Blake’s father.
I stared at the image.
“No.”
Adrien turned it over.
A date.
Twenty-two years earlier.
And one handwritten sentence.
Evelyn has the ledger. If she runs, the girl becomes leverage.
My breath disappeared.
“The girl?”
Adrien’s eyes lifted to mine.
“You.”
The door opened again.
Marco entered carrying something recovered from the rooftop.
A brass rifle casing.
Engraved with a tiny symbol.
Adrien looked at it.
His face changed.
“What is that?”
He closed his fist around the casing.
“My family crest.”
May you like
And suddenly the person shooting at me was not outside Adrien Viscari’s world.
They were already inside it.
