Chapter 3
Some promises made when people are young eventually disappear.
Clare had never forgotten that one.
She turned away from Victor and started toward table 9.
Not quickly enough to create panic.
Just quickly enough.
If no one else was going to get between that man and the girl, Clare would do it herself.
She was 3 tables away when it happened.
Marcus dropped his tray.
Silver struck the floor with a crash that turned every head in the restaurant.
In the half second that followed, he reached beneath his jacket and pulled out something that caught the light.
Later, people would argue about whether it had been a knife or something worse.
It did not matter.
What mattered was the way it moved through the air toward Lily Voss, who had turned toward the sound with her birthday smile still on her face.
Adrien saw it.
He was already moving, already reaching, already roaring his sister’s name in a voice coming from somewhere beneath all his practiced control.
But he was on the wrong side of the table.
He was too far away.
For the first time in his adult life, Adrien Voss understood that he was going to watch the only person he loved die 2 feet away from him and that none of his money, power, or empire could stop it.
His bodyguards were not there.
He had sent them away because it was Lily’s birthday.
The restaurant recoiled as one body.
Chairs scraped backward.
Someone screamed.
The instinct buried in every human being swept through the room.
Get away.
Survive.
Not me.
Everyone moved backward.
Everyone except 1 person.
While the room fled from danger, the woman in the worn-out shoes ran directly toward it.
Clare did not decide to do it.
There was no time.
Her body simply chose, the same way it had chosen on the nights Noah stopped breathing and she was on her feet before she was fully awake.
She crossed the final 10 feet in a sprint powered by whatever strength remained after a double shift and years of exhaustion.
She reached Lily half a heartbeat before the blade did.
Clare grabbed the girl by the shoulders and threw her down and clear of its path, using her own body as the wall between a stranger and what was coming for her.
Then Clare took the hit.
The sound silenced the room.
Adrien watched a woman he had never spoken to fold onto the marble in the space where Lily had been standing.
For a moment, nobody moved.
Clare lay on the cold floor.
She knew she was badly hurt.
There was a strange distant heat, the sensation telling her the pain had not fully arrived yet but would.
Even then, the part of her mind that never stopped taking care of people continued running the same calculation.
Noah.
Who would take care of Noah?
But even that thought came second.
Because before thinking about herself, Clare reached for Lily.
The girl was shaking violently where Clare had thrown her, her birthday dress twisted around her, her eyes enormous and wet with shock.
Clare gathered her close and held her the way she held Noah during his worst nights.
“Hey,” she whispered.
Her voice was thin but steady.
“Hey. Look at me. Don’t be afraid.”
Lily could not speak.
“Don’t be afraid,” Clare repeated more softly. “I’m here. I’ve got you. I’m right here.”
She was not trying to change anyone’s life.
May you like
She was doing the only thing she knew how to do.
Protecting someone who needed it.
