Chapter 2
Eight years earlier, she had found me bleeding in an alley behind a shuttered pharmacy. Three bullets had torn through my side and shoulder. My attackers had left me in the rain, certain I would die before dawn.
Isabella had dragged me through a back door, hidden me inside a storage room, stitched my wounds with trembling hands, and stayed awake for two nights while armed men searched the neighborhood.
When I regained enough strength to speak clearly, she had already vanished.
For eight years, I had remembered her eyes.
Now those same eyes were filled with fear.
“Your promises carry a dangerous price,” she said quietly.
“So did saving my life.”
Her expression shifted.
Then she nodded.
Ten minutes later, the restaurant manager cleared the entire second floor without asking questions. A table was set near the windows overlooking the park. My guards waited outside the room.
Lily climbed onto a chair and placed her scholarship letter carefully on the table.
“I got accepted into Saint Catherine’s,” she announced.
Despite the tension, pride warmed Isabella’s face.
“She earned the highest score in her class.”
Lily smiled at me.
“They have a library with three floors.”
“Do you like books?” I asked.
“I like stories where people who seem scary are secretly good.”
Isabella closed her eyes briefly.
I almost laughed, but the folded DNA report inside my coat felt like a stone against my chest.
Only hours earlier, I had been standing inside the nursery I built for Sofia’s baby.
May you like
I had painted one wall myself.
No one knew that.
