ella

of the Prohibition-era distillery. Rusted copper stills loomed

I ordered M

their hands instinctively hovering over

he gauze still showed faint rust-colored stains. The flesh underneath was beg

focating scent of old whiskey. As I navigated the decaying floorboards, the fa

irt. My breath caught. He was sculpted like a ruthless Roman deity, his back rippling with lean, predatory muscle. Hea

tten)?" he drawled, his tone la

eer, suffocating dominance radiating from him felt entirely wrong for a grunt.

sing yourself in a graveyard like

lips. "I'm hard to kill. What's a woman

dicinal mold," I lied smoothly, my g

his heavy boots was a tarnished cigar box stamped with a fa

anger in the room. "Seems I'm in the wrong win

very movement, burning with a sudden, in

into the daylight, I swore I heard him snap his fingers, followed by

age on which, before leaving the estate, I had written a single line in cipher: "The old ledger. I know where you hide. Meet me tonight. Sa

d anoth

" I ordered. "Then double b

wall on the far side, where the floorboards didn't creak. The stranger was gone. I found the cigar box, pried

The Ghost of Gary-a skeletal old man with milky eyes and a voice li

t you?"

d I know that Senator Whitmore's 1987 campaign was fund

not written down-it existed only in his memory. I had

Valenti. In exchange, I would provide him with a new identity and safe passage out of the country once I had extr

ad passed since Angelo's thoracentesis. He was stable now-the fluid had not returned-but his lungs were still weak. Dr. Rossi had warned me

Angelo. My son's small face was pale, the dark circles under his eyes a reminder of how close we

tate his throat. But the hope in his gaze-the first spark of normalcy I had seen since the motel-broke somethin

ce, twice-before smiling up at me. I smiled back, ignoring the ache in my bandaged palms as I held his free hand. For a seco

hispered, his

e across the bustling stre

ue was my ex-husband, Damien Valenti. He wasn't looking at us. His

around Seraphina's throat. She tilted her head up, her eyes shining with adoration. Damien smiled-a soft, genuine sm

a public declaration of their

tical power or family alliances anymore. It was the absolute erasure o

learned too young that tears changed nothing. Instead, he buried his

om the man who had discarded us. My bandaged palms throbbed where the gauze pressed into half-healed wounds-a small, grounding pain.