Chapter 8 - Stepping Into the Light
Sophia didn't scream when the stranger’s hand brushed her shoulder. She jolted awake with a small, desolate gasp, her wide, terrified eyes locking onto the masked men towering over her bed.
“Leave her alone!” Dante roared, straining against the two operatives pinning him against the splintered desk, blood tracking warm and dark from a cut on his temple. “She’s five years old! She knows nothing!”
The leader ignored him, leaning down over the mattress. “We don't need her to know anything, Dante. We just need her to be very persuasive when her aunt decides whether or not she wants to step out of that closet.”
My breath caught in my throat.
They knew I was in the closet.
They hadn't been tricked at all. The entire confrontation was a staged performance designed to flush me out, knowing that Dante would protect me by hiding me, and knowing that I wouldn't be able to watch a terrified, defenseless child pay the price for my mother’s past.
The weight of the last twenty years—the hidden past, the constant moving, the whispered warnings of a paranoid father—dissolved into a cold, burning clarity. Running had never saved anyone. Hiding had only brought destruction to the doorstep of an innocent man and a terrified little girl who had already lost her mother.
My hand found the brass release latch on the inside of the panel.
The hidden mirror door hissed open, sliding smoothly back into the wall.
The entire room went dead silent. The two operatives holding Dante froze. The leader turned slowly, his dark eyes narrowing with grim satisfaction as he watched me step out of the dark cedar-lined alcove and into the pale light of the nursery.
“Elena, no!” Dante yelled, straining violently against the arms holding him. “Get back in the vault! Don't listen to them!”
I ignored him, my chin lifted, my voice steady despite the violent shaking in my hands. I looked straight at the leader with the balaclava.
“Let her go,” I said, my voice cutting cleanly through the quiet room. “I’m right here. I’m the one you came for.”
The leader slowly straightened up, stepping away from Sophia’s bed. The little girl let out a choked sob, her eyes locking onto me from across the mattress, her small hand reaching out blindly toward the space I had just vacated.
“I knew you’d have your mother’s stubborn streak, Elena,” the leader said, reaching up to slowly peel the dark balaclava from his face.
May you like
The light hit his features, and my blood ran completely cold.
It wasn't a stranger. It was the senior partner of the legal firm that had managed my mother’s estate twenty years ago—the man who had sworn under oath to protect our family when we went into hiding.
