I waited until Bradley and Molly came home and headed straight to where Marisol had been attacked.
Nice part of town. Independent boutique shops, clean brickwork, polished windows, flower boxes nobody had kicked over. Even the alleys were tidy—swept, painted, the kind of place where nothing bad was supposed to happen.
I parked a block away and walked, slowly, scanning everything. Every doorway. Every rooftop. Every shadow.
That prickle hit me again—low between my shoulder blades, like fingers pressing there. Watching. Tracking. Hunting. It wasn’t imagination this time. It was too sharp, too cold.
A woman unloaded boxes from the back of a café. A man in a suit stepped out of a tailor’s shop. Cars passed. Perfectly normal.
But normal didn’t sit right on this street anymore.
I moved toward the boutique where Marisol had dropped off her candles, my eyes picking apart each reflection in the glass. A figure shifted across the street—just a shape, a movement caught out of the corner of my eye—but when I turned, they were gone.
Not gone. Hiding.
I checked the alley next, the one she’d been dragged toward. Clean concrete. Fresh paint. No sign of struggle except a faint smear halfway down the wall. Blood? Dirt?
My jaw locked hard enough to ache.
Someone had been here. Someone had waited for her.
Were they still close?
I stepped in farther, scanning every inch of the wall, the ground, the shadows. That was when I saw it—one word, scratched low into the paint where only someone looking for it would notice.
GAEL.
My breath stopped.
My real name.
The one that had belonged to a boy who had died years ago, a ghost I’d spent half my life killing off piece by piece. Barely a handful of people had ever known it, and now only Marisol did.
So why the fuck wasthatname here?
My pulse hammered as I crouched, running my thumb over the carved letters. Fresh. Deliberate. A message, sharp as a blade.
“They’re all dead,” I whispered to the wall—maybe to the boy I used to be. There was no one left of the old Águilas Cartel. I’dmade sure of it, and no one would know this name. It had to be a coincidence.
A cold rush slid down my spine. Whoever had been watching Marisol had been watchingme,too. Calling me out. Dragging Gael out of the grave I’d buried him in under blood, new identities, and years of silence.
Gael.
Did someone want me to see this? To feel it. To remember.
I hit call before I could talk myself out of it.
“Novak.” His voice came through rough, as if he’d been asleep or burying a body—could go either way.
“I need you at my house,” I said. “Outside it. Now.”
A beat. “Problem?”
“Someone grabbed Marisol. And someone left a message for me at the scene.”
Another beat. Longer. “I’m on my way.”
I didn’t hang up.
