Hermom.
The woman who’d taught her to read, who’d kissed her scraped knees. She wasn’t always perfect, but she worked her ass off to keep some normalcy for Opal in a life that was far from normal.
And now she was in Cipher’s hands because of her.
Her mind raced, calculating risks.
One—Cipher was setting a trap. He wanted revenge for the stabbing, and he was using her mother as bait.
Two—if Opal called in backup, he’d kill her mother before they arrived. Cipher didn’t bluff.
Three—if she went alone, she’d likely die. Or worse, be taken, used, broken.
Four—if she didn’t go at all, her mother would suffer for hours before Cipher finally ended it.
None of the options were good.
Only one wasunacceptable.
She couldn’t let her mother die because Opal was a coward. Not after so many years of distance.
Her hands shook as she shot off a text to Sinner.
Pork chops for dinner.
The signal that she was in trouble.
With hands that were steady only out of sheer force of will, she punched the address into her GPS and pulled back onto the highway, her pulse drumming in her ears.
At least she had her boots on. Easier to fight in these than Alyssa’s pretty leather heels.
And she’d worn pants today, so the knife was strapped around her torso, just under the hem of her blouse, the leather strap warm against her ribs.
Cipher was injured. She had the advantage.
Maybe.
She still wore the tracker Sinner planted on her boot. She should tear it out, leave it on the side of the road.
Make herself a ghost again.
But she couldn’t do that. She had a partner now.
A lover.
The love of herlife.
Sinner would find her. He’d come for her like he always did. The way no one else ever had.
She left the tracker where it was. Worst-case scenario, he’d find her body.
Best case? He’d find her alive.
She pulled up to a house at the end of a quiet suburban street. It looked abandoned, like that office he lured her into, but with peeling paint and an overgrown lawn, the windows dark and lifeless. The kind of place people forgot existed along with the stories of the people who’d once lived here.
She killed the engine and sat for a beat, letting her heart slow and her mind go cold and sharp the way Smith taught her.
Pain is just information. You can use it or let it stop you.
