Because the truth?
That blow she gave him… the sickening crack…
He never recovered. She shattered bone. By the time Sam hauled him to my old fishing shack—mile off-grid, forgotten on purpose—Sheifer was already gone. Neck slack. Eyes empty. Dead weight in every sense of the word.
Lucky will never know she ended him. And I’ll burn that secret before I ever let it touch her.
Sam and I handled what was left—quietly, efficiently, permanently. The sort of job we were trained for. The sort the government pretends doesn’t happen.
Sheriff Dawson filed his report on the bank yesterday.Faulty wiring, he wrote.
I snort. My jaw ticks.
Faulty wiring,my arse.
He hates covering for me. Hates pretending he didn’t see the pieces we didn’t leave behind. Hates knowing I acted outside the system, and he backed it.
But he also hated Sheifer. And he loves Lily.
We all have our reasons.
The road curves. Home comes into view—my house, Lucky’s figure on the front porch with her guitar, the life I didn’t think I’d get another shot at.
I roll my shoulders back. Shift into park.
Yeah.
Everything’s different now.
And I’ll kill a hundred more ghosts if it means keeping them safe.
Chapter 38
Lucky
Fifteenmonthslater…
The lights are low and warm.
Gold, like early evening caught in glass.
Bleecker Street hums outside the windows of this tiny venue—traffic, voices, a city that never quite shuts up—but in here, it’s quiet in a way that feels alive. Not the suffocating, oppressive silence I used to fear. This one breathes with me.
The crowd is small. Maybe sixty people, packed close, sipping cheap drinks and talking softly while a mic stand waits for me like an open door. Banks said to keep it intimate. “A soft relaunch,” he called it. “A palette cleanser. Just you.”
Just me.
I’m sitting backstage on a metal folding chair, guitar balanced against my knee, fingers tracing the edge of the fretboard like it’s a lifeline. My heart’s pounding too hard, too fast—my body remembering stages and spotlights and chaos, even though tonight is nothing like that. No glitter. No pyrotechnics. No persona.
No Lucky Pink.
Just Lucky Vale.
And for the first time, that feels like enough.
A soft knock comes at the door. “Two minutes,” someone says.
Two minutes until I stop hiding.
