For so long, I’d thought she’d never really come back to herself. But now, she looked lighter. Hopeful again.
“I think it’s perfect,” I said. “You deserve someone who makes you feel loved. Who shows you how special you are.”
Mom squeezed my hand, eyes shining. “You always say the sweetest things.”
We sat like that for a while—Mother and daughter, two women who’d survived our own storms, enjoying the quiet hum of normalcy between us.
But soon I felt restless, and it seemed a good time to help with any chores before I had to leave again.
I stood and smiled. “I’ll grab the mail for you, okay?”
“Thanks, honey. There should be a package coming for me, too.”
I slipped outside, the air cool and sharp against my skin. The neighborhood was calm—the same sleepy suburb I’d grown up in. Kids’ bikes on lawns.
A dog barking two houses over. I pulled open the old metal mailbox, flipping through a stack of envelopes. Bills, junk mail, a flyer for a new pizza place.
A plain white envelope, no stamp, no return address. My name was scrawled across the front in thick black marker. An ominous, dark call:Frankie.
My stomach tightened.
I glanced up and down the street—no one was there besides Devin, who was still waiting in the car he’d brought me in. He didn’t look at me, and I avoided looking in his direction either, not wanting to alarm him until there was a reason for it.
Still, I couldn’t shake the prickling sensation that I was being watched.
I carried the mail inside, setting everything but the envelope on the kitchen counter. Heart hammering, I tore the message open.
A single sheet of paper slipped out. My hands shook as I unfolded it, looking at the message inside. The handwriting was the same—angry, jagged.
You got involved in something big, little girl. Learn your place or your mother pays the price.
My breath caught.
For a second, I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. The words blurred and re-formed again and again as I tried to make sense of them.
I swallowed hard, rereading it, hoping I’d misunderstood. But the threat was clear.
Someone knew where my mom lived. Someone knew who she was, who I was.
And surely it was all because I’d gotten involved with the three guys who, despite their apparent shady dealings, made me feel protected.
Panic crawled up my throat. I turned the paper over, but there was nothing else.
No signature. No symbol.
Just that awful warning, as personal and cold as a knife at the back of my neck.
“Frankie?” Mom called from the living room. “Everything okay, sweetheart?”
I shoved the note into my pocket before she could see it. My voice shook when I answered, “Y-yeah, Mom. Just a sec.”
No reason to worry her. If all went well, she’d never have to know she’d been threatened at all. I’d wrap up my visit with her sooner than I wanted, then I’d tell Devin.
He’d know what to do, surely. Even if my involvement with him, Jonathan, and Alex was the only connection I had to the kinds of people who would wish my saint of a mother harm, they were also my only possible defense against it.
I just hoped I could trust them with such a precious life.
11
