"Who's her father?" I keep my tone too careful as every nerve inside me tenses, and every muscle stiffens.
Damiano hesitates, but only for effect. He likes to make things dramatic. "A state senator."
Enzo snorts in impatience. "Name?"
"Preston Kingsley."
The name detonates in my inner ear. I don't show it. I've spent too long training my face to betray nothing, not even to myself. But something old and ugly stirs in my chest, a memory with teeth. Ghosts that don't want to stay hidden.
"Wait," Damiano says, "there's more."
He whistles, low, like a man witnessing his own funeral. "The husband is Carter Whitford."
The name has barbed wire wrapped around it. A symbol. A hero. The only man I ever failed to have killed. The one man who deserved it more than any other. If he could be called a man.
Damiano keeps talking, oblivious to my churning gut, the low burning fury that's simmering underneath my skin like a volcano about to erupt. "The wife is Jenna Whitford. And the kid they took is Amauri."
Son.
I never knew she had a son. Good for her.
I haven't spoken to her, haven't so much as Googled her in ten years. When her face flashes on a newsfeed, I change the channel. When someone mentions her name, I walk away. That kind of distance doesn't happen by accident. It's built. Maintained. Enforced. Necessary.
Enzo is watching me, waiting for orders, reminding me that I don't have time for ghosts. Not now. Not ever. Whatever she was—whatever we were—it's dead. Buried where it belongs. And I have no intention of digging it back up.
"Get me everything," I press out, glad my voice is even. "Every dollar, every link. Who backs Kingsley. Who wants Whitford gone? Who profits from new drug laws?"
"What about Kingsley?" Enzo asks, with the caution of someone defusing a bomb, he knows me well enough to sense that I'm holding something back. Rightly so. I am. But this ghost I don't want to resurrect. Not ever. God have mercy on her if she ever so much as shows herself in my orbit. I'd love nothing better than to wrap my hands around her tantalizing neck and squeeze the life out of her lying body.
I force my mind back to Kingsley. The New York family owns him. Enzo has ties there. Ties that might come in handy.
"Later," I cut him off with a flick of the hand.
For a moment, we all just stand there, the club noise rolling up from the floor below, laughter and music and the illusion ofsafety. But what I hear is the clock starting, counting down to whatever comes next.
Someone just reached into my past and pulled out a ghost.
Deliberate?
Later that night…
The world keeps tilting. Every time the limo hits a bump, pain explodes somewhere new: my ribs, my ankle, my head. I'm wrapped in a blanket that smells old and has stains on it that no amount of Clorox will ever get out. There's still blood on my hands. Dried now. Dark. I keep rubbing at it like it might come off if I try hard enough.
Dad sits across from me, his jaw clenched, his phone pressed to his ear until the moment the door shuts and the car pulls away from the police station.
Then he rounds on me. "What the fuck were you thinking, Jenna?"
I stare at him. The words don't land right away. They bounce around in my skull, looking for somewhere to stick.
"The police?" he snaps. "Are you out of your mind?"
I laugh. It comes out wrong, too high, too loud, almost hysterical. "Oh—oh geez, Dad, I don't know," I choke. "Maybe because my husband and my son were kidnapped?"
His eyes flick, sharp. Calculating.
"Lower your voice."
My son.
