TWELVE
BLOOD IN THE SNOW
ARIA
The first thing I notice is the silence. The second is the cold. The third is the wrongness.
I unlock my office door and freeze in the doorway as the winter light spills across chaos. Not a mess, not disorganization, but a violation.
My desk is overturned. Drawers ripped out and dumped like someone was looking for a beating heart. Papers shredded across the floor like fallen snow. My chair is on its side, one wheel still spinning.
And on the wall, what looks like a fingerprint. Smudged in red. It’s not blood, but Ink? Maybe paint?
A warning.
My breath catches, sharp and thin. The cold outside clings to me, but this is different. This is fear that has shape and teeth.
The message plays on repeat in my head.“We know where you belong.”It’s not random phrasing. It’s ownership language, gang language.“Next time, neither of you walks away”is textbook escalation. Not a threat. A timeline. Premeditation. If a client brought this to me, I’d tell them to file an emergencyinjunction and leave town. But this isn’t a client. This is Steel. And the part that terrifies me most is knowing the law won’t protect either of us from whoever wrote that message.
I step inside, glass crunching under my heels. The frigid air slips across the floor, carrying the smell of paper dust and torn ink. A sharp, metallic scent that makes my stomach twist.
Shredded pages flutter in the heating vent’s breeze, little rectangles of my work and my sanity drifting like dead leaves. Glass glitters across the tile in jagged constellations, catching the thin winter light and throwing it back in broken fragments. The window is cracked open just enough to let the February air crawl inside, numbing my fingers as if the room itself is holding its breath.
Every instinct screams,Don’t touch anything, but my body doesn’t listen. I move like I’m walking through my own autopsy.
The Saint Motors deed, the one I brought home to review for Steel, the one the club told me to safeguard, is gone.
Completely gone.
A noise tears out of me. Something between a gasp and a sob.
My phone shakes in my hand before I even register that I’m calling him.
Steel picks up on the first ring. “Aria?” His voice is sharp, clipped. “What happened?”
“My office,” I whisper. “It’s, it’s destroyed. Someone… someone washere.”
“Are you inside?”
“Yes.”
“Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
Static breath. A low curse. The sound of an engine roaring to life on his end.
“I’m on my way. Don’t move. Don’t touch anything. Keep the door closed.”
“Steel…” But he’s already gone. And suddenly the silence feels like it’s listening.
The silence stretches for too long, too tight. I wrap my arms around myself and sink against the wall, every nerve on fire. The second hand on the wall clock ticks like a hammer, each click landing between my ribs.
My breath fogs faintly in the cold creeping through the broken window, and my hands won’t stop shaking. I try to count the inhales to steady myself, but they break apart halfway through. Every sound outside the door makes me jump. Every creak of the building feels like footsteps coming closer. I can’t tell if I’m freezing or panicking. Maybe both.
It feels like hours, but it’s minutes, maybe less, before heavy boots hammer down the hallway.
Steel bursts into the doorway, breath fogging the air, gun in hand, cut thrown over his shoulder like armor he grabbed mid-run.
