Chapter 3 - The Midnight TrainThirty minutes later, the back alley of First Snow Kitchen was quiet again.
The rain had stopped, leaving behind slick, reflective puddles that mirrored the yellow sodium glow of the streetlights. Grace stood by the back door, clutching a single canvas duffel bag in one hand while the other arm cradled little Emma tightly against her chest.
Marcus, Roman’s head of security—a six-foot-three former military operative with a face carved from granite—stood beside the idling black SUV parked half-shadowed by the brick wall.
“Get in, Miss Walker,” Marcus instructed, his voice low and professional as he held the rear door open. “The private airstrip at Midway is prepped. Our pilot is waiting.”
Grace looked down at the manila envelope resting on the seat inside the vehicle. Two million dollars. A ranch in Montana. A ticket out of the violence, the poverty, the constant, grinding anxiety of surviving on the razor’s edge of Chicago’s underworld.
It was everything she had ever dreamed of when she left Indianapolis with seven hundred dollars in her pocket.
So why did her feet feel like they were bolted to the pavement?
She looked up at the second-story window of the restaurant, where Eleanor was watching her through the glass with an expression of quiet, sorrowful approval.
You have a conscience, Eleanor had said. Your greatest virtue and your most dangerous liability.
If Grace got into this car, she would be safe. Emma would be safe. They would vanish into the mountains of Montana, living like ghosts on a dead man’s fortune, while Roman Callaway waged a bloody, merciless war in the streets of Chicago against men who preyed on infants.
She thought about Roman’s eyes as he left—the cold, absolute certainty of a man walking into a slaughterhouse because he believed it was the only way to protect what was left of his family.
“Miss Walker?” Marcus prompted gently, noting her hesitation. “We need to move. If Julian Vance’s security detail spots our convoy moving toward the south side, this window closes.”
Julian Vance.
The name hit Grace like a physical blow.
The venture capital executive. The high-society golden boy. The man who had abandoned another woman—Elena Vance—months ago, and now had ordered his own flesh and blood thrown into a dumpster to tie up a loose end in a corporate merger.
Grace’s grip on the duffel bag tightened until her fingers ached.
She looked at Marcus. Then she looked down at Emma, who was sleeping peacefully against her chest, completely unaware of the monsters circling her world.
“No,” Grace said.
Marcus froze, his hand resting on the open car door. “Excuse me?”
“I’m not going to Montana,” Grace said, her voice steadying, finding a strange, terrifying clarity in the cold night air. “If I run now, Julian Vance wins. If Roman dies tonight because he’s fighting alone, Julian and his associates will eventually find us, no matter where we hide.”
“Miss Walker, you don't understand the scale of what is happening—”
“I understand perfectly,” Grace interrupted, stepping away from the car and pushing the rear door shut with a definitive thud. “Roman Callaway thinks he can buy me off with a ranch and a check so he can play hero and die in a shootout. But he’s wrong.”
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Marcus stared at her, genuinely stunned. “What do you propose to do? Stay in a restaurant kitchen?”
“No,” Grace said, her eyes flashing with a sudden, fierce resolve. “I’m going to help him finish the audit.”
