Chapter 3 - The Girl in the Solarium
The smell of cordite and pulverized plaster choked the air.
“Down!” Evie hissed, her hand flat against Roman’s back, pressing him into the floor between the rusted stove and the refrigerator.
Glass rained down on them. Out in the hallway, Vance was firing blind through the doorway, his heavy automatic weapon thundering against the narrower, high-cyclic crack of the ambushers’ submachine guns.
Roman rolled over, his face covered in white plaster dust, his eyes blazing. He reached into his coat and pulled a customized black Kimber .45 from an armpit holster. The confusion and shock were gone; the warlord of Philadelphia had taken the wheel.
“How many?” he asked, his voice steady beneath the din.
“Two on the fire escape,” Evie replied instantly, her tactical senses taking over without conscious thought. “One covering the alley with a long rifle. If they have the stairs, your men are already dead.”
“They don't have the stairs,” Roman said grimly. “I have a second security team in the street.”
As if on cue, the heavy roar of a modified V8 engine tore through the alley below, followed by the deafening chatter of an automatic shotgun. Screams echoed up the brick well, followed by the clatter of a body hitting a metal dumpster.
Evie peeked over the counter. A figure dressed in black tactical gear swung through the shattered window, his boots clearing the sill.
She didn't wait for Roman. She rose from the floor like a striking cobra, caught the intruder’s weapon by the suppressor, and jammed her thumb behind the bolt carrier, taking it out of battery. With her other hand, she drove the butt of her Sig Sauer into the man's throat.
He choked, stumbling backward. Evie spun, hooked his neck with her forearm, and dropped her full weight, driving his skull directly into the cast-iron edge of the radiator.
He went limp instantly.
Roman stepped up behind her, his Kimber raised, covering the empty window frame. Below, in the alley, two of Roman’s black Suburbans had boxed in a silver sedan. Men in heavy tactical vests were securing the area, their weapons trained on the wet pavement.
Vance appeared in the ruined doorway of the apartment, holding his bleeding arm, his face pale. “Boss. Clear. The shooter on the fire escape is down. Bennett took one in the meat of his shoulder, but he’ll live.”
Roman didn't lower his gun. He looked at the unconscious assassin at Evie’s feet, then at Evie herself. Her hair was matted with plaster dust, her face streaked with sweat and soot, but her hands were rock-steady.
“They used suppressed MP5s,” Evie noted, looking down at the weapon she had disarmed. “High-end mercs. Not street-level enforcers. These aren't Moretti’s usual lowlifes.”
“No,” Roman agreed, his voice chillingly dark. “They’re not.”
He looked around the shattered apartment, then took Evie by the arm. His grip wasn't violent like Derek’s had been; it was firm, commanding, but strangely careful.
“Pack your things,” Roman said.
“I’m not going anywhere with you, Vale.”
“They know where you live. They knew you were alive thirty minutes after you left the Bellweather Room. The only reason they hit this place tonight was because they knew I was here, or because someone realized you were back.” Roman’s eyes locked onto hers with absolute intensity. “If you stay here, you’re dead before sunrise. If you come with me, you get answers. And I get the truth about my wife’s death.”
Evie looked at the ruined apartment, then down at the blood pooling on the linoleum. She had run for six years, and the blood had caught up with her anyway.
“Fine,” she said. “Five minutes.”
***
An hour later, the convoy turned through the wrought-iron gates of a secluded estate in Chestnut Hill.
The Vale residence was an imposing stone manor surrounded by thirty acres of old-growth oak and hemlock trees, guarded by high limestone walls, razor wire, and a dozen men with thermal scopes patrolling the perimeter. It was a fortress disguised as a home.
Roman led her through the massive double oak doors into a marble-floored foyer lit by a crystal chandelier. Servants in quiet uniforms hurried past, whispering instructions. A private doctor was already waiting in a side parlor to tend to Bennett and Vance.
“Upstairs,” Roman said, unbuttoning his blood-spattered cuffs. “You can clean up. We talk in my study in twenty minutes.”
“I’ll stay down here,” Evie said, crossing her arms. She stood in the center of the foyer, looking completely out of place in her torn jacket, combat boots, and plaster-covered hair.
Before Roman could argue, a door at the far end of the grand hall clicked open.
A small, slender girl stepped out onto the marble floor.
She couldn't have been more than ten years old. She wore oversized flannel pajamas covered in printed stars and dragged a worn woolen blanket behind her. She had Roman’s dark, expressive eyes, but her face—the gentle slope of her nose, the curve of her jaw—belonged entirely to Elena.
Evie’s heart felt as though it had been pierced by an ice pick.
*Lily.*
The last time Evie had seen this child, Lily was four years old, crying hysterically in the back of an armored sedan while glass rained down and the sirens wailed in the distance.
“Dad?” the little girl asked, rubbing her eyes. “There were loud cars in the driveway. Is Bennett okay?”
Roman’s expression transformed instantly. The ruthless criminal overlord vanished, replaced by a father desperate to shield his child from the darkness he lived in.
“Bennett is fine, sweetheart,” Roman said softly, stepping between Lily and Evie to block the sight of his stained shirt. “Just a broken exhaust pipe on the truck. Go back to bed. It’s past two.”
Lily didn't move. Her gaze slipped past Roman’s waist, locking directly onto Evie.
The little girl took a slow step forward. Her eyes traveled from Evie’s scarred face down to the torn olive jacket, and finally to her hands—the swollen knuckles and the pale scars across the skin.
Lily didn't look frightened. She looked fascinated.
“You’re the lady from the restaurant,” Lily whispered.
Roman turned, surprised. “What?”
“Tommy texted me,” Lily said, looking at Evie with open reverence. Tommy, the young busboy Evie had protected earlier that night, was the son of Roman’s head housekeeper. “He said a girl with a ponytail knocked Derek down with one punch while holding a tray of coffee. Derek can’t even sit up without crying.”
A tiny, reluctant smile touched the corner of Evie’s mouth despite the exhaustion crushing her chest.
“Derek has very poor balance,” Evie said.
Lily walked right up to her, stopping less than two feet away. She tilted her head back, studying Evie’s face with fearless curiosity.
“Tommy said you saved him from getting beat up,” Lily said quietly. “He said you were the bravest person he ever saw.”
Evie looked into the eyes of the child she had bled to protect six years ago. The weight of all those cold, lonely nights in cheap motels, the crippling pain of her scarred lungs, the endless guilt—it all seemed to collapse under the gaze of this one little girl.
“I just don't like bullies, kiddo,” Evie whispered.
Lily held out her woolen blanket. “You have dust in your hair. And you’re bleeding on your chin. You can use the bathroom in the solarium. It has the big towels.”
Roman watched the interaction in total silence, a strange, unreadable emotion tightening his throat. In six years, Lily had never spoken more than three words to any of the security personnel or the business associates Roman brought to the house. She lived in a cocoon of grief and quiet rebellion.
May you like
Yet within thirty seconds, she was offering her favorite blanket to the woman Roman had spent six years wanting to destroy.
***
