LOGINRaven (Past)I shrugged her hands off and stepped back.“I need to tell Dad.”I turned toward the door.Her hand closed around my arm and yanked and I wasn’t expecting it and my feet went out from under me and I hit the kitchen floor hard, my knee connecting with the tile, and the pain tore up my leg so sharply that the sound that came out of me didn’t feel like it came from my own throat.“Oh God.” She was on her knees beside me immediately, her hands reaching. “Oh God I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, let me see, let me…”“Stay away from me.” I scrambled backward across the floor on my hands, dragging my bleeding knee, pressing myself against the cabinet as far from her as I could get. “Don’t touch me. Stay back. Stay away.”“Raven…”“Don’t touch me.” Tears were running down my face and I couldn’t stop them and I didn’t try. “You’ve gone mad. You’ve actually gone mad.”She sat back on her heels.Her face went through something then that I still don’t have the right
Raven(past)Mum had been different for weeks.Not different the way she sometimes got when she and Dad argued and went cold on each other for a few days. Different in a way I didn’t have a word for yet. Withdrawn. Somewhere else even when she was standing right in front of me. And the yelling had started, sudden and sharp over nothing, over a glass left on the counter or a door closed too loudly, and I flinched every time because she had never been a yeller. Not at me. Never at me.Saturday morning she seemed better.That was the thing I kept coming back to afterward. She seemed better.She was in the kitchen when I came downstairs, moving around with something that looked almost like her old energy, and I sat at the counter and let myself believe that whatever had been wrong was passing.We made sandwiches together. She let me cut mine into triangles the way I liked and said nothing about the breadcrumbs I left on the counter.For a little while it felt like her.Then she l
Roman(Past)“I need to leave.” Erica’s voice came out flat and final, the way it did when she’d made a decision before entering a room. “I can’t stay here anymore. It’s been ten years and a few months, Roman. The contract I signed is over.”I set down the glass in my hand.“You can’t leave,” I said. “Not now.”“When then?” Her eyes were already bright with the frustration she’d been carrying into this room. “When is it ever the right time? You’ve been saying that for three years.”“When Raven is ready.” I kept my voice even. “Wait until next year. Then you can sit her down and tell her properly. Give her time to adjust.”“Next year.” She let out a short, hollow laugh. “You said that two months ago, and I told you I wouldn’t agree to it.”“The situation was different then.”“The situation is always different.” She spread her hands open. “I have sacrificed everything for this arrangement. My youth. My relationships. My family. My own life sitting on hold while yours carried on
RomanThe glass is in my back before I fully register the sound.One moment I’m stepping into the bedroom with Raven in my arms and the next the window explodes inward and I’m taking us both to the floor, covering her body with mine, my shoulder and back absorbing the impact of the fall and whatever came with it.Silence.Then my men are in the room.Four of them through the door in under ten seconds, weapons drawn, Marcus sweeping the window line before anything else.“Stay down,” I tell Raven, yanking the duvet off the bed and draping it over her naked body. “Roman—”“Stay down, baby.”She stays.Marcus moves to the window frame, staying low, reading the angle of the shot. He studies it for a moment then straightens and looks at me.“Rooftop,” he says. “Building across. Minimum four hundred meters.” He glances at the two men behind him. “They’re gone. Single shot, clean exit. This was planned.”I push myself up off the floor.I feel the glass shift in my back as I move
RavenRoman pulls me back against his chest, and I settle into him, the warm water shifting around us as I let my eyes drift shut.His fingers move lazily through my damp hair, combing the strands away from my neck.“I’ve been thinking about names,” I say quietly.He hums softly. “You already have Mason.”I smile. “I know, and I love the name. But what if it’s a girl? We still don’t have a name.”His arms tighten around me just a little. “We’ll figure out the perfect one before you get to term.”I trace idle circles over his forearm resting across my stomach. “And this time, you’re choosing the name.”I feel him hesitate behind me.“Me?” There’s a quiet note of surprise in his voice.I nod. “Mm-hmm.”He laughs softly against my hair. “That’s a dangerous amount of trust.”“You’ve earned it.”The bathwater laps gently against the porcelain and his thumb moves in slow strokes over my belly and neither of us feels the need to fill the quiet with anything.Then I freeze.“Wait.”His hand
RomanThe house is calm when I come home. I loosen my tie walking down the corridor, already tired in the way that sits in your bones rather than your eyes, the Diamond Club meeting having taken more out of me than I want to admit. Not physically. Just the particular weight of years of patience finally converting into action.I push open the bedroom door.The en suite light is on, the door open, steam drifting into the bedroom in soft curls.I hear water moving.I walk to the doorway.Raven is in the bath, hair pinned loosely up, the water deep and warm, her knees drawn up slightly, her head resting back against the edge. She opens her eyes when she hears me and something in her face settles the moment she sees me, the way it always does, like she’s been waiting all day to see me. “You look exhausted,” she says.“Long day.”“I made dinner.”“It can wait.”She watches me shrug off my jacket. Hang it on the back of the door. Work through the buttons of my shirt.She move
RavenThe sonography room is dim and quiet, the kind of quiet that feels volitional, like the whole world has agreed to hold its breath for a few minutes.I lie back on the table while the sonographer, a soft-spoken woman with careful hands, prepares the equipment. Roman stands slightly back from
Roman“Tell me.”“The image isn’t perfectly clear, but we matched a partial off the footage. A college kid. Twenty, twenty one.” A pause. “We picked him up an hour ago. He’s not talking yet but he will.”“Where is he.”“Body shop on Halloran. The back room.”I drive myself to the location at a
RomanShe wants to talk.I set the glass down.I look at her standing in the middle of my office and I already know whatever is coming is not going to be easy. I can read Raven the way I read a room before a deal goes bad. Something in the set of her jaw. The way she folded her arms when she walked
RomanI find Marcus in my study, standing by the window with his back to the door, trying very hard to look like a man who has been patiently waiting and not at all like a man who walked in on something he wishes he could unsee.“Marcus, I—”“I didn’t see anything.” He says it quickly, still facing







