Chapter 1 - The Woman Who Opened the CurtainsVincent Callahan had ordered men killed with less emotion than he now used to stare at a poor maid in a wrinkled uniform.
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Grace Miller stood in the hallway outside his children’s room with her hands folded in front of her, calm as if she had not just committed an act more dangerous than betrayal inside his house.
She had made his children hope.
To most fathers, that might have been a blessing.
To Vincent, it felt like a loaded gun placed in the hands of fate.
Behind the closed door, Noah and Lily were whispering to each other. Their voices were weak, fragile, thin as paper held too close to flame. But they were voices. They were not silence. They were not the slow, terrifying stillness Vincent had been watching consume them for weeks.
Grace listened to them with a softness that made something sharp twist beneath Vincent’s ribs.
“What exactly did you say to them?” he asked.
Grace looked up at him.
“I told Noah the raccoon was too proud to admit he was scared,” she said. “And I told Lily that sometimes brave girls laugh first so fear doesn’t get the best chair in the room.”
Vincent’s face hardened.
“This is not a game.”
“No,” Grace said. “That’s why I’m taking it seriously.”
Mason Reed stood several feet away, silent and watchful. Vincent’s right-hand man had seen interrogations, betrayals, executions, police raids, and gang wars. But even Mason seemed uncertain what to do with a maid who spoke to Vincent Callahan as if he were just a frightened father.