CHAPTER THREE

LENA’S POV

I paced through the length of the hospital corridor for what felt like eternity and when the doctor walked outside the curtains, they weren't smiling.

I ran to them. “How is she? How is my mother?” I asked, searching their faces for good news.

“I'm sorry, your mother has multiple organ failure and we have done all we can. We can only stabilize her. She has just a few hours left.”

My heart fell. I ran to my mother's room and I felt my world shatter to pieces as I saw my mother lying helplessly in the bed.

She looked so small and weak, nothing like the woman who had dedicated her whole life to keep me safe. I couldn't believe that my mother who had taken me through four different cities and lives was already on her death bed.

“Mum, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry for being stubborn, I'm sorry for leaving. If I was around maybe I would have been able to protect you.” I cried.

“Shhhhh…” my mother said weakly. “I need to tell you something before I go.”

I held her and continued to cry. “Please mum, I don't want to lose you. You're all that I have.”

“I want to tell you something that I have never told you before. And I want you to listen to me carefully.”

I nodded. “Okay Mum. I'm listening.”

“I want you to be careful when I die. Stay away from your father, he's a very dangerous man.”

“You've said that a thousand times mum. I know that by now.”

“Good. And there is someone else. Callum Reyes. He will come for you as he came for me.”

I paused. “Wait, what? Who is Callum?” I asked, but she didn't answer.

She started shaking and the machine went off.

“Mum? Mom? Doctor?” I screamed.

The nurses came in and put off the machine then covered her body with the blue clothes while I sat on that hospital corridor and cried till I didn't have it in me anymore.

***

I was given a plastic bag and a form to fill out. I sat in the corridor while I wrote her name in the box marked deceased.

My hand didn't shake until I got to the emergency contact line and found it completely blank.

I stared at that line for a long time. I didn't know any emergency number except my father, and I didn't want to, but I had no choice.

I unlocked her phone with the code she used for everything and scrolled until I found the contact she had saved as only a single letter.

D.

My father. The dangerous man she spent twenty years refusing to name. She had seventeen missed calls from him.

I pressed the dial button before I could think myself out of it and he picked it up on the second ring.

"Diana." He said without sounding surprised and I hated it immediately. He hasn't heard from me since he left and he didn't care a bit.

"Diana is dead," I said. "This is Lena."

He didn't say anything for a long time and I pulled the phone back to check if the call was still connected.

"Where are you?" he finally asked and I gave him the location.

"Stay there," he said. "Don't leave with anyone, don't speak to anyone." He paused. "I'm coming."

“No.” I snapped back immediately and he drew a sharp breath.

“Excuse me?”

“I will bury my mother myself. I know her well enough to know what she wants and I know that she doesn't want you there.”

“Hmmm,” he said and ended the call without saying anything else.

***

He showed up at the burial three days later even after telling him not to.

A burial I arranged myself. I bought a small plot with the little savings I had next, a plain headstone, and called a pastor I found online because we never stayed anywhere long enough to know one personally.

The rain came down soft and steady the whole time while I stood at the graveside in the only dark dress I owned.

I sniffed and dabbed my face with a handkerchief as I said goodbye to the woman who had given me everything she had, which wasn't much but always enough.

Suddenly I heard something that made me freeze without looking back.

Engines rolling from every direction at once. I turned slowly.

Black motorcycles lined every road around the cemetery and men in dark leather guarded the whole cemetery. The engines began to cut one by one until silence returned back to the graveyard.

Then he showed up. A man walked through them with an authority that commanded even the beds.

He was in his fifties, broad with grey threading through dark hair. He didn't need to explain anything or wear any leather. He just wore a dark coat and walked like the ground he walked on belonged to him.

He stopped a few feet from me.

We looked at each other across my mother's grave.

"You look like her," he said.

"I know." My voice hardened. "And you don't look like anything she ever described."

Something moved across his face. "I didn't come to fight," he said.

"Then why did you bring all of them to her funeral?"

"Because the people who got to her will come for you next." He said. "Your mother kept you hidden for twenty years and that cover was gone the moment she stopped breathing. You have no money, no family, and no idea what has been moving around you your whole life."

My jaw tightened. "Then tell me."

"Not here." His eyes moved briefly to the men around us. "Come with me."

"You want me to get on a motorcycle with a stranger over my mother's grave."

"I want you to be alive next week, and I know that I don't have the right to ask you for anything. I know what I owe you and I know that I can't pay it back today. But you are in danger, Lena, and right now I am the only person standing in this cemetery who actually cares if you survive it."

I looked at him, the wall of men behind him and my mother's grave while rain fell over it.

"I'll go," I said. "But I'm not promising anything past tonight. And if I decide to leave, you will let me go."

He held my gaze. "Agreed."

I didn't fully believe him. But I had nothing, and someone had already reached my mother inside a locked apartment.

I only agreed because that was the only thing I could do to buy myself time to figure out the next one.