Wrong Life

Rosalind didn't sleep.

She sat on her bedroom floor with Dahlia's notebook open on her knees, a flashlight propped against a pillow so the light wouldn't show under the door. Page after page of names, dates, numbers that meant nothing to her yet. She recognized a few names from before, men who'd stood beside her father at his funeral and cried like they meant it.

One name stopped her cold.

*Grayson — March 14 — 40k discrepancy.*

Grayson. The same deal Silas had mentioned that morning, rushing her father out the door.

She sat back against her bed, notebook pressed to her chest, and tried to think like someone who hadn't already died once for not paying close enough attention.

By morning she'd barely slept an hour. She came downstairs to find her father already gone, a note on the counter in his rushed handwriting.

*Out early. Back for dinner. Love you, kid.*

She should have felt relief. Instead her stomach twisted. Any morning he wasn't home felt like a countdown she couldn't see the end of.

She spent the day the same way she'd spent the last one, restless, watching the clock, waiting for something to happen. By afternoon, she couldn't stand the waiting anymore.

She went looking for Grayson.

It wasn't hard to find him. A used auto shop three streets over, faded sign, one man leaning against a truck out front, tattoos crawling up both arms. Rosalind stopped across the street and studied him for a long moment before crossing.

"Help you?" the man said, not looking up from the engine he was working on.

"Are you Grayson?"

That got his attention. He straightened, wiping his hands on a rag, eyes narrowing. "Depends who's asking."

"Marcus Vane's daughter."

His face changed instantly, guarded now, careful. "Didn't know Marcus had a kid running errands for him."

"He doesn't," Rosalind said. "I'm not here for him."

"Then why are you here?"

She hadn't planned this far. She hadn't planned any of it, really, just followed the pull in her chest that said this man mattered, that his name in Dahlia's notebook meant something worth chasing.

"I heard there's a problem with money," she said. "Forty thousand dollars that doesn't add up."

Grayson went very still. "Where'd you hear that?"

"Does it matter?"

"It matters a lot, actually." He stepped closer, lowering his voice even though the street was empty. "Kid, whatever you think you know, you need to walk away right now. That's not a conversation for a fifteen-year-old girl."

"Silas set you up, didn't he?"

The words came out before she could stop them, sharper than she meant, and she watched something flicker across Grayson's face, quick and involuntary.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You do." Rosalind held his gaze, steady even though her heart was slamming. "He made it look like you skimmed money that never went missing. And nobody checked because nobody wanted to doubt him."

Grayson's jaw tightened. For a moment she thought he might actually tell her something.

Instead, he shook his head and stepped back. "Go home. Forget you ever heard that name."

"Somebody has to stop him before he does worse."

"Worse than what?" Grayson's voice cracked slightly, and for the first time she saw something underneath the caution. Fear. "You have no idea what that man is capable of. I've seen what happens to people who go digging where he doesn't want them looking."

"What happened to you?"

He didn't answer. He turned back toward the truck, done with the conversation, and Rosalind knew pushing further wouldn't get her anywhere today.

"If you change your mind," she said, "I'm not going anywhere."

She walked away before he could respond, hands shoved in her jacket pockets, mind racing through everything he hadn't said. Fear like that didn't come from a rumor. It came from something real, something he'd already lived through once.

She was halfway home when her phone buzzed.

Dahlia.

*Did you talk to Grayson?*

Rosalind frowned. *How do you know that?*

*Because I told you to be careful and you went straight to the most dangerous name in that notebook. Tell me you didn't say my name.*

*I didn't.*

*Good. Keep it that way. Grayson's scared for a reason. Whatever Silas did to make him that afraid, it wasn't just money.*

Rosalind stopped walking, staring at the screen. *What do you think it was?*

*I think Silas doesn't just ruin people's reputations. I think he makes sure they can't talk at all.*

The words settled cold in her chest. She thought of her father, laughing that morning, calling Silas a good man. She thought of Grayson's face, the fear underneath the caution.

*I need more proof,* Rosalind typed. *My father won't believe me without it.*

*Then we get more proof. But not by walking straight up to people and asking questions like you did today. That gets you noticed. Noticed gets you dead.*

Rosalind's throat tightened. She hadn't told Dahlia how right she was about that.

*What do you suggest?*

*There's a ledger. The real one, not the one the club sees. Silas keeps it somewhere he thinks nobody knows about. If we find it, we don't need Grayson to talk at all.*

*Where?*

*I don't know yet. But I know someone who might.*

Rosalind's phone buzzed again almost immediately, this time with an address, a bar on the edge of town she'd never heard of.

*Tomorrow night. Come alone. Again.*

She slid the phone into her pocket and kept walking, faster now, the weight of everything pressing harder with each step. She was fifteen years old in a fifteen-year-old's body, chasing a conspiracy that had already killed her once, with nothing but a stranger's notebook and a man too afraid to say what he really knew.

When she got home, her father's truck was already in the driveway, earlier than his note promised. She found him in the kitchen, jacket still on, phone pressed to his ear, voice low and tense in a way she didn't like.

"...no, I understand," he was saying. "I'll handle it myself. Just make sure Silas doesn't hear about this until I've had a chance to look into it properly."

Rosalind froze in the doorway.

Her father caught sight of her and ended the call fast, forcing a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Hey, kid. Didn't hear you come in."

"Everything okay?" she asked carefully.

"Fine. Just club stuff." He set his phone face down on the counter, a small gesture that told her more than his words did. "Nothing you need to worry about."

She wanted to ask who he'd been talking to. She wanted to ask what he was keeping from Silas, and why, because in the life she remembered, her father never kept anything from Silas. He trusted him completely, right up until the night that trust got him killed.

Something had already changed.

"Dad," she said slowly, "who was that?"

Her father looked at her for a long moment, and for the first time since she'd woken up in this life, she saw something in his eyes she hadn't expected to see this early.

Doubt.

"Someone I used to trust completely," he said quietly. "Now I'm not so sure.”