Chapter 7

Then something inside of her went very still. Not calm, something older than calm. Something merciless.

The Greeks had called them the Furies: female creatures born from blood and vengeance, monstrous women who hunted the wicked without rest or mercy. Nala remembered learning about them in college once and thinking the mythology seemed absurdly dramatic. Now she understood, though, because motherhood had made her ancient too. Protective in ways that no longer felt entirely human.

Nala slid silently from the dumbwaiter and reached for the heavy marble rolling pin sitting in the crock beside the stove. Her fingers wrapped around the smooth cold weight of it, grounding her instantly in the simplest possible truth.

Weapon. Tool. Survival.

For eleven years, she had built a life around the idea that if danger ever came for Luna, Nala would be ready, but she knew she would not be fearless. 

Fear was alive inside her right now, huge and clawing and vicious, but fear had never made her weak. Fear had sharpened her, fear had taught her to listen through walls and sleep lightly and memorize exits and keep cash hidden in places nobody would think to look. Fear had made her into the kind of woman who could climb down a dumbwaiter in the dark with her heart breaking open and still keep her hands steady.

Because Luna was everything.

Nala stepped silently out of the kitchen.

The man came backward down the hall, broad shoulders blocking the weak nightlight glow from the stairs. He was dragging Luna against him, one gloved hand clamped over her mouth, the other locked around her waist. Luna’s eyes were huge and wet and terrified, but she was fighting him, kicking at his shins, clawing at his forearm, making him work for every single step.

That’s my girl.

The thought flashed through Nala, wild and proud, because of course Luna fought. Of course her daughter didn’t go quietly. Of course the child Nala had raised alone, loved alone, protected alone, had enough fire in her tiny body to make a grown man struggle and curse in the dark.

The man jerked her backward another step and hissed, “Stop it. Jesus fuck!”

Nala moved now. No warning, no scream, no hesitation. There was no room for dramatic courage in moments like this, no time for movie-style threats or righteous speeches or anything remotely resembling mercy. There was only distance, angle, force, and the unbearable fact that a stranger was touching her child.

She came up behind him and swung the rolling pin with every ounce of terror and rage that eleven years of fighting had packed into her body.

The crack against the side of his head was sickening. He grunted and staggered, loosening his grip just enough for Luna to tear free and stumble forward.

“Run!” Nala snapped.

Luna ran to the corner near the kitchen door, sobbing but smart enough not to scream, and some detached vicious part of Nala loved her even more for that too, because terror had not made Luna stupid, had not made her freeze, had not made her wait to be saved twice.

The man turned, dazed, blood already sliding from his hairline down one temple, and Nala hit him again before he could fully face her. This time the blow caught his cheekbone and sent him crashing sideways into the hall table. A framed photo shattered beneath him – Luna at seven, missing a front tooth, smiling beside the lake – and the sight of it broke something hot and savage open in Nala’s chest.

That picture was from one of her very rare good days. One of the days when she had almost believed they were normal. One of the days when Canandaigua had felt like home instead of defeat.

He tried to rise, but Nala stepped closer and brought the rolling pin down once more. He dropped hard, crashed face-up to the floor, and this time he stayed there.

For several seconds, the only sounds in the house were Luna’s ragged crying and Nala’s own harsh breathing. Nala stood over him, both hands still clenched around the rolling pin, waiting for movement, waiting for another threat, waiting for the nightmare to prove that it had more teeth because nightmares always did, in her experience. They never arrived alone. They traveled in packs.

But he didn’t move.

“Mom?” Luna whispered.

Nala turned instantly, and Luna flew into her arms so hard they both nearly went down. Nala wrapped herself around her daughter with one hand cradling the back of Luna’s head, the other still gripping the weapon because love and relief didn’t make her careless.

“I’ve got you,” she breathed into Luna’s hair, voice shaking despite every effort to keep it steady. “I’ve got you, baby. You’re safe.”

Except that was a lie, and she knew it before the words were fully out of her mouth.

Because the man on her hallway floor wasn’t some random monster.

Random monsters didn’t come into houses in the middle of the night and try to take sleeping children with gloved hands and hushed voices. Random monsters didn’t move with purpose. Random monsters didn’t know that a ten-year-old girl lived in an old blue house on a quiet street near the lake.

Nala eased Luna behind her and crouched, keeping the rolling pin ready as she shoved the man’s jacket open with shaking fingers. For one awful second, she saw only leather, then the cut shifted beneath her hand.

And there, stitched across the front of his vest in heavy block letters, were the words that made her entire past rise up like a corpse from shallow ground:

HIGHWAY HELLIONS MC UTAH.

Nala stared at the patch, her breath leaving her body in one slow, terrible exhale.

A motorcycle club.

Of course. Of fucking course.

The room tilted slightly, and she had to lock one hand against the floor to keep herself steady. For eleven years she had run from motorcycles and cuts and clubhouses and men who spoke about women and children like property or collateral damage. Eleven years of clean records and careful lies. Eleven years of being Nala Freeman, dental clinic manager, single mother, quiet neighbor, woman with no family worth mentioning and no past worth discussing.

She had built an entire identity out of absence. No old friends. No old photographs. No husband. No story. Just Luna, always Luna.

And now, after all that running, after all the sacrifice and loneliness and swallowed terror, after every birthday party where she smiled too brightly, and every parent-teacher conference where she sat alone, and every feverish night where she held her daughter through sickness with nobody to call and nowhere to fall apart, an MC had still found its way into her house. Into Luna’s bedroom.

Rage came first, white-hot and blinding, so pure it almost made her calm, then the fear followed. Not the frantic fear of waking to a sound downstairs, though, this was something worse. Something colder.

Because this was not random, and Nala knew enough about MCs to understand that immediately. Clubs didn’t send men across state lines for no reason, men in cuts didn’t sneak into homes and try to abduct little girls because of chance. Violence like this had roots, and roots always led somewhere.

Her gaze lifted to Luna’s pale, terrified face, and Nala felt the truth settle into her bones with absolute certainty.

Whatever the hell this was, whatever reason a Highway Hellion had come into her home and put his hands on her child, it had nothing to do with Canandaigua. It had nothing to do with the dental clinic, or the mortgage, or the careful quiet life she had carved out one exhausted day at a time. It had nothing to do with her.

Nala tightened her grip on the rolling pin and looked back down at the unconscious man bleeding on her hallway floor.

This was about Cole.