CHAPTER ONE
Kara held the screaming baby against one shoulder, bouncing on the balls of her feet in a vain attempt to soothe her niece. How long she could keep this up before her arms fell off from sheer exhaustion? Whoever had invented teething deserved to be shot. Or maybe locked in a room with a miserable ten-month-old for the rest of all eternity.
“Shhh, Esmée,” Kara murmured for perhaps the billionth time that night. Esmée reared her head back, pushing against Kara’s shoulders. For such a skinny little thing, she sure had a lot of strength. She’d been using it against Kara since the day she took over as mom six months ago.
Kara felt like screaming herself. Or maybe crying—not that either reaction would help solve the multitude of problems threatening to drown her. Motherhood was never something she’d envisioned for herself, but when her sister Danielle fell off the bandwagon and died of a heroin overdose, Kara had petitioned for custody of Esmée without a second thought. Kara had been a second mother to the baby since her birth, and foster care wasn’t something she’d wish on anyone. The three years she’d spent in the system before aging out had been hell.
Kara pressed her cheek against Esmée’s and began humming a lullaby as she paced the tiny nursery. Warped wood floors creaked with each step, and the open window did little to combat the stifling summer heat. Every inch of her two-bedroom apartment was in desperate need of repairs, but they’d have to wait until the dance studio below brought in more business. Right now, the money simply wasn’t there.
She’d bought the studio with the help of Homeless No More, a charity that turned out to be a scam. Danielle had bought a small apartment through the same program. Kara doubted it was a coincidence that mere days after being evicted, Danielle went back to drugs for the last time. The Galian Royals should be forced to sell the crown jewels and bail out all the lower-class citizens they’d scammed into the program.
Kara’s situation wouldn’t be much better than Danielle’s if something didn’t change soon. She was six months behind on pretty much everything.
Kara continued to sing the lullaby, bouncing Esmée up and down as she wore down the floorboards with all her pacing. Esmée stuck two fingers in her mouth and sucked furiously. One more hour until she could have another dose of pain reliever. Hopefully then the baby would finally sleep.
Crash! Kara jumped, heart hammering in her chest. Esmée stopped crying and popped her head up, listening. It sounded like it had come from the studio.
Another crash reverberated in the room, the thin walls keeping out none of the sound. Esmée grunted and squirmed to get down, the excitement of midnight noises apparently making her forget all about her swollen gums. But Kara clutched her charge closer with shaking hands as fear clouded her mind.
“Think,” she breathed. New mirrors had been delivered that morning, but Kara hadn’t had the money to pay for their installation. Maybe she’d hung one of the pieces wrong and it had fallen to the ground and shattered. The thought of all that money wasted made her nauseous.
Maybe it’s Raphael, a cynical voice that sounded suspiciously like her own whispered at the back of her mind. But that was ridiculous. Raphael was still in prison, and besides, he didn’t know where she lived. He’d petitioned for custody of Esmée after Danielle’s death, but the court had dismissed his request since it had come from a jail cell—never mind that he was the father.
Scuffling echoed up the stairs and filled the apartment, making Kara’s heart pound even more furiously. Not the mirrors, then. Someone was definitely downstairs.
“We can’t just hide up here like ninnies,” she whispered to Esmée.
The baby cooed as though in agreement.
Kara grabbed a frying pan from the kitchen and took a deep, shaky breath. A sane person would call the police. But then again, most of those people probably hadn’t been dragged from their dead mother’s body by a policeman and driven to a new home. They hadn’t watched their neighbors get arrested despite the presence of little evidence simply because of past indiscretions. In her world, the police were the enemy.
She set Esmée on the floor, then slipped into her shoes and shoved her cell phone and keys into her bra for safekeeping, since her pajama pants didn’t have any pockets. Esmée seemed to understand her aunt’s desire for silence and watched the whole thing from the kitchen floor, not making a sound.
“Come on,” Kara whispered, scooping up the baby.
As she crept down the stairs, Esmée in one arm and the frying pan in her free hand, Kara wondered if she’d imagined the scuffling. An almost oppressive silence echoed through the stairwell, and her strained ears didn’t pick up a sound.
She was nearly to the studio door when the low rumble of voices made her freeze. Laughter was followed almost immediately by cursing. The voices were loud, deep, and most definitely male. Kara pressed her ear against one wall, struggling to pick out the different sounds. Two men, at least. Maybe three.
Yeah, she knew better than to challenge those odds. She took a slow, deliberate step back toward the stairs. She and Esmée would hide in the darkest corner of the apartment, phone clutched close, and pray the men left without coming upstairs.
Esmée chose that moment to let out a giant wail. Kara froze and closed her eyes, pressing Esmée’s head against her shoulder in an effort to muffle any more sounds. She barely dared breathe.
“Was that a baby?” a deep voice asked. The words were slurred, as though he’d been drinking. Another shot of fear raced up Kara’s spine.
“No idea,” another voice replied. “Where are we?”
Another crash sounded, followed by raucous laughter. The mirrors! She’d spent months skipping meals and saving pennies to afford them.
Kara flew through the door to face the vagrants, fear for her studio eclipsing her fear of the intruders. Two men stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by shards of glass. One was slightly shorter than the first and wore a dark button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up nearly to his elbows. Moonlight reflected off the mirror fragments mixed in with the glass that had moments before been a front window.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Kara yelled. Her front window was completely gone. Two mirror panels had indeed fallen off the wall and shattered. Was that her stereo on the floor? She took a step closer, rage heating her entire being. Yes, her stereo dangled off the shelf, hanging by an exposed wire that seemed in danger of breaking at any moment.
The shorter man took a step forward, and Kara took an instinctive step back.
“My apologies,” he said, his words soft and polite. His hair was lighter than his companion’s—perhaps blond, though it was hard to tell in the darkened studio. “We were being chased by some angry men and thought to hide.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Kara pulled Esmée closer. “I didn’t realize you were hiding from large, angry men. By all means, continue vandalizing my studio!”
He held up one long finger and waggled it back and forth. “I never said they were large.”
“One was tall,” the second man said. He wore a lightly colored linen suit jacket, and his words were so slurred it was nearly impossible to make them out.
The first man snapped his fingers. “Yes, very tall. He should be on the national basketball team.”
“I thought they disbanded that?” the second said. The faintest hint of an accent laced the words. She hadn’t noticed until now, distracted as she was by the slurring.
“That was Durham.” The blond-haired man patted the one in a suit jacket on the chest. “Forgive my cousin. He’s had a hard few days.”
Kara let out a disbelieving laugh. He’d had a hard few days? Her studio had just been destroyed!
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