The living room was frozen in the kind of silence that comes after something unforgivable, when every person present understands the world has just split into before and after. Mateo...
. I took him to the emergency room at a private children’s hospital in Mexico City, the same hospital where my father once donated an entire pediatric wing after my...
Her stomach dropped. “I’m sorry.” She scrambled off the bed and nearly fell when her feet hit the rug. “I’m so sorry. My friend gave me the card. I...
ing locked. Mara knew who Adrian Vale was. Everyone in Chicago who read newspapers or insurance claims knew enough to keep a respectful distance. She knew that legitimate businesses sometimes...
“I want her awake,” Gabriel said quietly, “when she understands what she has done.” Clara came back to herself through a dark fog. First there was a sound: knuckles...
“She cried.” I swallowed. Mrs. Harper opened the doors. The bedroom beyond them was the size of my entire apartment before I lost it. Tall windows faced the lake....
Emma had laughed because Maya made laughter feel possible. They had browsed sweaters they could not afford, smelled candles called impossible things like Winter Orchard and Cashmere Smoke,...
“You heard me. Kneel and apologize for speaking to me like we’re equals.” Caleb’s hand flattened on the tablecloth. That was all. He did not speak yet. A man...
The night Adrian Vale walked into Marlowe’s, Chicago was under a freezing rain advisory. The windows glittered with sleet, and every table was full of people willing to...
“Now.” He half-carried me through the service corridor while bullets struck the marble behind us. We burst out into a December alley, where snow fell in dirty silver...
That night, above the laundromat where I rented a room with a radiator that clanged like chains, I told myself I would quit. I repeated the plan while...
Nathaniel Bishop had watched the entire scene from the shadow of a marble column. He had positioned himself there to study the room, not to enjoy it. He...
The guard with the broken nose looked at my hands. The other looked past me, scanning the room. Dominic Hale looked at my face. That was worse. His...
It was a laundering machine. Nora’s hands hovered over the keyboard. She should have stopped. She should have logged out, gone home, poured cereal into a chipped bowl,...
His lips moved. No sound came out. Then, barely, he nodded. For forty-eight minutes, the trauma bay became a battlefield. Mara clamped what she could clamp, packed what...
A masked man stepped in front of her. His eyes were dark and irritated above the black fabric. “Wrong move, nurse.” Evie tried to scream. A needle punched...
“The woman who keeps your house clean.” “You know my security code.” “You say it under your breath when you’re drunk.” “I never do.” “You did twice in...
His hands were shaking. Mara stood at the service well and watched his reflection in the mirror behind the bottles. That mirror was how she survived her job....
Nobody answered. Viktor barked something in Russian at his nearest guard, waving toward her as if ordering a spill cleaned up. Mara blinked. Then, to everyone’s astonishment, she scowled....
I laughed because I thought he was making some horrible nervous joke. He did not laugh back. That night, I heard him through the half-closed door of his...