Chapter 1
Lily’s hand was so small that the memory card nearly disappeared between her fingers.
She placed it in my palm and immediately started sobbing.
“Mom said this is for you. Only you.”
Everything around me seemed to quiet.
Grant stopped struggling beside the overturned delivery-bag rack.
That mattered.
A minute earlier he had been furious enough to attack me in the middle of Mercer Market. Now he looked at a piece of plastic smaller than my thumbnail as if somebody had put a gun against his throat.
I closed my fingers around it.
“What’s on this?”
Lily shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
“Where’s your mother?”
Her crying changed.
Children do that when a question reaches the thing they have been trying not to think about.
Grant answered from the floor.
“She ran off.”
Lily spun toward him.
“No!”
The force in her voice startled even me.
“She said she’d come back.”
Grant laughed.
“Your mother says lots of things.”
I looked at him.
He stopped.
Marco came from behind the counter carrying both babies. Owen had finally stopped crying after Maria opened the formula. Noah slept against Marco’s shoulder, unaware that his sister had just walked into a Mafia boss’s life carrying eleven dollars, two infants, and a secret someone was willing to fight over.
I crouched in front of Lily.
“When did you last see your mother?”
“Three nights ago.”
“What happened?”
“She put the card in my backpack.”
Lily wiped her face with her sleeve.
“Then she told me if Grant ever got mad about the bag, I had to find Daniel Mercer.”
My breathing changed.
She knew my full name.
Grant looked away.
I noticed.
“How did your mother know me?”
Lily stared at me.
“She said you wouldn’t know her.”
May you like
Then she added the sentence that made Grant close his eyes.
“But she said you should have.”
