Chương 1 - The Girls in the Snow
At 11:47 on the coldest night Chicago had seen in twelve years, Emily Parker found two little girls dying behind a dumpster—and twenty minutes later, she was on her knees with a gun pointed at her face.
What terrified her most was not the gun.
It was the smaller girl crawling from beneath a diner booth, looking straight at the armed man holding it and screaming, “Daddy, don’t hurt her! She saved us!”
The man froze.
Everyone in Chicago knew Dominic Vale’s face.
Newspapers called him a shipping billionaire. Television anchors called him a businessman with “alleged connections.” People who worked the docks used a simpler name when they thought no one was listening.
The Don.
Emily had spent the last hour protecting his missing daughters.
Now she was about to discover that saving them had not ended her ordinary life.
It had destroyed it.
The night had begun with thirty-eight dollars in tips.
Emily counted the bills twice because forty would have meant groceries and detergent, while thirty-eight meant groceries and pretending the detergent bottle had one more load left in it.
At twenty-six, she worked evenings at Miller’s Corner, an old twenty-four-hour diner wedged between a tire warehouse and a boarded-up furniture store on the industrial edge of the city. She had once planned to finish nursing school, but after her mother died, tuition became rent, textbooks became utility bills, and ambition became something she stored away with her old anatomy notes.
By midnight, the diner was empty.
Her manager, Calvin Miller, had left an hour earlier after reminding her that the back door had to be locked by twelve.
“People get desperate when it’s this cold,” he had said.
Emily almost laughed at the irony.
She was two missed paychecks from becoming one of those desperate people herself.
She carried the trash into the alley, shoulders hunched against a wind that cut through her thrift-store coat. Snow swept sideways between the buildings. The temperature had fallen below zero, and every exposed inch of skin hurt.
Emily threw the first bag into the dumpster.
Then she heard the sound.
A whimper.
She stopped.
“Hello?”
Nothing.
She waited.
There it was again.
Not a cat.
A child.
Emily followed the noise toward a pile of broken pallets beside the brick wall. Cardboard boxes had been pushed together into something resembling a shelter.
One of them moved.
Emily crouched and pulled the wet cardboard aside.
Her heart seemed to stop.
Two girls were curled against each other beneath a ruined wool coat.
They looked about seven years old, perhaps twins. Their blond hair was tangled and wet. Their faces were pale. The smaller girl’s eyes were closed, her lips frighteningly blue.
The other child lifted her head.
“Please,” she whispered through chattering teeth. “Don’t tell the wolf.”
Emily slipped her arms around them without asking another question.
The girls were terrifyingly light.
“Okay,” she said. “No wolves. Right now we get warm.”
She carried one child and half-dragged the other through the kitchen door.
Emily had learned enough before leaving nursing school to recognize severe hypothermia. She knew not to throw them under scalding water or rub their skin aggressively. She removed their wet outer clothing, wrapped them in dry kitchen towels and blankets, and turned up the heat.
The conscious girl watched every door.
“What’s your name?”
“Lily.”
Emily glanced at the unconscious child.
“And your sister?”
“Grace.”
Emily knelt beside Grace.
“Grace? Honey, can you hear me?”
Nothing.
Lily grabbed Emily’s wrist.
“She was talking before.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
“How long have you been outside?”
Lily’s face folded.
“Since yesterday.”
Emily looked at her.
“Yesterday?”
“The van crashed.”
“What van?”
Lily swallowed.
“The bad men’s van.”
Emily’s hands went still.
She had assumed they were lost. Maybe neglected. Maybe their parents had gotten into an accident.
Now every instinct in her screamed something else.
She made warm sweet milk and coaxed small amounts between Grace’s lips.
“Come on, sweetheart.”
Grace coughed.
Lily burst into tears.
“Gracie!”
Grace’s eyelids fluttered.
Emily exhaled so hard she became dizzy.
“You’re okay,” Emily told her, although she had no idea whether that was true. “You’re inside. You’re warm.”
Grace stared at her.
“You’re not with him?”
“With who?”
“The wolf.”
Lily shook her head urgently.
“Don’t say.”
Emily sat across from them once Grace could hold a cup. She made grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, and the girls ate as if every bite had to be finished before someone took it away.
Their clothing confused her.
Even damaged, the coats were expensive. Lily wore a tiny gold locket. Grace’s boots looked handmade.
These were not children from the neighborhood.
“Your parents must be looking for you,” Emily said carefully.
“Our daddy is.”
“Can I call him?”
Both girls shouted at once.
“No!”
Emily nearly dropped her mug.
Lily lowered her voice.
“Daddy said if the wolf comes, no phones.”
Emily frowned.
“Why?”
“He can hear phones.”
That sounded like frightened-child logic until Lily added, “Mr. Reed told him where we were going.”
Emily felt something colder than winter slide down her spine.
“Who’s Mr. Reed?”
“Our daddy’s security man.”
Grace reached into her torn coat and removed a water-damaged photograph.
“This is Daddy.”
Emily took it.
Two smiling girls sat on the lap of a broad-shouldered man in a dark suit. His expression was severe even in a family photograph, but his arms were wrapped around his daughters with unmistakable tenderness.
Emily recognized him instantly.
Dominic Vale.
The thirty-eight-year-old billionaire who controlled Vale Atlantic Shipping, half a dozen warehouses and enough lakefront property to make city developers nervous.
And, according to every rumor Emily had heard since childhood, much more than that.
She slowly lowered the photograph.
“Oh, God.”
Lily’s eyes filled.
“Is Daddy bad?”
Emily looked at the child.
She thought of newspaper photographs, whispered stories and men who lowered their voices when Dominic Vale’s name came up.
Then she looked at two freezing little girls who wanted their father.
“Your daddy loves you,” she said.
Lily nodded fiercely.
“He said he’d always find us.”
Before Emily could decide what to do, tires screamed outside.
Three large SUVs stopped in front of the diner.
Lily’s spoon fell into her soup.
“The wolf.”
Emily moved immediately.
“Under the booth.”
Grace started crying.
“Now, sweetheart. Both of you.”
She killed the dining-room lights, guided them beneath the deepest corner booth and pulled the table closer.
“Do not come out unless I say your names.”
Lily clung to her sleeve.
May you like
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