Chapter 6 - THE DEBT
Adriano had been nine years old.
A car bomb had been planted beneath the family sedan.
Gabriel discovered irregularities in a shipping payment connected to the assassination plot and warned Adriano's father minutes before the family left home.
The attack failed.
Gabriel disappeared afterward.
His new identity was not an accident.
The Vescari family had helped create it.
Wren's entire childhood had been built around a secret.
She hated them for it.
She hated her father for it.
Most confusingly, she hated Adriano least.
“You were a child,” she told him.
“So were you.”
They stood in the kitchen after midnight.
For once, Wren was not cooking.
Adriano looked at her across the counter.
“My father owed yours his son's life.”
“I don't want a debt.”
“Neither do I.”
“Good.”
“I want you alive.”
The words were simple.
They landed harder than anything romantic could have.
Wren looked away.
“That's inconvenient.”
“For both of us.”
A tiny smile appeared.
Then every light in the house went out.
Gunfire followed.
Adriano pulled Wren behind the island.
Men shouted upstairs.
Glass shattered.
Renato had stopped waiting.
The attack lasted six minutes.
It felt like sixty.
When emergency lights returned, three guards were wounded.
Matteo had blood on his shirt.
Odile was safe.
But Renato's men had taken the photograph and key.
Wren stared at the empty box.
Then she began laughing.
Adriano looked at her as if shock had finally broken her.
“What?”
“They took the wrong key.”
She reached into her bra.
Adriano stared.
Wren held up the real key.
“Women have pockets men don't think about.”
Despite everything, Adriano laughed.
It was the first time she had heard him do it.
May you like
And for one impossible second, standing in a wrecked kitchen surrounded by broken glass, Wren forgot to be afraid.
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