Chapter 3 - The Weight of the Past
The heater inside the sedan hit Nebula like a wall of fire, but her body didn't stop shaking.
She collapsed into the leather bucket seat, pulling the heavy door shut behind her. The click of the automatic locks sounded like a vault sealing shut. The car surged forward before she even had time to pull her skirts in, sliding smoothly onto the wet asphalt of Elm Street without a single spin of the tires.
Vance kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead. He held the steering wheel with one hand, his knuckles scarred and thick, while his right hand rested on a heavy silver lighter in the center console.
“You look like hell,” Vance said quietly.
“Thank you,” Nebula whispered, her voice cracking. She tried to swallow, but her throat was dry as ash.
“Who did it?”
“Richard.”
“The architect. The one with the country club membership and the clean tax returns.”
“He’s not what he looks like.”
“None of them are,” Vance muttered, taking a slow breath through his nose. He glanced at her sideways for half a second, his dark eyes sweeping over her swollen jaw and the ruined silk of her dress. A muscle feathered in his jaw. “I told you what happens when you step out of the shadows, Nebula. I told you the sun burns out here in the suburbs.”
“I wanted a normal life, Vance,” she sobbed softly, pressing her palms against her face. “I wanted a house with a white fence. I wanted a husband who didn't keep cash in floorboards and bodies in the river.”
“And look where it got you,” Vance said, his voice devoid of pity, filled only with the cold, heavy iron of reality. “A white fence is just a cage with shorter bars. At least with us, you knew who held the key.”
Nebula looked out the tinted window. The sprawling, manicured lawns of Oakridge disappeared behind them, replaced by the gritty, rain-slicked industrial corridors of the city’s east side.
Four years ago, she had been Elena Moretti’s shadow—the quiet girl who kept the books, laundered the cash, and balanced the ledgers for Vance’s syndicate. When Vance had tried to pull her deeper into the violence after a botched warehouse raid, she had panicked. She had run. She had changed her name, bleached her hair, dyed her identity, and hid in plain sight behind a university degree and a corporate job where she met Richard Trent.
Richard had looked like safety. He had looked like sunlight.
He had looked like everything Vance wasn't.
Until the first time he locked her in the basement for burning the roast.
“He’s going to call the police,” Nebula said, a fresh wave of panic washing over her as the adrenaline began to fade, leaving behind a crushing, bone-deep exhaustion. “He’ll tell them I’m unstable. He’ll tell them I ran away during a manic episode. They’ll search for me.”
Vance didn't answer immediately. He flicked his turn signal, guiding the heavy sedan down a steep ramp into a subterranean parking garage beneath an unmarked brick warehouse near the river.
The garage doors slid open automatically as they approached, recognizing the car’s transponder. Inside sat a dozen high-end luxury vehicles and two armed men in dark suits standing by the elevator bank.
Vance cut the engine. The silence inside the car was absolute, save for the ticking of the cooling metal under the hood.
He turned in his seat to face her, his dark eyes boring into hers with an intensity that made her shrink back against the leather.
“Let him call the police,” Vance said softly. “Let him file a missing persons report. Let him stand in front of the cameras and cry about his fragile, runaway wife.”
May you like
Vance reached out, his rough, scarred thumb gently touching the swollen skin of her cheekbone. She flinched, but he didn't move his hand.
“Because by the time the sun comes up tomorrow morning,” Vance whispered, “Richard Trent is going to realize that the woman he thought he owned wasn't just a housewife. And I’m going to show him what happens when someone touches what belongs to me.”
