But not because he had almost kissed her.
Because she had wanted him to.
The days after Mia’s birthday were strange in the way only mutually avoided truths are strange.
Nothing explicit passed between them.
Yet everything had changed.
Their glances lasted too long. Their hands brushed at dinner and both drew breath. When Mia was present, they remained careful, but beneath the carefulness lived recognition. Marcus saw it; Grace knew because his gaze had become a shade more guarded whenever he looked between them. Elena saw it and became suspiciously busy elsewhere at opportune moments.
Mia, of course, noticed everything and interpreted it through the straightforward lens of childhood.
One afternoon while coloring at the nursery table, she asked, “Grace, if two people like each other, do they have to say it?”
Grace nearly dropped the scissors she was holding. “Why are you asking?”
Mia shrugged. “Because Daddy looks at you the way he used to look at Mommy in pictures.”
Grace could think of no safe response to that, so she said, “Let’s focus on your drawing.”
Mia grinned with the merciless intuition of children and returned to her crayons.
It might all have remained suspended in that fragile, sweet uncertainty if the outside world had not intervened.
A week later, under clear skies and with two security guards following in a second vehicle, Grace took Mia for ice cream at the child’s favorite shop.
The road there was lined with tall trees and expensive quiet. Mia sang nonsense songs in the back seat. Grace turned to smile at her just as a black van shot out from a side street and swerved across their path.
Brakes screamed.
The car jerked sideways.
Grace threw herself across the back seat to shield Mia before her mind even understood what was happening.
Doors flew open.
Men in dark clothes rushed them.
One yanked the driver out. Another slammed the butt of a gun against the rear window. A third wrenched the car door open and shouted, “Give me the kid!”
Mia screamed.
Grace wrapped both arms around her. “No!”
The masked man grabbed Grace by the hair and hauled backward. Pain flashed white-hot through her scalp. She twisted, biting his hand so hard she tasted blood through his glove. He cursed, tore free, and raised the gun.
For one frozen instant Grace looked straight into the barrel.
Then gunfire exploded from behind.
Marcus.
The security car had arrived.
Shots cracked through the air. One attacker spun and went down. Another dove for cover. The van peeled away before all three men could be taken. Within seconds, chaos collapsed into echoing silence broken only by Mia’s sobs.
Grace clung to her, shaking so violently her teeth knocked together.
Marcus jerked the rear door wider. “Are you hurt?”
Grace couldn’t answer.
Mia buried her face in Grace’s shoulder, crying, “Like Mommy. Like Mommy.”
That was the worst part. Not the gun. Not the pain. The memory returning to the child with full force.
Back at the estate, Vincent was waiting on the front steps before the car had even stopped moving.
He yanked the door open himself.
Mia flung herself at him.
Vincent took her with both arms and held her so tight Grace could see panic beneath the control. Not fear for himself. Never that. Terror at almost losing his child again.
Then his gaze lifted to Grace.
“Are you hurt?”
There was a bruise rising on her wrist, blood where her scalp had been pulled, scratches on her forearm.
“I’m fine.”
He stepped closer, saw the damage, and something in his face darkened to near unrecognizable fury.
“Who touched you?”
The question came out low and deadly.
Grace, still trembling, answered honestly. “One of them grabbed me.”
Vincent’s jaw clenched so hard a muscle jumped beneath his cheekbone. He handed Mia to Elena with orders to take her upstairs, then turned to Marcus.
“Inside.”
In the sitting room Marcus delivered the facts in clipped, efficient tones. Rival men. Anthony Ricci’s crew. A targeted snatch. Mia was the primary objective. Grace possibly secondary leverage.
Vincent listened in total silence.
Then he drove his fist through the plaster wall.
The crack echoed like a gunshot.
Grace flinched.
Blood ran over his knuckles.
“I’ll kill him,” Vincent said, and there was nothing metaphorical in it. “I will wipe every one of them off the face of this city.”
Grace should have been horrified.
She was horrified.
But stronger than that was the image of Mia upstairs, shaking and reliving her mother’s murder.
So Grace crossed the room and put a hand on Vincent’s arm.
“Mia needs you calm,” she said softly.
He looked at her hand as if he had forgotten it was possible for anyone to touch him in a moment like this.
Then he looked at her face.
“You’re not afraid of me.”
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