Chapter 2 - Ghosts in the Starlight
Clara’s hands flew to her mouth.
He’s going to kill her. Oh God, he’s going to kill her.
She didn't care about the diner. She didn't care about the apron, the debt, or the graveyard shift. Adrenaline surged through her veins, overriding every instinct of self-preservation. She threw herself over the counter, the plastic stool clattering behind her, and sprinted toward booth four.
“Get away from her!” Clara screamed, throwing herself between Damon Vale and her daughter, shoving her hands against the lapel of his expensive charcoal coat.
Damon didn't flinch from the shove. He didn't even blink. He staggered back half a step, but his eyes never left Clara’s face.
As the overhead fluorescent light caught Clara’s features—the exhausted eyes, the sharp curve of her jaw, the way her hair fell across her forehead—Damon’s breath caught completely in his lungs.
“Elena?” he whispered, his voice cracking like dry ice.
“My name is Clara!” she yelled back, her voice shaking with terror as she dragged Mia behind her skirt. “Leave us alone! Take whatever money is in the register! Just let my daughter go!”
Damon stared at her. Really stared at her.
Nine years.
Nine years since the night on the rain-slicked highway when his little sister, Elena—only sixteen years old at the time—had vanished from the passenger seat of his car during an ambush. Nine years since he had spent every waking second tearing the East Coast apart looking for her, finding only blood, broken glass, and the silver bullet pendant he had tied around her neck on her fourteenth birthday.
He looked down at the pendant resting on Mia’s coloring book.
Then he looked at Clara.
She wasn't Elena. She was older, tired, worn down by a life of endless labor. But the bone structure, the fire in her eyes, the stubborn tilt of her chin—it was a ghost come back to haunt him.
“Where did you get that?” Damon pointed a trembling finger at the silver bullet on the table.
Clara’s chest heaved. She glared up at the crime boss, tears of pure rage and fear spilling over her lashes. “A dying girl pushed it into my hands nine years ago in an alley behind a burning warehouse! She told me to run! She told me to stay away from the Vale name because it only brings death!”
The Starlight Diner fell into a tomb-like silence.
Marcus Kane and the other two guards exchanged pale, terrified glances. No one spoke of that night. No one spoke of the night the Vale family empire had nearly been torn apart from the inside out.
Damon Vale stared at Clara, the ruthless, untouchable king of Newark crumbling right before their eyes. A single tear tracked down his soot-stained cheek, cutting a clean path through the grime.
“She... she was my sister,” Damon whispered, the words barely audible over the hum of the neon sign.
Clara froze. The anger evaporated, leaving only a cold, hollow shock in its wake.
“What?” Clara breathed.
“Elena was my sister,” Damon repeated, his voice breaking entirely as he fell to his knees on the filthy tile, right in front of a six-year-old girl and an exhausted waitress. He didn't care about his dignity. He didn't care about his men watching. He looked up at Clara with a broken, pleading desperation. “She survived... for three years after that night. She lived in hiding. And she gave that pendant to you.”
Mia peeked out from behind Clara’s pink apron. She looked down at the weeping, terrifying man kneeling on the floor, and her childish anger completely vanished.
May you like
Slowly, without a word of fear, Mia stepped forward. She picked up the blue crayon from Damon’s open palm, and then, with surprising gentleness, she reached out and patted the crime boss awkwardly on his wet, dark hair.
“Don't cry, mister,” Mia said softly. “You can share my crayons if you want. I have sixty.”
