Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN I BURIED
Everything inside me went perfectly still.
For eighteen years, I had promised myself I would never become that woman again.
But some parts of your past never stay buried.
The scar-faced man tightened his grip.
I looked down at his hand around my wrist.
Then I looked at Matthew Valentine.
He was smiling.
Not broadly. Men like Matthew never wasted emotion that way. It was a small, amused curve at the corner of his mouth, the expression of a man watching a dog bare its teeth before the leash got pulled.
“Something funny?” I asked.
The bodyguard blinked.
Matthew’s smile faded.
Nobody in the diner moved.
Even the refrigerator compressor seemed to go silent.
Scarface leaned closer.
“You got a hearing problem?”
“No.”
“Then apologize.”
I shifted the coffee pot into my left hand.
Carla whispered my name behind the counter.
“Emily…”
That was the name everyone here knew.
Emily Carter.
Twenty-six years old.
No family.
No history worth discussing.
No reason for dangerous men to remember my face.
Scarface twisted my wrist.
Pain shot toward my elbow.
And suddenly I wasn’t twenty-six.
I was eight years old again.
Bare feet on polished hardwood.
A man’s voice telling me not to cry.
Another voice counting seconds.
One.
Two.
Three.
Move.
My body remembered before my mind gave permission.
I stepped toward Scarface instead of pulling away.
His eyebrows lifted.
My thumb drove into the nerve beside his wrist.
His grip loosened for half a second.
That was enough.
I rotated under his arm, trapped his elbow against my shoulder, and drove my hip into his center of gravity.
Two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle left the floor.
Scarface crashed onto the tile so hard the silverware jumped.
Someone screamed.
The second bodyguard lunged from the booth.
I dropped the coffee pot.
It shattered.
Hot coffee exploded across the floor.
The second man came at me with both hands.
Too high.
Too wide.
Too angry.
I slipped inside his reach, slammed my palm beneath his chin, hooked his ankle with mine, and drove my shoulder into his chest.
He fell backward over a chair.
The chair collapsed.
He hit the floor.
I followed him down, caught his wrist, and bent it behind him until his face pressed against the black-and-white tile.
Three seconds.
Maybe four.
The entire diner stared.
Scarface groaned near my feet.
The second guard stopped struggling.
And Matthew Valentine sat alone in the booth.
He wasn’t smiling anymore.
I slowly released the man beneath me.
My breathing remained steady.
That frightened me more than anything else.
Carla’s mouth hung open.
The truck driver near the window whispered, “Holy hell.”
Matthew glanced at his fallen men.
Then at me.
His eyes changed.
Recognition was not there.
Not yet.
But calculation was.
“What are you?” he asked.
I picked up my order pad.
“A waitress.”
“No.”
His voice was quiet.
“You’re not.”
I stepped over Scarface.
“Three coffees. Seven dollars and fifty cents.”
Matthew stared at me for another long moment.
Then he reached inside his coat.
Every muscle in my body tightened.
He removed a hundred-dollar bill.
Placed it on the table.
“Keep the change.”
“I don’t take blood money.”
Scarface tried to rise.
Matthew didn’t even look at him.
“Stay down, Brennan.”
Brennan froze.
So that was Scarface’s name.
Matthew stood.
He was taller than I expected.
Maybe six foot two.
Lean rather than bulky.
The kind of man who never needed to throw his own punches because somebody else always volunteered.
He stepped close enough that I could smell expensive cologne and winter air.
“What’s your name?”
“Emily.”
“Emily what?”
“Coffee’s getting cold.”
He studied my face.
For one terrible moment, I thought he saw through all eighteen years.
Then his gaze dropped to my right hand.
I followed it.
My sleeve had ridden up during the fight.
Three inches above my wrist was a pale crescent-shaped scar.
Matthew stopped breathing.
It was subtle.
Anyone else would have missed it.
I didn’t.
His pupils widened.
He reached for my arm.
I stepped back immediately.
“Don’t.”
Matthew ignored the warning.
“Where did you get that scar?”
“Kitchen accident.”
“No.”
He took another step.
“Where?”
“Back away.”
Brennan and the other guard were climbing painfully to their feet.
Matthew raised one hand.
Neither man approached me.
His focus remained on the scar.
I pulled my sleeve down.
“What does it matter?”
His face had gone pale.
That was impossible.
Matthew Valentine terrified half the city.
Yet a scar on a waitress had just frightened him.
“Who are your parents?” he asked.
“I don’t have any.”
“Everybody has parents.”
“Not everybody gets to keep them.”
Something flickered behind his eyes.
He whispered a name.
So softly I almost didn’t hear it.
“Evelyn?”
My stomach dropped.
The diner disappeared.
Not physically.
But inside my head, everything went white.
Nobody had called me that in eighteen years.
I forced myself not to react.
“Wrong girl.”
Matthew stepped closer.
“Evelyn Grace Valentine.”
Carla gasped behind me.
My heart slammed once.
Hard.
Then again.
I had spent eighteen years training myself not to respond to that name.
Eight-year-old Evelyn had vanished in the winter of 2008.
Eight-year-old Evelyn had supposedly died in a house fire outside Lake Forest.
Eight-year-old Evelyn Valentine was buried beneath a small white headstone beside her mother.
I knew because I had visited the grave once.
At sixteen.
At midnight.
I had stared at my own name carved into stone.
EVELYN GRACE VALENTINE.
BELOVED DAUGHTER.
2000–2008.
The lie had been beautifully engraved.
Matthew’s voice pulled me back.
“Look at me.”
I did.
His expression had transformed.
There was no arrogance now.
Only something raw.
Something I refused to identify.
“You died,” he whispered.
“I think you’ve had enough coffee.”
“You died.”
He stepped closer.
I backed toward the counter.
Brennan looked between us.
“Boss?”
Matthew ignored him.
His eyes moved over my face.
My hair.
My scar.
My hands.
Then he whispered something that made my knees nearly give out.
“When you were seven, you broke the blue vase in Grandmother’s library. You blamed the dog.”
I said nothing.
“There was no dog.”
My throat closed.
Matthew’s voice trembled.
“You made me promise not to tell Father.”
I hated him for remembering.
I hated myself for remembering too.
Blue porcelain.
Rain against tall windows.
A fourteen-year-old boy kneeling beside a terrified little girl.
Matthew.
My brother.
The brother who had disappeared from my life the night our house burned.
The brother I had spent eighteen years believing was dead.
“No,” I whispered.
Matthew’s face cracked.
Not completely.
But enough.
“Evie.”
Nobody had called me that since I was a child.
I slapped him.
The sound snapped through the diner.
Brennan moved.
Matthew stopped him with a look.
I backed away.
“You don’t get to call me that.”
His cheek reddened.
He did not touch it.
“You’re alive.”
“And apparently so are you.”
“I searched for you.”
“Liar.”
“For years.”
“Liar.”
“I watched them carry a body out of that house.”
“Then maybe you should’ve checked whose body it was.”
Pain flashed across his face.
Good.
I wanted it there.
Matthew glanced around the diner.
The customers were pretending not to listen while listening to every word.
“This isn’t the place.”
“It’s the only place you’re getting anything from me.”
“Evelyn—”
“My name is Emily.”
“Who hid you?”
The question hit harder than it should have.
I thought of Helen.
Helen Shaw.
The woman who had dragged me from smoke through a basement tunnel.
The woman who had cut my hair, changed my name, and spent the next ten years moving me between cheap apartments whenever black SUVs appeared on our street.
The woman who died when I was eighteen.
A supposed drunk-driving accident.
I had never believed it.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Matthew looked toward the diner windows.
Suddenly his expression hardened.
“Get away from the glass.”
I frowned.
“What?”
“Now.”
A red dot appeared on the sugar dispenser beside me.
My body reacted instantly.
I grabbed Carla by the apron and threw us both behind the counter.
A rifle cracked outside.
The diner window exploded.
Customers screamed.
Glass rained across the booths.
Matthew flipped the table onto its side.
Brennan dragged the second guard behind the jukebox.
Another shot punched through the wall.
Then another.
Someone shouted for the lights.
I crawled toward the breaker panel.
Matthew yelled, “Stay down!”
I ignored him.
A third bullet struck the counter above my head.
I reached the panel and killed the main switch.
Darkness swallowed the diner.
Outside, tires screamed.
An engine roared away.
Then silence.
Terrified breathing filled the room.
Carla clutched my arm.
“What is happening?”
I knew.
I had always known this day might come.
The moment someone connected Emily Carter to Evelyn Valentine, eighteen years of hiding would end.
Matthew’s voice emerged from the darkness.
“They weren’t shooting at me.”
My stomach tightened.
He continued.
“The first shot went exactly where you were standing.”
Emergency lights flickered on.
Matthew stared across the ruined diner at me.
There was blood on his cheek from flying glass.
“They came for you.”
Before I could answer, my phone vibrated inside my apron.
Unknown number.
One message.
I opened it.
A photograph loaded.
It showed my apartment door.
Taken seconds ago.
Beneath it were six words.
WE KNOW WHO YOU REALLY ARE.
May you like
Then a second message appeared.
ASK MATTHEW WHO STARTED THE FIRE.
