Chapter 2 - The Ghost of SummerfieldThe skillet hissed softly as a stray drop of butter hit the flame, but the sound felt miles away.
“Helena,” I said, my hand tightening around the wooden handle of the spatula. I kept my chin up, refusing to shrink under the weight of three pairs of identical grey eyes staring at me as if I had just risen from the dead. “Helena Carter. Why? Did you check her credit score too, Mr. Falcone? Add her to the file with my sister’s medical debt?”
Roman didn't answer my jab. His face had gone chalk-white beneath his olive complexion, a stark contrast to the dark stubble shadowing his jaw. He gripped the edge of the marble counter with both hands, his knuckles turning translucent.
“Helena,” Roman repeated, the name tasting foreign and heavy on his tongue, like something he hadn't dared to speak aloud in over a decade. “She lived in Summerfield. Before the fire.”
My breath hitched.
The spatula slipped from my fingers, clattering loudly against the cast iron.
Summerfield. A tiny, forgotten logging town in upstate New York that had burned to the ground twenty years ago when I was four years old—an apocalyptic night of red skies, roaring pines, and ash that had turned our kitchen into a charcoal sketch. My mother had escaped with me in her arms, clutching a single cast-iron skillet and a tin box of recipes, never speaking of the life we left behind.
“How do you know about Summerfield?” I demanded, stepping around the island, closing the distance between us until I was standing right in front of Roman Falcone. I didn't care that he was feared across three states. I didn't care about his armed guards or his criminal syndicate. “My mother lost everything in that fire. We grew up in damp basements and charity wards because of what happened there.”
Declan pushed off the doorframe, stepping forward with a warning growl. “Watch your tone, Maeve—”
“Shut up, Declan,” Roman snapped, never breaking eye contact with me. His voice shook—just a fraction, just enough for someone watching as closely as I was to catch it.
Roman raised his right hand. Slowly, deliberately, he pulled back the pristine white cuff of his dress shirt.
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Running across the pale skin of his inner forearm was a jagged, horrific burn scar shaped like a crescent moon—the exact same pattern of scar tissue that my mother had spent her life tending to on her own left shoulder, earned on the night the world burned down around us.
“She didn't lose everything in that fire,” Roman whispered, his grey eyes shining with unshed, furious tears. “She left us behind.”
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