The Chicago cold had teeth, long, serrated ones that scraped across Connie's skin as if the winter itself wanted to flay her open. The city wind moaned down the boulevard, stirring trash, rattling broken signs, carrying the sharp stink of diesel, rot, and old snow. Far off, sirens wove through the distant industrial hum, the soundtrack of a place that had long since forgotten gentleness.
Connie stood across the street from the Youth and Young Adult Center and Homestead, the massive complex squatting like a fortress at the end of a deadened block. The sky above churned a sick gray, clouds thick as wet wool, swallowing what little light the city offered. Every breath she exhaled fogged before her, brief, ghostlike, vanishing as quickly as her patience.
She'd been watching it for thirty minutes. Standing still as a statue, hood pulled low, coat zipped to her throat, hands buried in her pockets with nails biting into her palms. She could feel the cracked photograph burning in her pocket like a brand.
Shade, young, thin, guarded. Standing next to another boy, that crooked-smile bastard whose face she didn't know and didn't care to. The building behind them, St. Jerome, wasn't this place, not exactly. The boys' home had been bulldozed, remade, sterilized, turned into this pristine concrete complex of towers and clean-painted facades.
But she knew. She knew. Shade had come from here. He had walked these grounds. He had been fed, sheltered, maybe even wounded inside these walls. She could taste it in the air.
The snow began to fall harder, flakes spiraling on the wind like bits of torn paper. They clung to her lashes, melted on her cheeks. The cold dug deeper, aching in her bones, but she didn't move.
Her pulse throbbed with a feverish rhythm, the same aching drumbeat that had been living under her ribs for the last week and a half.
Nine days since the fire. Nine days since she found the envelope. Nine days since her world fractured.
She lifted the photograph again, fingers trembling. Shade's eyes stared back at her, quiet, impossibly deep, the same eyes that used to slide over her body with that slow, hungry heat that made her knees weaken. Eyes that softened only when he touched her. Eyes that turned molten the night he made love to her like he was afraid she'd disappear.
Her heart seized.
Why did he leave her? Why didn't he trust her? Why did he vanish without a word, without her, when she had given him everything she had, everything she was?
A gust slammed into her, whipping her hair across her face. She pulled her hood lower.
This place was wrong. Too clean. Too organized. Too polished. It looked nothing like the shattered ruin of Chicago around it. The towers rose white and cold, windows gleaming like watchful eyes. The concrete wall around the perimeter was six feet tall, seamless, topped with discreet cameras, no barbed wire, too classy for that. But she could feel the weight of security pressing in.
She paced a few steps to warm her legs, boots crunching over the thin crust of snow and broken glass on the sidewalk. The ground smelled like wet cardboard, rot, cigarette ash. The contrast made her stomach knot, Shade had grown up in one world, then been thrown back into this one. No wonder he had become what he was. No wonder he clung to shadows like armor.
A black Honda crawled down the street, passing her slowly. She stiffened. The driver didn't look at her. Not a threat. Not Dee. Not the gang. She eased again.
Then her phone buzzed.
She didn't want to look, didn't want to hear his voice even in text form, but she already knew who it was.
DEE:
Status? Find anything yet?
A second buzz.
DEE:
Don't make me chase you. You know how things get when people don't pull their weight.
Connie's teeth clenched.
He always texted like that; soft threats wrapped in business tone. Dee didn't own her. Dee didn't command her. Dee had been a pawn from the moment the bosses anointed him as Shade's substitute, a temporary fill-in dressed up as authority.
He didn't say it out loud, but she felt it every time he spoke to her:
He thinks he's in charge. He thinks he can tell me where to go, what to do. He thinks Shade's disappearance made him the head.
A slow, poisonous anger coiled in her chest.
Shade wasn't dead. She refused to let that be true. And if Shade returned, if he walked through that gang territory again, Dee's power would crumble. That was why Dee wanted answers. That was why he was panicking. If Shade lived, Dee would lose everything he'd been clawing toward.
Her phone buzzed again.
DEE:
Don't ignore me.
She turned the phone off. Stuffed it deep in her pocket.
He wouldn't dare come for her. She was too useful. Too dangerous. Too unpredictable. She was the best tracker they had. The best fighter. And Shade had chosen her. In the end, that still made her untouchable.
She stared up at the building again.
Snowflakes clung to the gold-and-silver plaque at the gate:
YOUTH AND YOUNG ADULT CENTER & HOMESTEAD
The lettering seemed to glow under the streetlights, warm and polished, mocking her with its serenity.
She imagined Shade walking out of these gates as a teenager, shoulders hunched, hair too long, hoodie pulled tight. She imagined him watching the city like an animal studying hunter. She imagined him learning the geography of escape.
Something inside her cracked, a soft sound only she could hear.
Why didn't you let me in? Why didn't you tell me your name? Why did I have to find out from a ruined envelope meant for someone else?
Her breath hitched.
The memory hit her like a body blow.
That night.
The night they tangled in sheets, bodies slick, breaths ragged, hearts pounding against each other like fists on a locked door.
Shade had been slow, tender, frighteningly gentle. The way his fingers traced her ribs, her jawline, her throat, memorizing her. The way he pressed his mouth to her collarbone like it was sacred. The way he pushed inside her with a shiver, not a thrust, like he'd been starving and afraid to hurt what he needed.
His voice had been low, cracked, almost reverent when he whispered her name.
Connie had been nothing like that.
She had kissed him with desperation, nails in his back, thighs trembling around his waist. Her hunger was feral, clinging, possessive, her fear of losing him already blooming like rot. She held him like he was a lifeline and she was drowning. She whispered mine more than once without meaning to. She tried to pull him deeper, closer, trying to fuse their bodies like she could weld their souls.
She had never needed anyone like that. Never wanted anyone like that.
And he had looked at her afterward, eyes soft, warm, unbearably gentle, and she'd known she was ruined. Entirely ruined.
Another gust slapped her face, snapping the memory away.
Then the argument.
The morning after.
The tension was like glass cracking.
"I want to leave," she'd said. "With you."
Shade's expression had shuttered. Darkened.
He told her no.
Not yet.
Not until he finished what he'd started.
Not until he took back what was his.
Not until he earned freedom the right way, by severing ties, not fleeing them.
She remembered the heat in his chest, the simmering fury he kept buried under that quiet facade. Something had burned inside him. Something heavy. Something old. Something he'd never told her.
Now her breaths came quicker, fogging the air in thicker bursts.
The flakes turned heavier, swirling around her in frantic eddies. The streetlamps cast the falling snow into glittering sheets of white noise, the world growing softer, blurrier, dreamlike.
She wiped her face with the back of her sleeve, smearing melted snow, maybe tears, across her cheek.
Her heart hammered.
She had to get inside. Had to know. Had to find the door Shade had once walked through. Had to retrace his steps. Had to breathe the same air.
She stepped off the curb, boots sinking slightly into slush, crossed the dead street, and approached the gate.
The intercom panel gleamed under a layer of frost.
Her fingers hovered above the button.
She swallowed.
Long-lost sister, she reminded herself. Lost family trying to reconnect. Emotional. Polite. Harmless.
She almost laughed. She was none of those things.
She pressed the button.
A soft chime rang.
Static crackled.
Then a woman's voice, warm, professional, carefully measured, answered:
"Hello? Youth and Young Adult Center. How can I help you today?"
Connie stared at the black camera lens overhead.
Her pulse thundered.
Her breath hitched.
And she smiled, small, trembling, heartbreakingly sweet.
"Hi," she said softly, voice shaking with a perfect imitation of vulnerability. "I… I'm looking for someone."
Inside her coat, her fingers curled into claws.
Shade. Aiden. My only, my everything. Tell me you're alive. Tell me I'm right.
"Can you help me?" she whispered into the intercom. Her voice cracked right on time. "Please?"
The wind wailed behind her.
Snow fell harder.
And Connie's world teetered on the edge of collapse.
Waiting for the voice on the other side of the gate to either open the door…
…or break her completely.