The midnight air in Brooklyn was heavy with the scent of rain and salt from the harbor. Elara stood at the edge of the park, her silhouette a thin, dark line against the glowing streetlamps. Behind her, the city hummed with a restless energy—sirens in the distance, the screech of tires on the bridge—but here, in the shadows of the park where she and Julian had first met, the silence was suffocating.
She reached into her pocket and felt the cool, hard plastic of the burner phone Silas had given her. It hadn't buzzed yet. Silas was out there somewhere, hidden in the darkness of his Dodge, watching the thermal feeds and the perimeter. He was her guardian, but he was also her captor. She knew that if she tried to run now, he would be on her in seconds.
She began to walk toward the center of the park, her boots crunching on the wet gravel. The park bench sat overlooking the water, a simple piece of weathered wood and wrought iron. To anyone else, it was just a place to rest. To Elara, it was the altar where she had sacrificed her innocence. It was here, three years ago, that Julian had sat beside her and told her that he saw "greatness" in her art. He had looked at her with such intensity that she had felt like the only woman in the world.
Now, she knew he had been looking at a tool. An architect inspecting a foundation.
She reached the bench and sat down, her breath hitching in her chest. She forced herself to look like a woman waiting for a lover, tilted her head back, and closed her eyes. But underneath the seat, her fingers were moving. She felt the rough wood, the peeling paint, and then—her heart skipped a beat—a small, square piece of duct tape.
She peeled it back with trembling fingers. Taped to the underside was a small, silver key and a folded piece of paper.
"Got it," she whispered, the words barely a breath.
Before she could stand, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. The sound was faint—the scrape of a shoe on stone—but in the quiet of the park, it sounded like a thunderclap.
"Don't move, Elara," a voice said. It wasn't Silas. And it certainly wasn't Julian.
It was a voice like broken glass—cold, sharp, and entirely devoid of emotion.
Elara froze. Slowly, she turned her head. Standing ten feet away was the man in the charcoal suit. Up close, he was even more terrifying. He was middle-aged, with close-cropped gray hair and eyes that were completely vacant. He didn't look like a criminal; he looked like a bureaucrat. A man whose job was to file paperwork and erase lives.
"The key," the man said, holding out a gloved hand. "Give it to me, and you can walk back to your gallery. You can have your quiet life back. You can pretend the Vane family never existed."
"Who are you?" Elara asked, her hand tightening around the key in her pocket.
"I'm the person Julian should have hired to handle you a long time ago," the man replied. "Sophia is much more efficient than her brother. She doesn't believe in 'Anchors.' She believes in closure."
He stepped forward, and Elara saw the glint of a silenced pistol tucked into the waistband of his trousers. "The key, Elara. Now."
Suddenly, the park was flooded with light. A pair of high-beams cut through the darkness from the service road, blinding the man in charcoal. The roar of a heavy engine drowned out the sound of the rain.
"Get down!" a voice roared.
Elara didn't think. She threw herself off the bench and onto the wet grass just as Silas's truck tore across the lawn, the tires churning up mud and turf. The man in charcoal fired a shot—the thwip of the suppressor hitting the bench right where Elara's head had been a second ago—but Silas didn't slow down. He rammed the truck into the bench, the wood splintering into a thousand pieces.
The man in charcoal rolled out of the way, his movements fluid and professional. He didn't panic. He simply repositioned himself, leveling his weapon at the driver's side window of the truck.
Silas kicked the door open and stepped out before the truck had even stopped moving. He didn't have a gun; he had something far more brutal—a heavy iron tire iron.
"Stay in the truck, Elara!" Silas shouted.
The next sixty seconds were a blur of violence. The man in charcoal fired again, the bullet shattering the truck's side mirror, but Silas was already on him. He swung the iron with a guttural roar, the weight of it catching the hitman in the ribs with a sickening crack. The man went down, but he didn't stay down. He swung his legs around, sweeping Silas off his feet.
They tumbled into the mud, a tangle of limbs and muffled grunts. Elara watched from the grass, her heart nearly bursting. She looked at the key in her hand. This was it. This was the moment she could run. She could leave both of these monsters behind and disappear into the night.
But she didn't run. She saw the man in charcoal reaching for his fallen pistol.
Elara scrambled to her feet, grabbed a heavy piece of the shattered park bench, and lunged forward. She didn't think about the consequences. She didn't think about her "peace." She swung the wood with everything she had, catching the hitman across the temple.
The man's head snapped back, and he went limp.
Silence returned to the park, broken only by Silas's heavy, ragged breathing. He rolled off the hitman and sat up, his face covered in mud and blood. He looked up at Elara, his eyes wide with a mixture of shock and something that looked almost like respect.
"You... you stayed," he panted.
"I'm tired of running, Silas," Elara said, her voice shaking but her eyes clear. She held up the silver key. "We have it. Now, tell me how we use it to kill the Vanes."
Silas stood up, wiping blood from his lip. He looked at the unconscious hitman, then back at Elara. "We don't just use it to kill them, Elara. We use it to take everything they ever loved."
He reached out his hand. This time, Elara didn't hesitate. She took it.