Chapter 2 - The Shadow in the Garden
Mark stood over Tessa on the manicured lawn, his chest heaving under his charcoal grey shirt.
Tessa clutched her pale yellow dress, her gold jewelry glinting as she scrambled backward across the grass in terror.
"Mark, you've completely lost your mind!" Evelyn, the silver-haired matriarch, shrieked as she hurried down the patio steps.
Mark didn't look at his mother; his focus remained entirely on five-year-old Lily shivering in his left arm.
The red scratch on Lily's shoulder was already swelling, a raw contrast against her sky-blue cotton dress.
"Daddy... Aunt Tessa didn't come alone," Lily whispered again, her small hand tightening on his collar.
Behind the stone pillars of the patio, where the American flag hung limp in the humid afternoon heat, a tall figure moved.
A man in a sharp black suit stepped out from the estate's sunroom, adjusting his dark aviator sunglasses.
It was Victor Vance, Tessa's ex-fiancé and a rogue operative wanted by federal law enforcement across three states.
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Mark’s jaw tightened into steel as he realized the garden party was never a family celebration; it was an ambush.
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