Iced Out (Blackwood Blades #1)

Prologue

MILA

One year ago…

The text from Mom came while I was still at the rink watching the boys’ varsity hockey team practice. Just one line: Can’t make dinner. Don’t wait. It didn’t sound like her.

By the time I pulled into our driveway, the sky was streaked in bruised purple, red, and gold. Her car wasn’t there. She didn’t answer my calls.

The unease in my chest coiled tighter, sharp enough to hurt.

That sixth sense I’d learned to trust in every town we’d ever lived—it screamed that something was wrong. I opened her location on my phone. A single blinking dot lit up the map—King Enterprises.

It was after-hours, and she shouldn’t have been there.

Fifteen minutes later, I pulled into their nearly empty lot.

The glass building rose up in front of me, all mirrored windows and steel edges reflecting the last of the sun.

King Enterprises looked domineering even in the best weather, but under the heavy shadows, it felt colder.

More ominous. Only a few lights glowed inside.

I should’ve left. Driven home. Pretended I hadn’t seen where she was.

But I didn’t.

Her location showed she was behind the building.

I cut the engine and stepped out of my car.

The walk around the building felt longer than it should have.

The air back there was cooler, heavier, carrying the faint scent of motor oil and something copper, metallic.

The industrial lights along the wall flickered in uneven pulses, slicing the concrete into shifting bands of shadow.

I spotted Mom before she saw me—long dark hair spilling down her back, shoulders rigid, that familiar tilt of her head. My eyes tracked past her… and caught on the prone shape of a man lying on the ground.

The building blocked part of him, but I could see enough—the wrong angle of his limbs, the red pooling wider by the second. My breath snagged. A scream clawed up my throat.

Mom spun at the sound, and her eyes locked on mine, intense and unwavering. She closed the space between us in two quick strides and clamped her hand tight over my mouth.

“Not a sound,” she hissed, her voice a razor-edged whisper. She darted a glance over her shoulder then locked urgent eyes with me. “We have to move.”

My pulse pounded so loud it drowned the distant hum of traffic. My knees trembled, barely holding me up.

Because I knew who it was—Darren. The guy Mom had been dating. The VP at King Enterprises. The man whose lifeless eyes—eyes I’d seen crinkle in laughter just weeks ago—stared past us into nothing.

“Mila.” My name carried a sharp panic that cut through the fog in my head. I tore my gaze from Darren’s face and locked on hers.

“We have to go. Now. Get in your car and move. I’ll meet you at the house. Hurry.”

I ran. My legs didn’t feel like mine, my breath scraping in and out as I slid behind the wheel. The drive home was a blur of headlights and static, my hands gripping the wheel until my knuckles leeched of color.

When I skidded into the driveway, she was right behind me. Her car door shut, and the front door was open before I’d even killed the engine.

“Pack,” she snapped. “Everything you need. Bags, boxes, I don’t care. Just move.”

“What? No. We need to call the cops—”

“No cops.” Her voice cracked like a whip.

“But we didn’t do anything—”

Her gray-green eyes locked on mine. “It will come back to us. You have to trust me. The people who did this—” She broke off, fingers curling against her side. “They’ll put it on us. Do you understand? They will make sure we take the fall.”

It didn’t make sense. But Mom had always looked out for me. And every line of her face, every tight coil of her body, screamed run.

I grabbed bags, stuffing them without thought. Jeans. Hoodies. My sketchbook. The framed photo of me and Luke from last summer at the lake.

Luke.

An ache tore through my chest. Just a few hours ago—after practice, when the ice still clung to the air and the locker room was empty—I’d slipped my white-gold chain with the tiny star pendant into the side pocket of his hockey bag.

A good luck charm for his away game tomorrow.

I’d wanted him to find it later, know I was rooting for him, that our future was written in the stars.

It was supposed to be something I would get back after the game, when I could listen to every detail straight from him.

I already missed the weight of it against my skin.

He wasn’t just my boyfriend—he was every breath, every steady thing I’d ever believed in. If I could just hear his voice, maybe I could breathe again.

My fingers hovered over his name on my phone. Mom’s hand closed around my wrist before I could type.

“Under no circumstances,” she said, voice low but fierce, “can you text about what you saw. To no one. Not even Luke. Especially Luke. He can’t know why you’re leaving. Or even that you are.”

Tears stung my eyes, blurring her face into something soft and unfamiliar. “Mom—”

“Promise me, Mila.”

My chest ached. The words scraped out, raw and splintered. The future we’d planned and dreamed of shattered around me. But Mom had always looked out for me. And in this, I had to believe she still was. “I promise.”

I thought I was protecting him. Turns out, I was setting the fuse.