Phoenix (Steele Shadows Investigations #1)

Chapter 1 Rose

ROSE

Lightning lit the sky, a momentary reprieve from the darkness of the kitchen around me. I twisted my long, black hair between my fingers, my eyes widening with the flash of light.

I can still remember that moment. I was wearing my favorite purple nightgown, a pair of holey pink socks. The kind with the little pom pom ball on the back. Purple, to match the gown that hadn’t been washed in weeks, but I didn’t care. It was mine, it fit, and made me feel like a princess.

A loud pop of thunder sent my heart slamming against my ribcage. Windows rattled above me. I hugged my knees to my chest, pressing my back against the wall, the thin sheetrock like ice through my nightgown.

I knew how fragile sheet rock could be.

I knew from experience.

Then came the sleet. A soft hiss, like sand spilling from the sky, building to a frantic buzz against the roof. This wasn’t thunder snow, it was thunder sleet. To this day, I’ve never seen weather like it.

I closed my eyes, imagining the ice falling from the sky. Free to fall where it wanted, free to fly away. Free to melt away in a silent surrender.

I imagined myself as that ice—fading, dissolving. Drifting away from the pain, the torment, the chain of events that carved the woman I would one day become.

My childhood was built on survival. From far too young, I understood a cruel truth: The weak are destroyed. Only the strong survive.

In school, it was always the misfits who were assumed to come from broken homes. The louder they were—the more rebellious, defiant, crude—the more likely people believed their lives were unraveling behind closed doors. Little Johnny with the bloody knuckles? He must have it rough.

But that wasn’t always the truth.

There was another kind of child who had it far worse.

The quiet ones. The ones who sat in the corners, eyes down, fading into the walls. The ones who never made eye contact. The ones with bruises hidden beneath their clothes.

That was me.

To stay silent was to stay safe. Not fighting wasn’t weakness—it was survival.

The house had been quiet for hours. Cheryl had given up on looking for me sometime around sunset, as she usually did.

Rain began to mix with the sleet, turning into a steady deluge. My eyes locked on the refrigerator just a few feet away. Hunger gnawed at me, but so did the anxiety. Eating without permission meant another violent meeting with the sheet rock.

I glanced at the doorway. Then the fridge. The window. Back to the doorway.

The storm would mask my movements—I was sure of it. Steeling myself, I crawled between the chairs beneath the dining table, following the familiar route I’d traced a hundred times before.

A gust of cold air brushed past as I emerged from under the table. I froze—like a groundhog breaking the surface—exposed, vulnerable.

But hungry.

I was so hungry.

It had been seventeen hours since I’d eaten the crust of a microwave pizza I’d been tossed. They liked to mess with me like that. A cliché power trip. I know that now.

My pulse hammered as I forced myself forward, shuffling on my knees along the cold, tiled floor. Stay low, stay small. The smaller the target, the harder to hit.

My hands trembled as I reached for the handle.

And that’s when the front door flew open.

I spun around, able to see the front door from my vantage point.

Lightning outlined his silhouette like the villain in every little girl’s dream. Rain swirled around his untied boots as he stumbled inside. I dropped to the floor and slammed my back against the cabinets, praying he didn’t see me.

His scream was something out of a horror movie, echoing off the walls and lingering in the air as if to punctuate the shock.

I stilled, wondering what could entice that kind of reaction from a man who was the one who typically did the scaring.

Boots hurried across the living room, along with a low, panicked repetitive muttering of something I couldn’t make out. My thoughts spun, every instinct in my body telling me that something was wrong. Very, very wrong.

“Rose!” My name exploded from his lips. It wasn’t the first time he’d screamed my name, but it was the first time it sounded like that.

“Rose!”

My heart kickstarted into panic mode, my gaze darting around the kitchen. The window above the kitchen sink. Could I make it? Could I escape?

“Rose!”

I surged to my feet, my nightgown snagging on a nail sticking out from the cabinet.

My mind split in two—one half desperate to flee, the other paralyzed by the unfamiliar sound of panic in his voice.

What was going on?

I crept toward the doorway, heart pounding, breath held tight in my chest.

The living room was dimly lit by the television’s blue glow. A low, haunting melody accompanied the end of a movie streaming on the television. His back was to me—stumbling like he’d been shot.

And as my gaze shifted to the couch, my stomach plummeted.