Public Enemy #91 (Shots on Goal: MN Frosthawks #1)

Prologue

BEA — FOUR YEARS AGO

The day I left Brazil, it rained so hard Florianópolis blurred into a watercolor painting—hues shifting, edges softening—like the city was trying to erase me.

It pressed against the windows in lax, determined sheets, clouding the buildings across the street into pale blocks and smudged palm fronds. Every few seconds, a heavier drop struck the metal railing outside with a bright, sharp click—punctuation my nerves didn’t ask for.

Inside, our apartment looked as if someone had picked up my life, shaken it, and poured it out onto the floor.

Two suitcases lay open with hungry mouths.

Shipping boxes, of all sizes, crowded the living room in uneven towers.

A roll of clear tape sat on the coffee table beside a black marker and a stack of customs forms my father had printed in triplicate—of course in triplicate—because he trusted the law more than he trusted the universe.

The large space smelled like wet concrete drifting in from the hallway, stale chai from the mug I kept forgetting to drink, and cardboard—dry, dusty, faintly sweet.

It was the same smell it always carried when something was ending or beginning.

Birthdays. New school years. The afternoon my father decided the old couch had absorbed too many memories to keep.

Today, it meant goodbye.

I knelt on the floor with a puffy jacket in my hands.

A real winter coat. Thick, gray, padded like armor.

Something designed for survival, not style.

In Florianópolis, the cold meant a light sweater at night and complaints that lasted ten minutes.

Where I was headed, it meant layers and warnings and forums online explaining how skin could freeze.

I’d bought it after watching too many videos titled Surviving Chicago Winter, learning the difference between cute boots and the kind that kept your toes attached to your body. Learning that scarves weren’t accessories. They were shields.

Control. Research. Preparation. If I could name it, list it, fold it, label it—maybe it wouldn’t hurt.

I smoothed the coat over my knees, pressed my palms into the fabric, then folded it down the middle. Again. Again. A tight, exact rectangle. My hands moved with practiced efficiency, but my chest felt like it had been packed with damp sand.

Across from me, my father crouched beside a box that was already perfectly squared.

Rafael Ribeiro—late-fifties and still carrying himself like a man ten years younger—wore a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled cleanly to his elbows.

The fabric pulled faintly across his shoulders when he moved, tailored for a body that hadn’t softened with time so much as settled into itself.

His hair, dark and only just beginning to silver at the temples, remained neat despite hours of lifting and taping, like disorder simply didn’t stick to him.

Reading glasses rested low on his nose, catching the gray light.

He wrote:

Bea — Livros

The tip of the marker hovered over the cardboard. His gaze fixed on the word Bea like it had startled him.

I watched him, my throat tightening. “So dramatic,” I murmured, angling for levity—for the natural rhythm between us. “It’s just a box of books.”

My father lifted his eyes slowly. There was a smile on his mouth, the polished version he used with clients, but it didn’t consume his face. His eyes—dark, sharp, always thinking—looked older in the gloomy afternoon light.

“Important things rarely look like much,” he whispered.

His English was flawless. Precise. Measured. But the accent—thick, unmistakably Brazilian—wrapped around the words anyway, rounding the edges, anchoring them somewhere deeper than grammar.

After a weighted pause, he leaned back on his heels and flexed his hands once. He glanced around the room like he was trying to redirect himself—cataloging, assessing, anything but lingering.

“Which suitcase is carry-on?” he asked.

“The black one,” I replied automatically. “The navy one is checked.”

“Make sure you keep one extra outfit in the carry-on,” he continued, already reaching for the black suitcase. “And the documents. Passport. University letter. Insurance. All in the folder.”

I lifted my chin. “They’re in the folder.”

His gaze flicked to me—quick, assessing. “And the folder is where?”

“In the backpack. The backpack is staying on my body.”

He exhaled through his nose, settling somewhere between relief and approval. “Good.” A pause. Then, softer, “No vanity with shoes. I know you.”

A laugh tried to come out of me and turned thin on the edges. “I bought ugly boots.”

“Proper boots,” he corrected, like he was amending a contract clause.

I shifted, reached for the paperback, and hesitated before sliding it into a box. The pages had always felt like home in my hands.

My father’s gaze landed on the book. Not the title—he’d never cared about titles. On the fact that I was packing it like it mattered.

He leaned forward and opened a nearby box with a careful pull of the tape.

Inside were things he’d already packed. A framed photo.

A small ceramic dish shaped like a shell.

A stack of letters tied with twine. He took out the framed photo.

Me at seven. Front tooth missing. Hair in a crooked ponytail.

Smile too wide for my face. My arm thrown around his waist like I owned him.

I’d forgotten that photo existed.

He held it for a moment, thumb brushing the edge of the frame. The look on his face wasn’t theatrical. It was private. Almost stunned. Like he couldn’t understand how time could take someone from that toothless grin to a young woman folding winter coats to move to another country.

“You were fearless,” he murmured, and the word carried a weight it hadn’t earned in normal conversation. “Sempre.”

Always.

My mouth went dry. I stared at the photo and felt something sharp press behind my ribs.

Fearless wasn’t what I remembered. I remembered being small and watching the front door as if staring hard enough could keep it from becoming permanent.

My mother had left early enough that most people thought it shouldn’t still matter.

But absence didn’t follow logic. It lived in the places you didn’t look directly at.

The corner of a closet. The empty space in family stories.

The way my father never used her name, as if speaking it might invite her back just to leave again.

I reached out and touched the frame lightly, just once, the way you touched something hot to prove you could.

My father set the photo down on top of the packing paper. He didn’t put it back in the box yet. He didn’t put it in my hands. He let it sit between us like a fragile truth.

He cleared his throat, straightened, and returned to the tape like it was safer.

I forced my voice into steadiness. “You’re going to be fine.”

His shoulders went still for half a second. “Of course.”

The lie didn’t bother either of us. It was the kind of lie you offered the people you loved when the truth was too sharp to hold without bleeding.

The rain thickened, drumming harder against the glass. Outside, the sky had gone that particular bruised gray that meant the sun was still there, somewhere, but not interested in showing itself.

A sharp buzz cut through the apartment—clean, mechanical, out of place against the softer sounds of rain and shifting boxes.

My father’s head lifted immediately, attention snapping toward the intercom panel mounted beside the door.

“Sim?” he answered, already moving before the response came.

The doorman’s voice filtered through a second later, faintly distorted but familiar. “Mr. Ribeiro, Ms. Atha is on her way up.”

Not a question.

A notice.

My father’s gaze flicked to me, something unreadable passing through it—resignation, maybe, edged with something softer. “Of course she is,” he muttered, more to himself than to the speaker.

He didn’t press the unlock button right away. He didn’t need to.

Lo didn’t wait for permission.

As if the building itself had learned her rhythm, the hallway outside filled with the sharp, unmistakable cadence of heels against polished stone—quick, certain, unapologetically loud.

A second later, the door swung open with the confidence of someone who believed doors existed to be entered dramatically.

Clementine Louis Atha stepped inside like she was arriving at an event, not into an apartment full of half-taped boxes and a girl trying not to fall apart.

Oversized sunglasses, even though it was raining. Lipstick perfect, a shade too bright for a gray afternoon. A trench coat cinched at the waist, scarf knotted with intention. She rolled a suitcase behind her that looked expensive enough to have its own passport.

She’d been in my life since I was a child. Not long enough to claim me by blood. Long enough that it never mattered.

“Okay,” she huffed, her voice warm and bright, Southern honey wrapped around years of travel and reinvention. “Why does it smell like feelings in here?”

My father’s mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. A concession. “Lo,” he greeted, carefully neutral.

But his eyes gave him away. They softened at the edges, the way they only did for two people in this world.

Me.

And her.

Lo pushed her sunglasses up into her hair as she stepped fully inside, and the room shifted with it—because that was her talent. She didn’t just enter spaces. She warmed them. Claimed them. Made them feel like something worth staying in.

She saw me—and everything else fell away. “Hi, bebê.” Soft. Immediate. Like she hadn’t crossed half the world to get to me.

Three quick steps and her arms were around me, pulling me in before I could brace myself.

Her perfume wafted off silk—lavish florals cut with something bright and citrusy, expensive and familiar, the kind of scent that lived in memories.

Her coat was cool from the rain, but beneath it she was warm, solid, real.