Flashback — Grace
I was twenty-three. Young. Naive enough to think I could be someone different. In love with a woman who laughed like sunlight and touched me like she knew the man I wanted to be—not the cold, inherited thing I was raised to become.
Grace. Her name still tastes sweet and poisonous in my mouth. She was clever. Gorgeous. Dangerous in the ways you don’t notice until your throat is already slit.
I thought she was the one. Until the night I was mugged. We’d fought—something stupid—outside our favorite wine bar. She said she was leaving. I said I needed space. A man stepped out of an alley with a gun. Asked for my wallet. I refused.
He shot me in the stomach. The paramedics said I was lucky.
I didn’t feel lucky. Grace never showed up at the hospital.
But the police did. Turns out she sent the mugger.
Planned the whole thing. Not for revenge.
Not for heartbreak. For my black card. For what she thought was in my wallet.
She assumed I’d bleed quietly and be done with it. She didn’t expect me to survive.
That night, I stopped believing in love. Stopped letting softness near me. Built walls so high no one would ever get over them again.
Until Evelyn. Aiden watches me, something unspoken passing between us. “You’re in trouble, brother,” he says softly. I don’t deny it. Because I already know. This time, the fall could kill me. And I don’t fucking care.