Vice's Vendetta (Steel Sentinels MC #39)
Chapter One
Twelve hours. Twelve hours of wiping noses, mediating disputes over the red crayon versus the slightly different red crayon, convincing Matty that yes, he really did need to nap even though he was absolutely, completely, totally not tired.
Twelve hours of being everything to everyone, of keeping her voice steady and her smile bright while her stomach churned with a dread she couldn't name.
She locked the front door of Little Sprouts and turned back to survey the controlled chaos of her kingdom.
Tiny chairs sat crooked around tiny tables.
Finger paintings—today's theme had been "things that make us happy"—dripped from the drying line she'd strung across the craft corner.
Someone had abandoned a single pink sock under the reading nook's beanbag.
Goldfish crackers had somehow migrated into the block bin despite her strict no-food-outside-the-kitchen policy.
It was a mess. It was her mess. And someone was trying to take it from her.
Diana grabbed the broom and started sweeping, the familiar motion doing nothing to quiet her racing thoughts.
Three weeks ago, the pipes had burst in the bathroom—except the plumber said pipes didn't burst like that, not without help.
The flooding had destroyed two hundred dollars worth of craft supplies and soaked through the wall into her reading corner.
She'd spent her entire emergency fund on repairs and replacements.
Two weeks ago, the electrical panel had "failed.
" Every breaker tripped at once during naptime, plunging twelve terrified toddlers into darkness.
The electrician found nothing wrong with the panel itself, just evidence that someone had manually flipped everything off.
From outside. Where the panel box had been pried open.
And the complaints. God, the complaints.
She finished sweeping and moved to straighten the chairs, her movements sharp with barely contained frustration.
Three anonymous reports to the licensing board this month alone.
Fabricated violations that existed nowhere except in the imagination of whoever was filing them.
Insufficient supervision ratios—false. Improper food storage—false.
Inadequate emergency exits—completely false, and easily disproved, but each complaint required hours of documentation, photographs, witness statements.
Hours she should have spent teaching. Planning. Resting.
Diana straightened the last chair and pressed her palms flat against the tiny table, breathing through the tightness in her chest. The children couldn't see this.
The parents couldn't know. Her assistants, Martha and Beth, had picked up on her tension—of course they had, they'd worked together for three years—but she'd brushed off their concerns with reassurances she didn't feel.
Everything's fine. Just some bad luck. These things happen with old buildings.
Except these things didn't just happen. Someone was making them happen. Someone who wanted her gone.
She moved to her desk in the corner, a battered wooden thing she'd rescued from a garage sale and painted cheerful yellow to match the walls.
The afternoon light slanted through windows decorated with paper butterflies the kids had made last week.
Normally, this was her favorite time—the quiet after the storm, when she could reflect on the day's small victories and plan tomorrow's adventures.
Tonight, the quiet felt like a held breath.
The envelope sat exactly where she'd dropped it that morning, too busy with arrivals to deal with whatever fresh hell it contained. Plain white. No return address. Hand-delivered, probably, since it had appeared on her desk sometime between Saturday's lockup and Monday's opening.
Diana picked it up. Slit it open with her thumbnail. Pulled out the single sheet of paper inside.
NOTICE OF COMPLAINT State Board of Childcare Licensing
Her eyes skimmed the bureaucratic language, her heart sinking with each line.
...anonymous report received regarding facility conditions...
...concerns about structural safety of outdoor play equipment...
...scheduled inspection within fourteen business days...
...failure to demonstrate compliance may result in suspension of operating license...
The outdoor play equipment. The wooden playset her father had built with his own hands the summer before he died, the one she maintained obsessively because it was the last thing he'd ever made. The one that had passed every safety inspection for four years running.
Someone was accusing her of endangering children on equipment she would literally throw herself in front of traffic to protect.
Diana's hands shook as she set the paper down. The shaking spread to her arms, her shoulders, her whole body trembling with a fury so hot it felt like ice.
Who is doing this?
She'd asked herself that question a hundred times.
She had no enemies. She paid her bills on time, smiled at her neighbors, donated to the elementary school fundraiser every year.
She'd chosen this location specifically because the neighborhood was quiet, safe, full of families who wanted their children in a home environment rather than a sterile corporate facility.
The building's owner had never given her trouble in four years. Her lease had two years left, and she'd never missed a payment. There was no reason—no logical reason—for any of this.
But logic didn't flood bathrooms. Logic didn't flip breakers. Logic didn't file false complaints designed to bury her in paperwork until she either gave up or lost her license entirely.
Diana gathered the complaint with the others she'd already documented—a folder that had grown sickeningly thick over the past three weeks—and shoved everything into her bag.
She needed to photograph the playset tonight, document every bolt and board and safety feature before whoever was doing this found a way to sabotage it too.
The thought made her stomach lurch.
What if they already had? What if they'd loosened something, weakened something, and tomorrow little Sophie would climb up and—
No. No. She checked that equipment every single morning. She would check it again tonight. She would check it until her fingers bled if that's what it took.
Diana made one more circuit of the daycare, her trained eye cataloging everything.
Supplies locked in childproofed cabinets.
Emergency exits clear. Fire extinguisher in place, inspection tag current.
First aid kit fully stocked—she'd restocked it herself this weekend, adding extra supplies because her instincts were screaming that something bad was coming and she wanted to be ready.
Whatever was coming, her kids would be protected. Whatever she had to do, however many hours she had to work, whoever she had to fight.
These twelve children weren't her own—she'd never married, never had kids, had poured all that love into other people's babies instead—but they might as well have been.
Matty with his stubborn refusal to nap. Sophie with her endless questions about why the sky was blue and why dogs had four legs and why her daddy's beard was scratchy.
Twins Ellie and Ethan, who finished each other's sentences and had just started reading simple words.
Baby Lily, only two, who still called her "Dee-Dee" and fell asleep on Diana's shoulder during afternoon stories.
She would burn the world down before she let anyone hurt them.
Diana hit the lights, plunging the cheerful space into shadows, and armed the alarm system she'd installed last week—paid for with the credit card she was trying not to think about. The keypad beeped its confirmation, and she stepped outside into the cooling evening air.
The parking lot held only her aging Honda, faithful and battered and desperately needing new brake pads she couldn't afford.
The street beyond was quiet, residential, lined with modest homes and mature trees just starting to show their fall colors.
A dog barked somewhere distant. A lawnmower hummed a few blocks away.
Normal. Safe. The kind of neighborhood where nothing bad happened.
Except it was happening. Right here, right now, and she couldn't see the threat well enough to fight it.
Diana locked the door behind her—checking twice, three times—and crossed to her car. The Honda started on the first try, which felt like a small victory after the week she'd had. She pulled out of the lot and turned toward home, her eyes flicking automatically to the rearview mirror.
Nothing. No one following her. No suspicious vehicles. Just the familiar streets she'd driven a thousand times, suddenly feeling like enemy territory.
Her apartment was fifteen minutes away, on the other side of town.
A small one-bedroom in a complex that catered to young professionals and single people who didn't mind thin walls and parking lot noise.
It was fine. It was functional. It was not her daycare, not her kids, not the only thing she'd ever built that felt like it mattered.
Diana stopped at a red light and pressed her forehead against the steering wheel, just for a moment. Just long enough to feel the cool plastic against her skin and breathe through the panic clawing at her chest.
Three weeks of this. Three weeks of attacks I can't predict, can't prevent, can't explain.
The inspector would come. She would show them the playset was safe, just like she'd shown them the supervision ratios were correct and the food storage was up to code.
She would spend hours she didn't have compiling documentation for violations that didn't exist, and whoever was doing this would file another complaint, and another, and another, until she finally broke or her license was suspended or she simply couldn't afford to keep fighting.
The light turned green. Diana lifted her head and drove.
She passed the elementary school, dark and quiet at this hour. The grocery store where she bought goldfish crackers in bulk. The park where she'd taken the kids last summer for a picnic that had ended with Matty getting stuck in a tree and Sophie declaring it the best day ever.
Normal places. Safe places. A neighborhood she'd chosen specifically because it felt like somewhere children should grow up.
But the feeling had changed. Every shadow seemed darker. Every parked car might contain someone watching. Every stranger on the sidewalk could be the person destroying her life for reasons she couldn't understand.
Diana pulled into her apartment complex and parked in her assigned spot. She sat for a moment with the engine off, staring at the building's brick facade and the lights glowing warm in other people's windows.
Other people who weren't being systematically dismantled by an invisible enemy.
She grabbed her bag, heavy with complaints and documentation and the weight of too many sleepless nights, and walked to her door.
The apartment smelled stale when she entered—she'd been spending so many hours at the daycare that she barely lived here anymore.
There was nothing in the fridge except expired yogurt and half a bottle of wine she'd bought two weeks ago and never opened.
Diana dropped her bag by the door and sank onto her thrift-store couch, too exhausted to even turn on the lights. The darkness felt appropriate somehow. Fitting.
Outside her window, the neighborhood hummed with ordinary evening sounds. Televisions murmuring. Someone's kid practicing piano, badly. A couple arguing in the parking lot, the kind of mundane drama that felt almost comforting in its normalcy.
She closed her eyes and tried to imagine tomorrow. The kids would arrive, bright and loud and expecting her to be everything they needed. She would smile for them. Laugh with them. Read the same book six times because Sophie couldn't get enough of the bunny who refused to go to bed.
And somewhere, invisible, whoever was targeting her would prepare their next attack.
Diana wrapped her arms around herself and stared into the darkness.
How long can I keep doing this? she wondered. How long can I fight someone I can't even see?
The question had no answer. But she would be at Little Sprouts tomorrow at six AM, checking the playset before anyone arrived, documenting everything she could think of, preparing for an inspection designed to destroy her.
Because those children were counting on her. Because their parents trusted her. Because giving up meant letting whoever was doing this win, and Diana Marsh hadn't built something beautiful just to watch it burn.
But God, she was tired. And scared. And completely, terrifyingly alone.
The shadows in her apartment deepened as night fell outside, and Diana sat in the dark, wondering if tomorrow would finally bring an enemy she could actually fight—or just more ghosts she couldn't see coming until it was already too late.