They didn’t so much open the door as collide with it. It slammed shut behind them in a burst of laughter and breathless sound, mouths already tangled, hands everywhere at once. He caught her around the waist and she came with him willingly, legs bumping, hips knocking as they stumbled deeper into the house. The air still clung to them—salt, sunscreen, chlorine, heat—as though the day had refused to loosen its grip.
He was all solid momentum: broad shoulders, arms built by lifting and hauling, by work that taught muscle to remember weight long after it was gone. His body moved with the confidence of someone who trusted it completely. And, when he kissed her, it was full and reckless, the kind of kiss that was hungry in its devotion.
She met him with a laugh against his mouth, breathless and bright. She was tall, nearly his height, and her skin was warm, her dark hair spilling loose around her shoulders. Her body was firm where it mattered and soft where it undid people. Her bikini was clinging to her, barely holding on after a day of eyes and attention. The straps slipped with every movement, fabric sliding treacherously low, as though it had already surrendered.
They crashed into the wall together, giggling and moaning in the same breath.
He pressed her there, forearm braced beside her head, his body pinning hers without thinking. The wall was cool against her back. She found the contrast sharp and delicious. She tilted her head and caught his lower lip with her teeth, tasting salt and something darker beneath it.
For a second, he stopped and stepped back a fraction.
He looked at her—really looked at her—his eyes flicking over the way she was flushed and smiling, the way her breasts rose fast beneath the stretched fabric. Surprise crossed his face, quick and boyish, as though he had only just realized how easily he had gotten her there.
“Are you letting me win?” he asked, half laughing, half uncertain. The question lingered between them, strange and loaded, wrong in a way that felt deliberate.
She smiled. It wasn’t sweet or shy, it was wicked. Then, she bit her lip slowly, the way she knew unraveled him, her green eyes dark now, and never leaving his. She stepped back into his space and slid her hand straight down the front of his swimming trunks.
There was no hesitation and no teasing. Her fingers closed around him with confident familiarity, heat and pressure stealing the breath straight out of his lungs. He sucked in a sharp sound, shoulders jerking as his body betrayed him instantly. He was already half-swollen, and now he was growing even harder as she gripped his length.
Her gaze stayed locked on his as she held him. “Right where I want you,” she said quietly.
It wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. And his knees nearly buckled.
She lifted her other hand then, calm and deliberate, and rested it on the crown of his head. Her palm was warm, grounding, impossibly intimate. She smiled again, slower this time, and pressed down. He followed without resistance, dropping to his knees before her as naturally as breathing. The wall was still cool behind her, the room suddenly very quiet except for the sound of their shared breath.
She looked down at him, at the strength folded so willingly, at the way his hands hovered at her thighs as though waiting for permission. She loved the way he looked at her—she always had—as though she were an angel rather than a demon. Or perhaps something that carried a little of both. And, with the unhurried grace of a sovereign taking her throne, she drew one leg over his shoulder, opening herself to him as the thin fabric of her bikini barely held its place.
“You know what to do,” she said softly. It wasn’t a command; it was a certainty. As though there was no part of her that expected anything else.
He leaned in, his hands wrapping around her, anchoring himself to her curves. He breathed her in deeply, a low sound slipping from him as he pressed reverent kisses along her thighs, moving with familiar hunger and awe toward her warmth. She lingered in the sight of him, savoring the devotion in every measured movement, before her head tipped back and a quiet moan escaped her as he slid the fabric aside with his tongue and began loving her with the intimate certainty she adored.
The house seemed to hold its breath, the air becoming thick with heat and salt and the taste of skin.
=====
PROLOGUE
Marseille, 2002
Amélie’s mother’s voice was the last soft thing.
A hymn, hummed low and steady beneath the ordinary clatter of the kitchen: onions and garlic sweating in a pan, olive oil whispering, a spoon tapping enamel. Light from the stove pooled warm across the tiles and over Amélie’s sketchbook as she sat cross-legged in the hall, pencil smudging the hollow of her fingers. For the length of a breath, the flat was ordinary—sound and smell and the small domestic patience of a meal being made.
Then the door hit the jamb, and the evening blew apart.
They came in like a storm. Not neighbors, not men she recognized. But, rather, hard faces, leather jackets, and the faint smell of copper and gunpowder clinging to them like cologne. The air changed; the taste of pennies rose on her tongue, and the fine hairs on her arms lifted.
Her father’s voice tore across the room. He was no saint; he had hands that bruised and a temper that flared, but he was not a coward. The first shot cut her mother’s hymn in half, a severed note, bright and unbelieving. The pan clattered then, sending oil spattering over the white tiles. Her mother moved with the speed of a single, terrible clarity. Her hand caught Amélie’s shoulder in a grip that was both command and benediction, and she shoved her toward the back of the flat.
“Cours!”
Amélie’s legs obeyed. The sketchbook slipped. The pencil skittered and left a thin graphite tail behind. She turned once, because the child in her could not fully extinguish the hope of being followed and saw her mother framed in the kitchen doorway, chest heaving, lips parted as if to call, eyes full of pleading.
The second shot found her mother mid-breath, and time narrowed to two sounds: the dull fall of a body and the savage stillness that followed.
Amélie ran. Her bare feet slapped the tiles, every step a drumbeat of terror. The scream she wanted to release sat like a fist in her throat, and she shoved it down with the animal will of a child whose whole world had been severed. The corridor blurred—doors, framed photographs, the small domestic artifacts of a life made jagged and strange in an instant.
The bathroom window stuck fast; dampness had swollen the paint. She clawed at it until her palms stung and the glass cracked under her nails. She squeezed through the narrow opening, her ribs scraping stone. For a heartbeat, she hovered on the sill, cold frame against her belly, Saint Joan’s medal against her throat—her mother’s little charm, ancient but still glowing.
She looked back once more. The men in the flat shouted, “Pas de survivants!“ and bullets chewed at plaster where her head had been a second before. In the doorway, she saw it again: the shape of her mother, and the terrible slowness as life left her body.
Amélie’s throat went raw and something small tore loose inside her then, but she forced herself forward. Down into the alley she dropped, knees jolting, breath splitting, the medal cold and steady at her collarbone. The city opened into its familiar crookedness: left at the shuttered bakery, right at the iron gate, and into the tangle of streets her father had once cursed and navigated. She ran the routes she had learned by listening. The shortcuts were a map etched into muscle and memory.
By the time the killers spilled into the alley, Amélie was already swallowed by Marseille’s night. The flat, the hymn, the smell of onions—all of it receded into a tight, aching place behind her eyes that time would never erase.
The state would later call her lucky: found before the streets could swallow her, placed into the blunt, clean system designed to flatten pain into boxes and forms. Lucky? Amélie never thought so.
—–
The foster home was a stone block that smelled of bleach and boiled cabbage, metal doors, and paint peeling in curls. The dormitory beds were all made to military angles, with gray blankets folded like promises. Voices moved through the corridors as if on rails: other children passing through, old and new names arriving and being taken away. Amélie carried silence like a garment. It kept her small in rooms where hands reached for you. It kept her safe.
At meal times, she sat with her back to the wall, one hand hovering over the tray as if it were a shield. The food tasted of nothing, but hunger taught its own lessons. Once an older girl—big, quick, and wearing a grin that meant trouble—plucked a roll from Amélie’s plate. Amélie didn’t lunge or wail. Instead, she had waited until the dorm went dark, and when the others breathed into sleep, she slid from her bed. The laundry room they used smelled of starch and rusted iron, and she found scissors there and took them. In the morning, the girl woke to hair sheared in jagged clumps, and the scissors stabbed into the mattress beside her head.
That was the last time anyone reached for Amélie’s bread.
Her mother’s voice lived with her in the quiet: Courage, ma fille. She mouthed it at night, her own private prayer. She no longer believed prayer could change anything, but the syllables steadied her. So did humming her mother’s final hymn to herself, a gentle echo of a life that had been soft before it was broken.
Then there was a boy once, a foster brother with quick hands and a grin that made the world feel less sharp for a moment. He slipped her half an apple one afternoon. And, later, he’d offered her a cigarette behind the laundry shed. She coughed and laughed and felt almost normal, almost touched. But, a week later, his bed was stripped, and he was gone, as if the world had swallowed him whole. No warning. No goodbye.
Those losses taught her the arithmetic of attachment: everything kind could be taken without ceremony. So, she learned to expect departure. She learned not to want or rely on the soft.
By fifteen, the walls there felt too narrow, and the voices in the corridors pressed in like humidity. The orders, the schedules, the conveyor belt of new faces—everything spelled confinement. So, one predawn, when the gate still smelled of frost and the watchman nodded over a bundled radio, she got up and walked out without a backward glance. The Saint Joan medal pressed cool against her skin, her eyes stayed forward, fixed not in hope but in calculation—toward the docks, toward the men who smoked and watched, toward the life she would claim before the world could claim her.
======
Saratoga Springs, 2005.
His grandfather’s shed leaned a little toward the lake, timbers warped with decades of winters, but it was steady, the way his grandfather was steady. Inside, the air was warm with mingled scents of cedar and motor oil. Sun-baked dust rose from the floorboards whenever they moved.
The Triumph Bonneville waited in the middle like some sleeping beast. It was his father’s, but his father never seemed to have time to work on it. Its frame was heavy, black paint chipped in patches, chrome dulled but not defeated. The leather seat was cracked, thread peeling at the edges as though time itself had been gnawing on it. Owen thought it was beautiful anyway. More than a machine, a promise.
At twelve, his body was all long limbs and restless energy. His hair was dark and sweat-tangled, and kept falling into his eyes no matter how often he shoved it back with a grease-smudged hand. He crouched over the engine, tongue caught between his teeth in mock concentration, grin never far behind.
“Steady now,” he drawled, giving Connor a sideways glance. “This baby’s delicate, like your feelings.”
Connor, barefoot and scuffed-kneed, snorted. The carburetor wobbled in his grip as he shot Owen a glare. “You don’t even know what you’re doing.”
“I know enough,” Owen said, snatching the screwdriver without asking. “See? Natural genius.” He flourished it like a sword, then promptly dropped a washer with a loud plink. His grin widened, unbothered. “That was a test. You passed.”
Connor was his best friend. They’d been pals since Owen dared him to jump from the hayloft with an old bedsheet as a parachute. Connor broke his wrist, but Owen swore it had almost worked.
Now Connor just shook his head and muttered, “You’re impossible.”
“Yeah,” Owen said with a shrug, tightening a bolt that probably didn’t need tightening. “But at least I’m interesting.”
Sometimes his grandfather leaned in the doorway, pipe stem resting in his teeth, arms folded across his chest. He never corrected them, never scolded. He just let them wrestle with bolts too tight for their hands, let them sweat, let them laugh when something clattered to the floor.
Owen’s laugh filled the shed, bright and irreverent, bouncing off the walls until even the dust motes seemed to dance in the shafts of light. He cursed often too, softer when his grandfather was close enough to hear, always with a spark that turned frustration into comedy.
The Bonneville would never run for them, not that summer. But trying became its own language: grease on their wrists, oil under their nails, jokes flying fast and sharp like sparks in the dark. That was the summer the world was small and whole—just a shed, a bike, and two boys certain they were infinite.
—–
It was fall, the kind that painted Saratoga in copper and gold. Leaves skittered across the cracked blacktop behind the school, brittle underfoot. The gym’s brick wall was cool against Margot’s back, rough enough that she could feel it through her thin sweatshirt.
Owen leaned beside her, one sneaker propped against the wall, hands shoved deep in his hoodie pocket like he didn’t have a care in the world. Taller now, shoulders broadening, his frame filling out with the promise of muscle. He carried it with ease—a lopsided grin tugging at his mouth like he’d just won a bet only he knew about.
Margot’s hair fell loose, spilling over her shoulders in red waves. The low sun threaded through it, setting her alight. She was flushed from the bike ride, her freckles brighter against pale skin, and her breath still quick and visible in the cooling air.
Their bikes lay tossed in the weeds, wheels spinning lazily as if unwilling to stop. The world narrowed to the two of them, tucked behind the gym, laughter softened by distance from the road.
Owen’s hand brushed hers on the brick, and he tilted his head down at her, grin widening. “You know, if you keep staring at me like that, Red, I’m gonna have to do something about it.”
Margot scoffed, rolling her eyes, but the corner of her mouth betrayed her as she said with a dare in her voice, “You wish.”
“Yeah,” he said easily, leaning closer, voice dropping into mock seriousness, “I really do.”
======
Marseille
The air around the docks was heavy with salt and diesel. Cranes groaned overhead, and gulls shrieked as they dove at fish guts spilled from the trawlers. Men in thick jackets leaned against crates, smoking, their eyes following her as she passed.
Amélie kept her chin up. She was small and slight, all sharp bones and hungry eyes, but she moved like she belonged. She had learned in the foster home: don’t ask permission, don’t look lost.
She stole her first cigarette from the top of a cargo crate when the boys weren’t watching. The tobacco burned her throat and made her cough until her ribs hurt. She clutched the medal, forcing herself not to spit it out, and by the third drag, her hands had stopped shaking.
One of the men noticed her. He was older, and a scar ran from his ear to his jaw, and as he watched her, his eyes narrowed in something like amusement. He flicked ash into the water and said nothing, but the next day—and the day after—he was still watching.
Within a week, she was carrying crates for coins, and slipping food into her jacket when no one looked. She learned which alleys led to safety, which doors opened for a knock, and which men you never turned your back on. By the end of that first month, she had disappeared from the lists, the records, and every well-meaning social worker’s clipboard. Amélie Durand no longer belonged to the state. She belonged to the docks, and the docks became her school.
By sixteen, she knew which crates to stack to climb fences, which ships came in heavy with contraband, and which taverns would slip a drink to a girl who didn’t flinch at the stink of sweat and smoke. She wore silence like a cloak, and silence bought her something louder than words ever could: invisibility.
The scarred man—the one who had first noticed her with the cigarette—began to test her. It began with a message delivered across the yard, folded tight in her palm. Then, a bottle smuggled past the foreman’s eye. Next, a small package slipped into a waiting car. Nothing large, nothing she could be caught with. But his eyes stayed on her, weighing her, as if he could see the space inside her that had already been hollowed out, ready to be filled with something new, something rotten, something of himself.
One night, she was sent with a satchel to a warehouse at the edge of the quarter. Inside, men argued over ledgers, their voices sharp. She hovered by the door, waiting, the weight of the bag heavy on her shoulder. Someone shoved her then, roughly. She fell against a crate, and the breath was knocked out of her lungs. Laughter followed, mocking and ugly and cruel. And then the man was simply gone.
Scar’s knife had opened his throat in a long red seam. Blood sprayed against the planks, hot and metallic. And Amélie’s scream stayed caged behind her teeth. She didn’t move, she just watched him fall, eyes wide, mouth working soundlessly as he crumpled.
Scar looked at her, his expression flat, and for the first time, he spoke her name. “Amélie.” Just that, as if to say: this is your world now. Don’t pretend otherwise.
She pressed the medal to her lips that night, the blood still vivid in her mind. Her stomach twisted, but her hands did not shake. For the first time since her parents died, she felt something close to certainty.
Scar called himself Armand, though she doubted it was his real name. Amélie had known for a while which men were dangerous and which were simply cruel. Armand was both, but he was also more than that. He was patient, he was precise, and he didn’t waste words.
He found her again after she ran a job clean, a packet carried across half the quarter without a single eye marking her. He stepped out of a doorway, tall and lean, his gaze like a blade that cut straight through her silence.
“Tu sais disparaître à merveille…” he said in French, voice low, almost amused. “mais sauras-tu attendre ?” You disappear beautifully… but will you be able to wait?
That was his first lesson: patience, delay deployed like a blade. He taught her to shoot too, correcting her grip until her hand hurt. He taught her to stab, guiding her hand on the hilt, forcing her to strike until her arms ached. He taught her to lie; he could spin a new life from three sentences and a steady gaze. But patience came first. Hours of stillness, and learning to hold her breath until her lungs screamed. Learning to watch shadows move across walls until she could predict a man’s habits from the way he stirred his drink.
She hated him, and she admired him. He was her father and her jailer all at once. He gave her structure and sharpened her into something lethal, but every kindness was laced with control. A pat on the shoulder was really a chain. A word of praise sounded like a lock clicking shut.
And, under his eye, she changed. Her frame—still long-limbed, still slight—now hardened with discipline. Her silence sharpened, too, it was no longer hollow but edged like glass. And her beauty ripened into something deliberate and dangerous, the kind that drew eyes in a crowd and then punished anyone who dared to linger. Her face and body became assets, tools she learned to wield without hesitation.
At seventeen, she killed for the first time. It wasn’t a practice or a test. That was the brutal reality of it. It was a man in Lyon who never saw her coming. She pressed her hand against his chest as he died, steady, patient, Saint Joan’s medal dangling freely over him. She felt the tremor of his heart fade beneath her palm.
That night, Armand poured her a drink. He called her, “Mon fantôme,” my ghost, and for the first time, Amélie allowed herself to smile. But, later, in the dark, she held the Saint Joan medal and whispered into it. Not as a prayer, but as a vow: One day, I will be free even of him.
======
Saratoga Springs, 2010.
Connor’s basement smelled faintly of popcorn and laundry detergent. A futon sagged under their combined weight, mismatched pillows thrown haphazardly against the wall. The glow of the old TV flickered across their faces, washing the room in stutters of blue and white.
Margot pressed against Owen’s side, his arm draped casually along the back of the couch like he owned the space. Sixteen had sharpened him into something broader and stronger, but he wore it with the same lazy swagger as always. He kept up a running commentary through the movie, half jokes and half wild theories about how he could do everything the main character was screwing up.
“See? He’s walking straight into it,” Owen muttered, loud enough for both of them. He tossed a kernel of popcorn in the air and caught it in his mouth with a grin. “Amateur. I’d have him beat in twenty minutes.”
Margot laughed, leaning into him, copper hair brushing his jaw. Her laugh always lit him up and made the whole stupid routine worth it. He grinned wider, tugging a throw blanket over her legs without thinking. It was an instinct, the way you keep someone warm.
But then he caught the flicker in her eyes, turning away from him. Connor sat on the other end of the couch, quieter, gaze steady on the screen. He didn’t say much, hadn’t all night, but his presence had weight— it was grounding. Margot’s laugh tapered, lips parting as her focus lingered on Connor just a beat too long.
Owen felt it in his chest: that small shift. Subtle, but it changed the air. He leaned forward, tossing another kernel up and catching it, saying louder this time, “You seeing this, Con? I’m practically a circus act over here and she’s still not impressed.”
Connor smirked without looking away from the screen. “Maybe she just likes the movie.”
“Maybe she likes you being so serious all the time,” Owen shot back, grin intact, but an edge threaded his voice.
Margot shifted, the blanket slipping from her knee. “Stop,” she said, half laughing and half warning, as if she’d sensed the undercurrent. She reached for Owen’s hand under the blanket and squeezed it, freckles bright in the flickering light.
He squeezed back automatically. He never let her feel a gap. But when her hand slipped away a few minutes later, her eyes strayed back to Connor. Owen, meanwhile, leaned back into the sagging futon, grin plastered on, his heart ticking faster. He kept making her laugh, because he always could, but tonight Connor’s silence pressed harder than any joke could push away.
The movie played on, the popcorn grew cold, and the triangle between them, barely a shadow before, began to take its shape.
—–
A few nights later, a knock at the door forced Owen up from where he’d been sprawled across the living room rug, math homework half-finished. The fire chief stood there with his hat in his hands. There were no sirens, and his face said more than words ever could. Owen’s father had called out his location—then silence, smoke too thick, and heat too sudden, and a roof had given way unexpectedly.
At the funeral, the town gathered in rows that felt endless. The firehouse stood in dress blues, white gloves pressed against folded caps. The casket was draped in the flag, polished wood gleaming under the gray September sky. His helmet sat on top, his badge catching the light one last time.
Owen stood between his grandfather and Margot, with Connor close by, jaw clenched so tight his teeth ached. Margot’s hand caught his sleeve, anchoring him as the bagpipes keened. When the chief called his father’s name, the silence that followed rang louder than any bell.
His grandfather’s hand closed around his then, strong and steady, a grounding weight. The old man’s thumb rubbed once across Owen’s knuckles. He didn’t say it would be alright. He never lied like that. He just stood there, shoulders square, and carrying Owen’s grief alongside his own.
That night, Owen sat out on the pier. The lake lay like a smoked mirror under the moon, and Margot came out first, her ginger waves whipped by the wind. She sat beside him without a word, knees drawn up, and for a long while, he pretended not to notice the way her shoulder leaned into his.
Later, Connor joined them, lowering himself onto the planks with that quiet gravity of his. The three of them sat together—no words, just breath, just the lap of the lake.
The house felt too big without his father’s voice, but his grandfather filled it as best he could. He taught Owen how to patch a roof, how to change the oil in the truck, how to make coffee strong enough to last a morning’s work. They even began restoring an old ’70s series Land Cruiser. It was a mess, but Owen loved it from the beginning. Grief hollowed him, but something else took root too: a stubborn, smoldering fire that would not go out.
In the evenings, they gathered on the porch overlooking the lake. His grandfather smoked his pipe, ember glowing red in the dim. Margot curled on the railing, sipping ginger ale from the can, legs swinging idly. Connor slouched in the wicker chair, a book open on his lap.
Sometimes they talked about the weather, about Owen’s dream to follow his dad into the firehouse, about the way engines breathed if you listened right. Other times, they just sat, the silence heavy, but never empty.
—–
The Bonneville still waited in the shed, patient and silent. His dad had admitted long ago it was really Owen’s bike. Some nights Owen wandered in alone, trailing his fingers over cold chrome, over cracked leather. He imagined himself riding it—the wind in his face, the world unspooling beneath him, free and fierce.
But the world was shifting, Margot was shifting, and Connor, too.
Margot’s laugh came easiest when Owen teased her, when he tugged her braid or stole the last slice of pizza. But more and more, he caught the way she looked at Connor—head tilted, eyes softer, drawn to that quiet steadiness Owen could never quite match. And sometimes Connor’s gaze lingered back. Not long, not bold, but long enough that Owen saw it.
He wasn’t upset. That surprised him. He loved Margot. He loved Connor. He should say something, and he would, eventually, and when he did, the three of them would become even more knotted together—by loss, by loyalty, and by something new none of them had the language for. On the porch, in the shed, at the lake, their lives blurred until it was hard to know where one ended and the other began.
And Owen, sixteen and raw with grief, began to understand something sharp and uneasy: the people you loved most could also be the ones you had to fight hardest to keep.
======
Marseille
Amélie was eighteen, but life had carved her into someone who could have passed for twenty-five. Her body had lengthened into elegance, the first suggestion of curves tempered by wiry precision. Her silence had hardened into presence. It was something people felt before they even saw her.
In bars, eyes tracked her. She was mysterious, alluring, and dangerously beautiful. But on jobs, she made sure no one ever caught her face, only the cold echo of her absence afterward. Armand began to boast of her skill, wearing it like pride. But pride was just another chain.
He sat in the apartment that night, a bottle of Armagnac on the table, the heavy scent clinging to the air. His knife lay beside the glass, sharpened and polished, always within reach. He had trained her to notice such things: knives, exits, the rhythm of a man’s breathing. She wasn’t sure if he’d ever guessed all his training would come back and bite him. Surely he must have considered it.
Amélie moved quietly through the room, Saint Joan’s medal cool against her chest. Her shadow stretched across the wall as she poured him another glass, the liquid catching the lamp glow like fire. He watched her with that flat expression that said: you are mine, you will always be mine.
She smiled, and for once, the smile was real, but it wasn’t for him.
When she slid the knife from the table, there was just enough time for his eyes to widen slightly. But she was faster; she had always been faster. The blade kissed his throat in a single, patient line. It ended so quickly she wondered, for a moment, if it had happened at all.
Then blood welled, hot and red, spilling over his collar. He clawed at it, at her, at the life leaving him.
Amélie held him steady, hand firm on his shoulder. She leaned close, lips almost to his ear. “Patience,” she whispered—his word, his lesson. She’d taken it to heart.
He shuddered once, twice, then stilled. When it was done, she wiped the blade, set it neatly on the table, and walked into the night. She never looked back. From then on, there was no Armand. No teacher, no master. Only Amélie.
In the months and years after Armand’s blood dried on the floor, Amélie worked alone. Paris, Berlin, Prague. Men disappeared, debts were erased, networks unraveled. Contracts grew larger and more lucrative.
She left no mark but absence, no proof but silence. Those who looked closely found nothing at all—only a shadow, a rumor, a woman glimpsed at the edge of a room and then gone.
And still, a name began to spread.
At first, it came in fragments, carried in smoke-filled bars and whispered across tables where no one dared raise their eyes. A saint’s name, twisted and wrong. Rumors spread that she wore a medal, a glint of gold against her collarbone, the faint impression of Joan’s face rubbed nearly smooth with age. Imagination filled in the rest.
The name they gave her was blasphemy and reverence in the same breath: devotion and profanity welded together. To some, it was superstition. To others, it meant a contract fulfilled before the ink dried. To all, though, it meant fear.
Amélie heard the name, of course, and it stung. Shame stayed close to her, but she never corrected them. She didn’t need to. She had accepted what she’d become. Ghosts belonged to the dead, but saints endured, even in the shadows, even broken and burned to ash. And so she endured. And so she thrived. A figure made of patience and silence and consequence.
La Sainte Obscure. The Saint in Shadow.
======
Saratoga Springs, 2013.
The bus idled at the edge of the lot, exhaust ghosting into the morning air. Owen’s duffel bag sat at his feet, straps worn, everything he owned for the next stretch of his life stuffed inside. He stood with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders squared against the chill. His hair was cropped short now, his frame sharpened with the training runs he’d put himself through for months. Margot and Connor stood with him. The three of them had been side by side for so long it felt strange to picture them breaking formation.
Margot reached for him first, her red hair whipped up in the late summer breeze, eyes shining with something she didn’t want to name. She pressed herself against him, arms tight around his neck, and before he could say anything, her mouth was on his.
It wasn’t a peck. It was deep, lingering, hungry with everything they’d never had the chance to be. A kiss like fire poured straight into his chest. She kissed him like she needed him to carry it with him, wherever he was going. And, when she pulled back, her freckles were blotched with tears.
Connor stood a step away, not flinching, not scowling, just watching with his jaw set hard. He understood, and Owen felt it. Connor moved in then, clasping Owen’s shoulder, grip strong enough to bruise. His brown eyes were steady, serious, grounded. “Be safe,” he said low. “Come back.”
Owen nodded, grin tugging at the corners even through the weight in his chest. “Yeah. That’s the plan.” He squeezed Connor’s arm back, then added, “Look after Pop, alright?”
“I will,” Connor said. No hesitation.
The bus driver leaned out the door, calling him in, and Owen swung his duffel over his shoulder, the strap biting into his palm. He gave them both one last look—Margot with her red hair blazing against the gray sky, Connor with his rooted steadiness beside her, his arm around her waist—and he felt the pull of them, the strange, impossible knot they’d tied together.
Then he turned and climbed aboard, engine growling to life beneath his boots.
Through the window, as the bus pulled away, he caught one last glimpse: Margot clinging to Connor’s arm, Connor folding her tight against his chest. The sight lodged in him like shrapnel. Owen leaned back into the seat, heart pounding, Margot’s kiss still burning on his lips, and Connor’s words heavy as ballast in whatever lay ahead.
======
Chapter One
Saratoga Springs, Present Day (Twelve Years Later)
The bakery burned. Flames shoved through broken windows, smoke dragging black into the night. Upstairs, apartments glowed orange; heat turned shadows into writhing things.
Owen knelt at the door, mask tight in his hands, Halligan steady at his side. His breath filled the seal—controlled, and steady with the rhythm he’d taught himself in the Corps and never forgotten.
“Two still in there!” Connor’s voice cut across the chaos, clipped and sharp. Lieutenant’s bar gleaming faintly in the firelight. “Second floor!”
Owen rose in one motion. “Copy.”
He started forward, but the rookie shouldered past, all raw muscle and no sense. “I’ve got it!”
“Hills—” Too late. He was already up the stairs, line dry, and seal bad. Owen muttered a curse and moved in after him.
The stairwell groaned, fire pressing down like weight. Hills kicked a door wide and vented straight into the hall. The backdraft hit like a freight train, sucking the air and rolling smoke and heat through the space. He stumbled, and almost lost it.
That’s when Owen saw them: two shapes at the far end. A kid, maybe seventeen, clutching a woman slumped against the wall. Fire crawled fast toward them.
“Hills! Back it up, now!” Owen’s voice cracked like a rifle shot.
The rookie froze, wide-eyed, and the floor sagged, its timbers popping under the heat. Owen grabbed his coat and yanked him back a step. “Move your ass before I make you part of the furniture!”
That broke him. Hills stumbled down, out of the way, and Owen dropped low, beam sweeping until it caught the boy’s face—soot-streaked, terror wide in his eyes.
“Hands on me,” Owen said, flat, sure, and leaving no room for doubt.
The kid obeyed. Owen got the woman over his shoulder. She was a dead weight, but his legs held, and together they staggered back toward the stairs. The floor howled as wood split, and the roar of the fire was deafening.
“Don’t stop!” Owen bellowed. His back screamed, arms shaking, but momentum carried them through. Then daylight. Cool air.
They spilled onto the street. Margot and the medic crew were already there. Her hands were on the boy in an instant, checking his vitals. Then she dropped fast to the woman, her movements calm and practiced.
“She’s still breathing,” Connor called. A beat later, he shot Owen a look through soot, a grin flickering at the corner of his mouth. “Hell, Hale. Thought I was gonna have to come drag you out myself.”
Owen ripped his mask off, steam rising from his sweat-drenched face. He shoved the helmet into Connor’s chest. “Yeah? You’d look terrible carrying me. Bad optics, boss.”
Margot snorted under her breath but didn’t look up from the boy, copper hair damp with sweat, eyes only on her patient. Connor barked a laugh, but knew better than to push it. He turned, calling orders as the sirens spiked when the woman was loaded onto the rig.
Owen spun back on Hills. The rookie’s mask was loose, eyes wide. Owen reached out and ripped it off his face, then shoved him full in the chest, driving him back a step. Hills was the larger man, but Owen had mastered how to use his own strength and advanced on him. “You ever pull that cowboy stunt again and you’ll be washing rigs till your hands fall off. You move when I say move. You breathe when I say breathe. You nearly cooked them—and us—with your hero crap.”
Hills opened his mouth, but nothing came out. And then, Connor’s voice cut in sharply, “That’s enough, Hale, we’ll debrief later.”
Owen’s chest heaved under the weight of his gear, his body quivering with adrenaline and anger, his sweat soaking his back. He dragged a glove over his face as he forced his pulse down.
—–
Owen hadn’t planned on leaving the Marines five years ago. The Corps had carved itself into his bones, and he’d thought he’d wear the uniform until it wore him down. Then Connor and Margot called with the news that his grandfather was sick. The man who helped raise him was fading, so Owen packed his duffel without hesitation.
Coming home was less a decision than instinct. By the time the old man passed, Owen knew he couldn’t go back. Connor and Margot—they were married now—they were the ones who steadied him through it, best friends who had always been more. Connor was his brother.
And Margot… well, she was Margot.
Connor was already a firefighter then, and Owen followed him (and his dad) into the Saratoga Springs Fire Department. Different uniform, different brotherhood, same pull toward danger, same drive to throw themselves into the fire if it meant someone else walked out alive.
—–
Saratoga Springs wore its history like a well-cut coat: clean lines, old bones, quiet glamour beneath the surface. Broadway’s brick façades gleamed under fresh paint, coffee shops spilling warm light onto sidewalks where college kids, old money, and track-season tourists mingled without ever quite blending.
Ten minutes out of town, the air shifted. The bustle softened, the trees closed in, and Saratoga Lake opened wide and silver, catching light like glass. Along its shore, houses leaned toward the water—some clapboard cottages sagging with age, others gleaming retreats with wide decks and perfect lawns.
Owen’s place sat somewhere between.
His grandfather’s weatherboard house—his house now—rose two stories, white siding faded soft by time, shutters dark and crooked on their hinges. The porch stretched across the front, swing chain still squeaking from where his grandfather used to polish it every spring.
The gravel drive crunched under the tyres of his ’70s series Land Cruiser, the one he had restored with his grandfather. It led to the wide shed where the half-restored Triumph Bonneville still slept beneath a tarp, wrenches and socket sets spread across the bench like a battlefield half-abandoned. He couldn’t explain why he never got around to finishing it.
The lake waited at the back of the property. A weathered pier reached into it, boards groaning with each step. In summer, Owen dove off the end at dawn, scars silver in the water. In winter, frost rimmed the planks and the lake lay still, black and secretive.
The house was imperfect and in mid-renovation. Drywall sheets leaned against studs, an air compressor hunched in the hall. The kitchen was half-gutted: one wall stripped to beams, the other lined with new oak cabinets he’d set himself. A steel sink sat boxed and waiting. Paint swatches curled on the fridge under magnets, next to a calendar scrawled with shift rotations and firehouse notes. The dining table was covered in clamps, planks, and an old circular saw.
It didn’t look polished. It looked lived-in. It looked like Owen.
He dropped his turnout jacket by the door, boots thumping hard on the mat. The place smelled of sawdust, leather, and strong coffee, a rough sort of comfort.
And then, from the couch came the low thud of paws hitting the floor. Ed Sheeran padded out, red coat catching the dim light, eyes bright and sharp. He was no purebred showpiece— with his rangy build, and ears too big and slightly askew—but he carried himself with rakish grace.
In his mouth dangled the chewed-off handle of a paintbrush. He held it like a prize, tail sweeping once in a slow, satisfied arc.
“Really, Ed Sheeran?” Owen asked, voice caught somewhere between weary and amused. “That’s what you’ve been guarding the house with?”
The dog dropped it at his feet, unblinking, then sat squarely, chest forward, as if daring Owen to contradict him. For all his quirks—stealing tools, and claiming the couch as his own—he was loyal through and through.
Owen crouched and moved his rough hand over the thick fur at Ed Sheeran’s neck. “You’re a menace,” he muttered, warmth betraying him.
Ed Sheeran leaned into the touch, gave a single decisive huff, and trotted back toward the couch, sprawling with the casual confidence of a creature who knew he belonged.
Owen shook his head, running a hand through his own hair. Silence pressed in, broken only by the dog’s steady breathing. He climbed the stairs, muscles aching, smoke still in his pores, already picturing the relief of hot water and steam.
The bathroom he’d finished first: square dark tiles, brushed metal fixtures, shelves stacked with plain white towels, a bottle of cologne, and his father’s old straight razor propped beside his own electric. It wasn’t pretty, but it was his.
He stripped down, dropping his gear in a pile, sweat-dark shirt clinging as he tugged it off. At the sink, he hesitated, fingers at his wrist. The watch sat there, familiar weight—his dad’s old one, leather band cracked and darkened, navy blue face scratched but solid.
He unbuckled it carefully, setting it on the counter. For a moment, his wrist felt bare, exposed. Then he stepped under the spray.
Water hammered against him, sluicing smoke and grime down his back and the light coat of hair on his chest. He braced his hands on the tile, head bowed, steam rising around him. Heat soaked into sore muscles, across the ridges of his scars, and through the taut lines of his stomach.
His breath slowed, but the ache in his body didn’t. It sharpened. He cursed under his breath, half growl and half laugh. “Fuck, I need to get laid.”
Margot’s face intruded, and the sound of her laugh still lit him up, even after all this time. She and Connor were good together. He told himself that was enough. But, still, the knot pressed like a bruise in his chest, refusing to ease, even here, even now.
Rachael’s face came next, uninvited. He’d met her shortly after retiring from the Marines. She’d made promises, but her eyes wandered when she traveled down to New York for joint operations and training. He never asked how many times she’d cheated. He didn’t need the exact number. Twice, three times, more? It didn’t matter. The weight of one betrayal was heavy enough.
Steam curled thicker in the air and his hand drifted down, more rough than tender, calloused palm grazing his stomach before slipping lower. He was already hard, thick with blood, and the ache was demanding. He wrapped his hand around his shaft, firm, steady, dragging it down in one practiced pull. His hips jerked in answer, a guttural sound slipping out as the shower hissed louder, drowning the quiet with its relentless rush.
He found a pace, rough and efficient. His teeth clenched, breath rasping against tile. He stroked harder, faster, until the coil snapped deep in his gut.
The climax ripped through him suddenly and fiercely, his whole frame bowing, and a groan was torn raw from his chest. Heat spilled across his hand, water washing it away as fast as it came. He sagged forward, forehead against cool tile, chest heaving.
For a long moment, he just breathed, steam wrapping him, water pounding down. He wasn’t fixed, but he felt lighter. He washed himself, rinsed off, grabbed a towel, and padded into the bedroom. The air was cooler there, dust motes catching in the fanlight. He tugged on a clean plain white T-shirt, worn denim jeans, and boots scuffed from years of life. In the mirror, his reflection stared back: He worked a bit of clay through his hair, scratched at his rough jaw, and looked into his pale blue eyes.
“Good enough,” he muttered, tugging the watch back onto his wrist. He rolled his shoulders, grabbed his keys, and headed for the door.
The night air wrapped cool around Owen’s bare forearms. Crickets hummed low in the grass, and his porch lights glowed across the front yard. Fall was biting at summer’s heels—sharp air with warmth still clinging to it.
He walked toward his Cruiser, standing like an old warhorse: boxy, stubborn, still alive. The door groaned as he hauled it open. He slid into the smell of motor oil, sun-baked vinyl, and black coffee that had spilled years ago into the mats and never really left. Pine needles and sawdust clung to the floor.
He wrapped a hand around the worn steering wheel and turned the key. The engine came to life with a throaty rumble, vibrating through his legs, steady and sure. Owen smirked, tapping the dash with his palm. “Still got it, old girl,” he muttered, as if the truck were listening.
Gravel spat from under the tires as he pulled onto the road. The headlights sliced across his house before sliding away in his mirrors. Night poured in through the cracked window, sharp and clean. The truck’s growl carried him forward, the road opening like a dare.
By the time he rolled into Saratoga proper, the streets buzzed with weekend noise—neon humming, music spilling from brick-front bars, laughter tumbling onto sidewalks. He swung the Cruiser into a spot outside a corner bar, engine grumbling low before he killed it.
For a moment, he stayed there, hands loose on the wheel and sighed. He felt it in his chest: the old itch. Restless. Hungry. He shoved the door open, his boots thudding against pavement, and walked inside.
======
Amélie liked cities that could swallow her whole. Places with enough chaos that her edges blurred, where noise drowned memory. Marseille had done it, Cairo too, Lisbon, sometimes. New York, of course—until her job last week complicated things.
Saratoga was different. Too small, too neat. But, that was the point. She was here to lie low for a while. Even so, she had found a corner that reminded her of the cities that shaped her: a bar where shadows held sway and strangers didn’t ask questions.
The walls were brick and damp with age. Beams sagged under smoke sunk too deep to wash out. Laughter rolled in uneven bursts across the low thrum of a guitar. A jukebox flickered in the corner, neon catching on glassware and the curve of whiskey bottles.
Amélie sat tucked deep in the booth, half-swallowed by its high walls and shadow. Her cropped brown leather jacket hung open, framing the black silk camisole beneath. Each rise and fall of her breath sent a faint sheen rippling across the fabric in the low light. Dark denim traced the long lines of her legs, curving over her hips, while ankle-high brown boots grounded her with quiet authority.
The look was casual, almost careless, yet sharpened by effortless elegance. Her hair was down tonight, loose waves spilling glossy around her face, grazing her collarbones. She didn’t fidget or search the room. She simply sat there, stillness commanding in its own quiet way.
In her hand, the whiskey glass gleamed, cool on the outside, fire burning amber within. She cradled it lazily, as though the glass itself were a secret worth keeping. Every now and then, she lifted it, lips grazing the rim, mouth as deliberate as the rest of her.
Men had already noticed her, of course, but none had dared approach, yet. Something in her presence warned against it: magnetic danger wrapped in elegance, beauty that felt like a knife’s edge pressed lightly against the throat.
Tonight, she wasn’t interested in company. At least, that’s what she told herself. But then the door opened.
Cold air rushed in, and a tall man stepped through: short dark hair, broad shoulders, his jaw roughened by stubble. He carried himself with a looseness that bordered on cocky, boots heavy against the warped floorboards, blue eyes sweeping the room with an easy, irreverent smile.
“Hey! Hale!” a voice called from near the bar.
He turned toward it, grin widening. A couple perched on stools already: one man, steady and broad, his presence quiet but commanding; and a woman with red hair spilling down her shoulders, yellow dress brushing her thighs. She laughed at something the man said, the sound bright enough to ripple through the noise.
The dark-haired newcomer—Hale—cut across the room toward them, and the crowd shifted without thinking, making way. The redhead’s laughter, the man’s grounded weight beside her, and Hale’s swagger changed the temperature in the room. It changed hers.
She lifted her glass and let the rim hide her mouth. One drink, she had told herself. One drink and then out. But something told her now that she wasn’t going to keep that promise. Amélie, who never lingered and never stayed, found herself unwilling to look away from the newcomer.
Owen leaned against the bar, one boot hooked on the stool’s rung, shoulders loose, grin wide. Connor had just dropped the punchline and Owen barked a laugh, sound carrying easily over the din. Across from him, Margot’s freckled shoulders shook with her own laughter, the rim of her glass catching the neon glow as she tried—and failed—to keep it together.
It felt easy. Familiar. Jokes ricocheted, stories swelling taller with every retelling. “Hell no,” Owen said, pointing at Connor with mock outrage. “You did not light firecrackers under those bleachers.”
Connor shot him the flat look he’d perfected back in high school, deadpan as ever. “You were the one who dared me to.”
Margot snorted into her drink, nearly choking. “And you both nearly got suspended. Honestly, you should have.”
“Worth it,” Owen fired back, raising his glass in salute. They clinked, laughter spilling out again. For a moment, it was as though the years folded back and they were kids again, bruised knees and bad ideas and summers that felt infinite.
He should have stayed there, warm in that circle. But his gaze drifted and caught on a booth in the back.
She sat half-shadowed, leather jacket open to reveal silk beneath. Black, cut low enough to hint at the curve of her breasts. Dark hair spilled glossy, catching what little light the room offered, strands grazing the line of her collarbone and the rise of her chest. She didn’t smile, and she didn’t fidget.
Everything about her read as control: unhurried, deliberate, as if the room existed around her rather than with her. One arm stretched along the booth’s edge, claiming space without effort. The other held a whiskey glass in long fingers. When she tipped it, amber fractured the light and threw gold up her wrist and into the hollow of her throat.
Then she raised her eyes, and they locked on him, and the room snapped still.
It wasn’t just her beauty—though that hit like a strike. It was the way she looked: direct, commanding, as if she wasn’t merely seeing him but weighing him. Owen’s grin faltered, and his breath caught in his chest. For once, words didn’t come to him.
“She’s got you,” Margot murmured, following his stare. Her grin turned sly as she nudged his arm. “Oh, what’s this? The great Owen Hale, tongue-tied?”
Connor glanced over, then back at him, eyebrow raised. “She’s beautiful.” His tone was matter-of-fact, as if that explained everything. Margot raised a brow at him.
Owen dragged a hand through his hair, trying for casual and failing. Heat climbed his neck. “Yeah. I noticed.”
Margot’s laughter was soft but merciless. A little jealousy edged her tone. “Go on, then.”
Connor leaned closer, voice low but amused. “She looked right at you, brother. That doesn’t happen by accident.”
Owen tried to shrug it off, but his chest still felt tight, breath still tangled from that one look. She was back to her whiskey now, eyes hidden beneath her lashes, but the echo of it still burned through him.
“Yeah,” he muttered, half to himself, half to them. “Easier said than done.”
Margot bumped her glass against his. “Not for you, Hale. Go.”
Connor smirked. “Or we’ll tell her ourselves you’ve been staring.”
Owen groaned, dropped his head back, but the grin crept in despite himself. His pulse still hadn’t slowed, and across the room she sat like a secret, like a dare. So he drained the last of his beer, slapped the empty down on the bar, and dragged a hand through his hair. “Alright,” he said, half-grinning and half-grimacing. “If she throws a drink in my face, I’m blaming you two.”
“Just walk,” Margot sang after him, voice lilting with mock encouragement. Beneath it though, a selfish hope tugged sharp and mean—that he would crash and burn with this woman, so she wouldn’t have to watch the spark in his eyes belong to someone else. She’d endured all of that with Rachael, watched him ache through the betrayals. It had cut her too, though part of her had been quietly relieved when the truth surfaced and he finally walked away. Still, deep down, she knew the day would come when she’d have to let him go for real.
Owen moved. Boots heavy on the warped floorboards, shoulders loose, grin widening with each step. Inside, his chest thumped like a drumline, but he wore swagger like armor. He cut across the room, weaving through the crowd until he stood at her booth, looking down into the eyes that had already unraveled him from across the bar.
She hadn’t moved. And, she didn’t flinch when he stopped at her table. She only lifted her gaze slowly, whiskey glass still poised in her hand, as though weighing him like a hand of cards she already knew she’d win.
A delicate gold chain glimmered at her throat, dipping between her breasts. Something small and worn hung at the end, but from here he couldn’t make it out—at least, not without staring long enough to truly earn a drink in the face.
His mouth slanted into an easy grin, and his voice pitched low enough to cut under the noise. “You know,” he said, “I’m not usually the guy who does the dramatic cross-the-room thing.”
He nodded at her glass. “But something told me I’d regret it forever if I didn’t come over to you. So… can I buy you another?”
======
