RUN!!!!
Chapter One — Run
Clara Bennett had been running for almost twenty minutes, and she no longer knew where she was.
The rain had turned the streets into a blur of headlights and shadows, soaking through her clothes and making her shoes slide against the pavement each time she turned a corner. Her chest burned from the effort of breathing, but she did not dare slow down. Every time she heard the sound of an engine behind her, panic tightened around her throat, and every time she looked over her shoulder, she expected to see the black SUV that had been following her since she left the university.
She had no idea why they wanted her.
That was the worst part.
If she had stolen something, betrayed someone, witnessed a crime or even known the people chasing her, at least she would have understood what she was running from. But she had done nothing. She had simply gone to class that afternoon, stopped at a pharmacy on her way home, and found a dead man sitting in the back seat of her car.
She had screamed.
Then she had run.
She had not even realised the man was dead at first. He had been sitting upright, his head tilted slightly toward the window, as though he had fallen asleep. It was only when Clara opened the passenger door that she saw the blood spreading across his white shirt.
She had stepped backward in shock.
That was when the first gunshot shattered the silence.
The rear window of her car exploded.
Clara had run without thinking.
Now she was somewhere she did not recognise, hiding behind a row of abandoned shops while rainwater ran down her face and mixed with the tears she refused to acknowledge.
She pressed one hand over her mouth and tried to control her breathing.
A vehicle passed slowly at the end of the street.
Black.
Large.
Clara stopped breathing.
The vehicle slowed.
She closed her eyes.
Please keep going.
The headlights swept across the buildings and disappeared.
Clara waited.
Ten seconds.
Twenty.
Thirty.
Then she heard a car door slam.
Her stomach dropped.
They had found her.
She looked around desperately. There was nowhere to go. The shops beside her were locked, the street behind her was blocked by a high fence, and the only road out was the one where the men were approaching.
She saw a narrow opening between two buildings.
It was barely wide enough for her shoulders.
She squeezed through.
Her handbag caught on a piece of broken metal, and she nearly cried out when it tore. She pulled herself free and continued forward until she found herself in a dark courtyard surrounded by tall walls.
Dead end.
“No,” she whispered.
Footsteps sounded behind her.
Clara turned.
Three men entered the courtyard.
They were dressed in dark clothes, and the man in front was holding a gun.
She backed away.
“Please,” she said, her voice trembling. “I don't know anything.”
The man looked at her with no expression.
“You know enough.”
“I don't.”
“You saw him.”
“I didn't see anything.”
“You saw the body.”
Clara shook her head desperately.
“I didn't kill him.”
“We know.”
The man raised his gun.
“That isn't why we're here.”
Clara's heart stopped.
Before he could say anything else, the sound of another vehicle approaching filled the courtyard.
The three men turned.
A black Maybach came through the gates.
It stopped directly between Clara and the armed men.
For a moment, nobody moved.
Then the rear door opened.
A man stepped out.
Clara had never seen him before, but something about him immediately made the men with the guns lower their weapons.
He was dressed in a perfectly tailored black suit despite the rain, and his expression was so calm that it was almost frightening. He looked at the three men as though they were an inconvenience he had expected to deal with eventually.
“Leave,” he said.
The man holding the gun stared at him.
“This doesn't concern you, Sterling.”
Clara looked from one man to the other.
Sterling.
She knew that name.
Alexander Sterling.
The billionaire.
The man whose companies controlled half the city's luxury real estate and whose name appeared everywhere from financial newspapers to gossip columns. Clara had seen his photographs before, but photographs had never captured what stood before her now.
Alexander Sterling did not look like a businessman.
He looked like a man who was accustomed to people being afraid of him.
“You have five seconds,” Alexander said.
The gunman laughed nervously.
“You think your money makes you untouchable?”
“No.”
Alexander's voice remained calm.
“My money is the least dangerous thing about me.”
Nobody spoke.
Then one of the men raised his weapon.
Everything happened at once.
Alexander's security team moved from the vehicle, and the courtyard erupted into chaos. Clara heard gunshots, saw one of the men fall, and instinctively covered her head. Someone grabbed her arm.
She screamed and fought back.
“Let me go!”
“Stop.”
She looked up.
Alexander was standing in front of her.
“Get in the car.”
“I don't know you.”
“You don't have time to know me.”
“I am not going anywhere with you.”
His expression hardened.
“Then stay here and die.”
Clara stared at him.
For one horrible second, neither of them moved.
Then another gunshot struck the wall beside her.
Alexander grabbed her around the waist and pulled her behind him.
“Get down.”
Clara hated him instantly.
She hated his arrogance, his coldness and the way he spoke to her as though she were another problem he had to solve. Most of all, she hated that despite everything, she had no choice but to follow him.
He pushed her into the back of the Maybach and got in after her.
The doors locked.
The car accelerated.
Clara pressed herself against the opposite door, breathing heavily as the mansion-sized vehicle sped through the rain.
Alexander sat across from her, perfectly composed.
There was a small streak of blood on his cuff.
Clara stared at it.
“Are you going to kill me too?”
His eyes lifted to hers.
“No.”
“How reassuring.”
“You should be grateful.”
“For what? Being kidnapped?”
“You were not kidnapped.”
“You dragged me into your car.”
“I saved your life.”
“I didn't ask you to.”
“No,” he said. “You were too busy running.”
Clara glared at him.
“Who are those people?”
Alexander looked out of the window.
“That is no longer your concern.”
“They were trying to kill me.”
“I know.”
“How?”
He looked back at her.
“Because they were working for someone who has been trying to find you for twenty-two years.”
Clara's anger disappeared.
“What?”
Alexander said nothing.
She stared at him.
“What did you just say?”
Before he could answer, his phone rang.
He looked at the screen.
Something changed in his expression.
“What is it?” Clara asked.
He ignored her and answered the call.
“Speak.”
A man's voice came through the phone.
Clara could not hear the words, but she saw Alexander's jaw tighten.
“How long?”
Another pause.
“Understood.”
He ended the call.
Clara waited.
“What happened?”
Alexander looked at her.
“Your apartment has been searched.”
Her blood went cold.
“My mother?”
“She is gone.”
Clara's face crumpled.
“What do you mean she's gone?”
“She disappeared three hours ago.”
“No.”
Clara shook her head.
“No, she was at home this morning. I spoke to her.”
Alexander watched her carefully.
“She left something for you.”
“What?”
He reached into his jacket and handed her a small envelope.
Clara opened it with trembling fingers.
Inside was a photograph.
Her mother was standing beside a much younger Alexander Sterling.
On the back, in her mother's handwriting, were six words.
Do not trust the man who saves you.
Clara slowly looked up.
Alexander was watching her.
For the first time since he had entered the courtyard, the coldness in his expression had disappeared.
Something darker had replaced it.
“You need to understand something, Clara.”
She said nothing.
“The people chasing you are not trying to kill you because of what you saw tonight.”
“Then why?”
Alexander leaned forward.
“Because of who you are.”
Clara stared at him.
He reached across the seat and took the photograph from her trembling hands.
“You are not the daughter of the man you were told was your father.”
She felt as though the air had been knocked out of her.
Alexander's voice became quieter.
“You are the daughter of the man who built the organisation I now control.”
Clara could barely breathe.
“What organisation?”
He looked directly into her eyes.
“The one that just put a price on your head.”
The car continued through the darkness, carrying Clara deeper into the world she had spent her entire life unknowingly running from.
And sitting across from her was the man she already hated.
The man who knew the truth about her family.
The man whose secrets could destroy her.
The man who, by sunrise, would become the only person standing between Clara and everyone who wanted her dead.
