Prologue
Roman
One Year Earlier
I can feel the vibrations of the street beneath the leather seats of the limousine.
Elena rests in my arms, her head against my shoulder, her soft breaths brushing the side of my neck. Rain lashes the windows almost horizontally now, turning the city’s lights into blurred streaks of color beyond the glass.
I’m happy.
The word feels painfully inadequate for what I’m feeling, but I can’t think of a better one.
The world is in the palm of my hand.
And the most important part of it is asleep beside me.
“Roman,” she whispers softly.
Her eyes, the eyes that seem to hold the entire universe, meet mine.
“What do you think?” she asks. “Will the baby have your blue eyes?”
I laugh.
A deep, genuine laugh, one that has nothing to do with election campaigns or Senate battles.
“If the baby has your eyes,” I say, kissing her forehead, “I’ve already won the world.”
Her skin is warm.
Sweet.
Familiar.
Then everything changes.
It doesn’t begin with a sound.
It begins with a violent jolt that throws the limousine completely off balance.
The armored vehicle shudders as something unimaginably massive slams into its side.
Only then does the noise come.
The scream of twisting steel.
Metal crumpling like paper.
Glass exploding.
Tires shrieking across wet asphalt.
The world becomes a single spinning nightmare.
We’re flying.
Sliding.
Rolling helplessly through the darkness as impact after impact crashes into us, as if some giant hand is tossing us across a table.
I see Elena’s face.
The panic that twists her beautiful features burns itself into my memory forever.
I don’t pray for my own life.
I reach for her hand.
I have to protect her.
I want my body to absorb every blow that’s tearing our car apart.
Then comes one final, deafening explosion.
Everything stops.
The silence afterward is more terrifying than the crash itself.
A piercing ringing fills my ears.
The air is thick.
Heavy.
The smell of gasoline burns my lungs.
“Elena?”
The voice sounds like mine, yet it feels as though someone else is speaking.
Blood trickles into my eyes, staining my vision crimson.
No answer.
The door beside me is gone entirely.
Cold rain pours freely into the wreckage.
I fight with my seatbelt, my fingernails scraping against twisted metal until they tear open.
I don’t care.
I drag myself out of the wreck and collapse into the mud.
The freezing rain strikes my skin like thousands of needles.
I reach back inside.
I have to pull her out.
I have to get her out of there.
The moment my fingers touch her face…
My heart stops.
She’s pale.
Her skin…
God…
Why is it so cold?
“Elena… please…”
My voice breaks as my trembling fingers search desperately for a pulse in her neck.
Nothing.
Only silence.
The tiny pair of baby shoes she’d proudly shown me only moments earlier lies among the wreckage, floating in a muddy puddle, completely soaked.
I start CPR.
I press against her chest over and over while tears mix with rain and blood on my face.
Please…
Beat.
Please…
Beat.
Nothing.
Death has settled here in a single merciless instant.
And I cannot drive it away.
I can’t do it anymore.
A sound tears free from somewhere far deeper than my throat.
A raw, broken howl born from the darkest place inside my soul.
It drowns out even the wail of the approaching sirens.
I’ve lost my light.
The only point on the map that ever made life worth living.
As the paramedics pull me away from her with rough hands, I touch her fingers one last time.
They’re already growing stiff beneath mine.
In that moment, I know something inside me has been severed forever.
Roman Crawford…
The man.
The President.
The father to be.
He dies here…
In the mud beside her.
Everything that comes afterward isn’t living.
It’s only a long, gray, merciless protocol for survival.
A routine designed for one purpose alone.
To stop feeling.
To stop remembering.
But the darkness wrapping itself around me now…
It has no intention of ever letting me go.
