It started with a note.
No name, no signature. Just five words written in neat block letters:
“Come alone. Trust yourself.”
The location was scrawled beneath — an old riverside café that had been shuttered for years, its windows boarded, its door chained from the inside.
Ava stood across the street now, her coat pulled tight against the bite of wind coming off the water. The rain had stopped hours ago, but the air still smelled of it — damp wood, rust, and something faintly electric.
She shouldn’t have come.
Every part of her training, every instinct Liam had drilled into her, said never walk into the lion’s den. But maybe she needed to know if the lion was already inside her home.
The lock on the café door had been broken recently; the chain hung loose, one end bent at an awkward
