Chapter 14 - A Promise Kept
Winter arrived early in Chicago, blanketing the city in a thick, pristine layer of white snow.
The morning of the first major snowfall, I woke up to the smell of roasted coffee beans and maple syrup drifting up the grand staircase.
When I walked down into the kitchen, Damian and Lily were already knee-deep in a flour war. Lily had managed to coat Damian’s dark sweater in white dust, while Damian pretended to look stern before scooping up a handful of powdered sugar and dusting the tip of her nose.
They both stopped when they saw me standing in the doorway.
“Mommy! Come help! Damian is losing the snowball fight and he’s cheating!” Lily shouted, waving a spatula like a sword.
“I am strategically regrouping,” Damian corrected smoothly, his eyes locking onto mine with a look that made every harsh memory of my undercover past dissolve into absolute nothingness.
I smiled, walking across the warm kitchen floor to join them.
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The federal badges, the undercover aliases, the syndicate wars, and the cold marble floors where a little girl had once been forced to scrub away a stain—they were all part of a chapter that had finally closed.
Here, in the warmth of this kitchen, surrounded by the people who mattered most, life was just beginning.
