Chapter 2 - THE DEVIL'S NAMES
“Leo,” he breathed out, the sheer force of his will the only thing keeping him conscious. His head rested back against the wire shelving of the pantry, his icy blue eyes fixed on the ceiling. “The boy is Leo. And the girl…” He swallowed hard, a grimace of agony flashing across his pale features. “Mia. Her name is Mia.”
“Leo and Mia,” I repeated softly. I kept my voice steady, though my hands were trembling so violently I nearly dropped the baby bottle.
Mia had finished eating. She let out a soft, contented sigh that felt entirely out of place in a room smelling of copper blood and industrial bleach. I carefully lifted her to my shoulder, patting her back until she let out a tiny burp. When I looked back at the stranger, his eyes were locked onto me. The feral, cornered-animal look had faded, replaced by something much sharper. He was analyzing me. Weighing my worth, my threat level, and my breaking point.
“My name is Kaelen,” he rasped. “Kaelen Vance.”
The name didn’t mean anything to me, but the way he said it—with a heavy, expectant weight—told me it probably should have. In Southie, there were names you didn't say out loud unless you wanted a brick through your window.
“Alright, Kaelen,” I said, keeping my tone strictly professional. Nursing school had taught me how to handle combative patients, even if it hadn't covered gunshot wounds in a diner pantry. “You can’t stay down here. The morning prep crew arrives at five A.M., and old man Sullivan doesn't take kindly to bloodstains on his inventory. I live upstairs. We’re moving.”
Kaelen let out a harsh, breathless laugh. “You want to take the bleeding man with a bounty on his head into your own bed? You’re either the bravest woman in Boston, Ella Harper, or the most foolish.”
He remembered my name from my nametag. I didn’t know whether to be impressed or terrified. “I’m the woman who doesn’t want my diner shot up. Can you stand?”
It took ten agonizing minutes to get him up the narrow, creaking staircase at the back of the building. I carried the twins in their tactical carrier against my chest, while Kaelen leaned heavily on my shoulder, his breath hitching with every step. By the time I unlocked my apartment door and kicked it shut behind us, he was dead weight. He collapsed onto my faded floral sofa, unconscious before his head hit the armrest.
I spent the next three hours in survival mode. I stripped his ruined shirt, cleaned the entry and exit wounds again, and stitched the ragged edges of his flesh using a sewing kit and a bottle of cheap vodka for sterilization. He didn't wake, but his body flinched with every pull of the thread. I set up a makeshift crib for Leo and Mia in my laundry basket, padding it with my softest blankets. They slept through it all, an unnatural, exhausted sleep.
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As dawn broke, casting a gray, bruised light through my blinds, I sat on the floor across from Kaelen Vance, watching his chest rise and fall. My apartment was a mess of bloody towels, tactical gear, and empty baby bottles. I had crossed a line tonight. I had harbored a fugitive, aided a criminal, and invited a war into my living room.
I looked at the stacks of hundred-dollar bills spilling from his backpack. There was enough money in there to pay off my nursing school debt three times over. But as I looked from the cash to the sleeping babies, I knew money wasn't going to save us. Kaelen Vance was running from the devil, and now, the devil knew my address.
