Chapter 1 - The Ghost in the Grease
The silence in the diner was thick enough to choke on.
Jax, the man with the scarred face, didn’t know it yet.
But he had just made the last mistake of his life.
His grip on my wrist was tight, bruising.
He thought I was soft.
He thought I was just a girl who smelled like cheap coffee and fried eggs.
I looked down at his hand.
Then I looked at Matthew Valentine.
Matthew was watching with a faint, amused smirk.
He wanted to see me break.
He wanted to see the "little waitress" cry for mercy.
I didn’t cry.
I didn’t even blink.
"Let go," I said.
My voice wasn't shaking.
It was cold.
Cold like the winters in the mountains where I had spent five years training.
Jax laughed, a wet, guttural sound.
"Or what, sweetheart? You gonna spill some sugar on me?"
I felt the old heat rising in my chest.
The heat I had buried for eighteen years.
The monster I had kept in a cage was scratching at the door.
"Last warning," I whispered.
Jax squeezed harder, intentionally trying to snap the bone.
In one fluid motion, I stopped being a waitress.
I rotated my wrist against his thumb, the weakest point of his grip.
His hand popped open.
Before he could react, I slammed my palm into his chin.
His head snapped back with a sickening crack.
But I wasn't done.
I grabbed his tie and yanked him face-first into the Formica counter.
The sound of his nose breaking echoed like a gunshot.
The other guard reached for his jacket—the universal sign for a gun.
I didn't give him the chance.
I grabbed a heavy ceramic coffee pot from the burner.
I swung it with everything I had.
It shattered against his temple in a spray of brown liquid and shards.
He went down like a sack of stones.
Jax was trying to scramble up, blood masking his face.
I kicked the back of his knee.
He hit the floor, hard.
I stepped on the back of his neck, pinning him down.
The diner crowd was paralyzed.
Carla dropped a tray of silverware in the kitchen.
The clatter was the only sound in the room.
Now, I looked at Matthew Valentine.
His smirk was gone.
His eyes were wide, darting between his two unconscious men and me.
I leaned over the table, my face inches from his.
"You're in my house now, Matthew," I said.
He tried to regain his composure, straightening his charcoal coat.
"Who the hell are you?" he hissed.
I reached into my collar and pulled out a silver chain.
Hanging from it was a ring.
Not just any ring.
It was a crest of a black lion biting a sword.
Matthew’s face went pale.
Deadly pale.
"The Thorne family..." he stammered.
"They're all dead. The fire... eighteen years ago..."
I leaned closer, whispering so only he could hear.
"Fire doesn't kill ghosts, Matthew."
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"And I've been waiting a very long time to come home."
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