Chapter 5
The room went dead silent.
Mom’s hand flew to her mouth.
I stood up so fast my chair scraped the floor.
“What do you mean, they know?”
Ethan held out his phone.
It was a text.
Unknown number.
We know you’re not dead, Ethan. We know where you live. We’re coming for what you owe us. And this time, we’re taking the wife and kid too.
Below it was a photo.
It was taken from the street in front of our house.
You could see Lily through the front window, coloring at the coffee table.
My blood ran cold.
They’d been watching us.
They’d been watching my daughter.
“Lily,” I yelled.
I ran into the living room.
I grabbed her off the floor, held her tight against my chest. She dropped her crayon, startled.
“Mommy? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, baby. Everything’s fine. We just… we’re going to go to Grandma’s house for a little while. Okay?”
I didn’t wait for her to answer.
I grabbed her backpack, stuffed a few changes of clothes, her favorite stuffed rabbit, her tablet inside.
Daniel ran in from the garage. He’d heard the yelling.
“What’s happening?”
“They know,” Ethan said. “They’re here. They’re watching the house.”
Daniel’s face went hard.
He ran to the closet by the front door and pulled out the baseball bat he kept there.
“Call the police,” he said.
“No,” Ethan said. “We can’t. They have cops on their payroll. Half the east side precinct is in their pocket. If we call the local cops, they’ll tip the sharks off. We’ll be dead before the squad car even pulls up.”
I froze.
He was right.
The sharks had told him that once. They owned the police. They owned the judges. They owned everyone who could help us.
We were on our own.
“Okay,” I said.
I held Lily tighter. She was starting to cry now, scared by all the yelling, by the way everyone was running around.
“Okay. We don’t call the local cops. We get out of here. Now. We go somewhere they won’t find us. We figure out our next move from there.”
We moved fast.
Daniel grabbed the go-bag we kept in the closet—passports, cash, a first aid kit, a portable charger. Ethan grabbed his phone, the ledger he kept with all the sharks’ transactions, the names of their clients, the dirty cops on their payroll.
Mom grabbed her keys.
“Come on,” she said. “My house is too close. They’ll look there first. I have a friend who has a cabin an hour outside of town. No one knows about it. We can hide there until we figure out what to do.”
We ran out to the cars.
I put Lily in her car seat, buckled her in tight. I kissed her forehead, told her it was just an adventure, that everything would be okay.
I lied.
I had no idea if everything would be okay.
I didn’t know if we’d make it out of the neighborhood alive.
We pulled out of the driveway.
As we turned onto the main road, I saw a black SUV parked two houses down.
It had tinted windows. No license plate.
It started to follow us.
My heart jumped into my throat.
“Daniel,” I said. “They’re behind us.”
He looked in the rearview mirror.
His jaw tightened.
“Hold on,” he said.
He stepped on the gas.
The SUV sped up too.
We raced down the street. Cars honked as we swerved around them. Lily started crying harder. Mom was praying under her breath in the passenger seat. Ethan was turned around in the back, watching the SUV.
“They’re gaining,” he said.
Daniel took a hard right onto a side street.
The SUV followed.
We wove through the neighborhood. Left. Right. Left again. The SUV was still there, right on our bumper.
“There’s a police station up ahead,” Mom said. “The main downtown precinct. Not the east side one. Maybe they can help.”
Daniel nodded.
He floored it.
We blew through two red lights. The SUV was still there.
We pulled into the police station parking lot.
Tires screeched.
The SUV didn’t follow.
It kept going straight, disappearing around the corner.
We sat there for a minute, breathing hard.
No one moved.
“Are they gone?” Lily whispered.
I looked back.
The parking lot was empty. No black SUV. No men with tattoos. Just police cars, a few people walking in and out of the station.
“Yeah, baby,” I said. I stroked her hair. My hand was shaking. “They’re gone. We’re safe now.”
But I didn’t believe it.
They knew where we lived. They’d followed us. They’d let us go to the police station—probably because they didn’t want to make a move in public, in front of cameras.
But they’d be back.
They’d find us.
No matter where we went.
We got out of the car.
Daniel took Lily’s hand. I walked beside him. Ethan and Mom followed close behind.
We walked into the police station.
The smell of coffee and floor wax hit me. A uniformed officer sat at the front desk, typing on a computer. He looked up as we walked in.
“Can I help you folks?” he said.
I stepped forward.
I laid Ethan’s ledger on the desk.
“We need to talk to someone about the loan shark ring operating on the east side,” I said. “We have evidence. Names. Dates. Everything. And they’re trying to kill us.”
The officer looked at the ledger.
He looked at us—five people, disheveled, scared, a crying seven-year-old.
He picked up the phone.
“Wait here,” he said. “I’ll get the detective in charge of organized crime.”
We sat down on the hard plastic chairs by the desk.
Lily curled up in my lap. She was exhausted. Her eyes were closing.
I held her.
I looked at Daniel. At Ethan. At Mom.
We’d come a long way in two weeks.
From lies and secrets and hiding in walls.
To running for our lives, walking into a police station, ready to fight.
I didn’t know what would happen next.
I didn’t know if the police could help us. If the sharks were too powerful, too connected.
But I knew one thing.
We were done running.
We were done hiding.
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Whatever came next, we’d face it together.
As a family.
