Prologue
Once upon a time, I fell in love.
She was feisty, radiant, and reckless. She had nothing. She came from nothing. And unless she found a rich husband—it would take everything she had to pull herself out of poverty.
I wasn’t rich.
I had less money than her.
I had no college degree.
No job prospects.
All I had was five dollars in my pocket and the clothes on my back.
None of that mattered.
Our love was enough.
We vowed to love each other forever.
We got married.
A baby followed.
I thought our life together was so happy.
I thought we could make our marriage last.
I thought…
I sigh.
I thought it was enough.
Turns out, you can’t live on love.
You can’t eat love.
Breathe love.
Live under a roof made of love.
You need money.
We tried to make more of ourselves. I went to a community college.
It wasn’t enough.
She worked three jobs.
It wasn’t enough.
Our baby deserved more.
We deserved more.
So we started hunting for a way out.
Hunting.
Hunting.
Hunting…
Until finally, we found a way out.
We had more money than we could have ever imagined.
More money than the suits who used to look down on us as we cleaned their homes.
More money than the executives who those suits reported to.
More money than the queen of England.
We thought we had it all. We thought we knew what came next.
But all that came next was defending what we had stolen.
Our love wasn’t enough.
Fighting our enemies wore us down until we had no energy left. Until we had no desire to fight. Until our love dissolved into ash, and our hearts were torn apart.
Sometimes fairytales turn into nightmares.
Listen to my warning, child.
Don’t search for it.
Don’t seek the fairytale.
Don’t seek the money like your mother and me.
Run, Liesel.
Hide.
Don’t hunt.
Above everything else, don’t ever tell anyone the truth—who you are or what you know.
“I don’t understand,” Liesel says.
I wish I could explain everything to her. I wish I had more time. I wish I could ensure she didn’t make the same mistakes her mother and I did.
But there is no time.
And I can’t make her decisions for her. I’ve failed as a father in more ways than one. All I can give her now is my advice and hope she makes the better choice, becomes the better person.
“It’s all in here.” I hand her an envelope.
She stares at it with big eyes as she begins to remove the letter from the envelope. “What is it?”
I put my hand over hers, stopping her.
“Later. Read it later, when you’re alone. Then burn it. Forget about going after the money, the treasure. Lie to anyone who asks you about it.”
I want to ask her to promise me, but I don’t. That’s too much to ask of her. Someday, she may choose to go after the treasure. She may think it’s worth it. My only hope is that it is—for her.
Just please, God, don’t let it destroy her like it did me.
“I have so many questions,” she says.
“I know, and I wish we had more time.”
“Is this goodbye?”
“It is, my sweet daughter. It is.”
I lean forward and kiss her on the cheek. I wish I could apologize for all the shit I’ve put her through. There is no apology big enough to earn her forgiveness.
“Go,” I say.
She takes a step out of the tiny house that she and her mother lived in for years when she was little. A house I lived in with them when she was first born, before I made the worst mistake of my life.
It takes everything inside me not to chase after her.
But I pulled myself out of her life a long time ago. I don’t get to come back into her life now that she’s an adult.
Liesel runs down the porch without glancing back.
She heads toward her car, and just before she reaches it, a boy approaches her. No, he’s all man. Tall, dressed in dark clothes, but his hair light as the sun. The tenseness on his face and vein bulging on his forehead says he’s pissed.
He stops her.
I want to protect her, save her.
I can’t.
This is the life she was born into. I have no way to save her.
But my Liesel is more than capable of handling her own with this man. She yells back, pointing her finger at him as she storms around him to the driver’s side of the car.
There is more yelling I can’t make out, before she climbs into the car. He catches the door right before she slams it in his face.
One tense moment.
He slams the door.
She drives away.
The man stands there a moment—watching her.
And then he turns and looks right at me.
I glare back.
I see what’s in his hand—a ripped piece of paper.
He must have torn part of the envelope when they were arguing.
I told Liesel to keep it a secret, but it’s too late now. Now someone knows.
Now she has no choice but to lie.
Lie, Liesel—it’s the only way to stay alive.
1
Liesel
I will kill you.
I read the words on the piece of paper in my hand. Who puts death threats in the mail anymore? It seems archaic and old-timey. There are so many better ways to send a threat: a phone call, a text message, an email.
An in-person act of violence really sends a message too, if you really have the balls.
Why write a letter?
Because he’s a coward.
I consider tossing the letter in the trash and not taking the issue any further, forgetting that it even happened. But I didn’t survive this long by tossing away idle threats.
I will kill you.
This isn’t the first time someone has made a threat like this against me.
I will kill everyone you love.
Again, not new. I just thought I was passed this part of my life. I thought I was done living in this dangerous, vicious world. One where there are no winners—at least, I never win. I just survive.
I thought, just like letter writing, this part of my life was buried in the past.
I tap my painted red nails against my desk as I read the letter over two more times. Nothing hints at who the author is. There is no name scrolled across the bottom. Like I thought—wuss.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t hints of who my enemy is. The way the letter is scribed tells me it’s a man who wrote it. It was scribbled quickly with a pen almost out of ink on a piece of computer paper. This note was written last minute; it wasn’t thought through.
And it didn’t arrive in an envelope in the mail. It was stuffed loosely into the mailbox. I wouldn’t be surprised if I found fingerprints.
Whoever sent this is an amateur, or at least, wants me to think he’s an amateur.
I’m not an amateur. As much as I never thought I would know how to hold a gun, fire a weapon, hunt down men, rescue myself, I’ve never had a choice in the matter. My entire life I’ve lived in a cruel underworld of men who controlled everything. Men who had no right to own anything. Men who ruled with guns and darkness in their hearts, taking no prisoners. Taking what they wanted without concern of whom they hurt.