The Sixth Anniversary
The clock above the pastry case read 11:47 PM. In seventeen minutes, Valentina Caldwell could lock the deadbolt, flip the sign to CLOSED, and walk out of Electric Moon Coffee with her tips in her apron pocket and her sanity only slightly frayed.
The last customer had been a university student who’d nursed a single lavender latte for three hours while highlighting textbooks in four colors. He’d left at 11:30, leaving behind a smudge of pink highlighter on the table and the faint, vanilla-sweet smell of his vape pen. Valentina had wiped the table twice, then mopped the entire floor just to keep moving.
Keeping moving meant not stopping. Stopping meant thinking. Thinking meant remembering that today—this exact day—marked six years since she’d last seen Sebastian Blackwood.
Six years since she’d stood in the rain outside his apartment with a positive pregnancy test burning a hole in her coat pocket, watching him load a duffel bag into the trunk of his car. Six years since he’d driven away without a backward glance, convinced she’d betrayed him, convinced the child she was carrying couldn’t possibly be his.
Six years since she’d stopped believing in second chances.
The espresso machine hissed as she ran the cleaning cycle. Steam clouded the chrome surface, and she wiped it away with a rag, catching her reflection in the polished metal. Twenty-eight years old. Dark circles under her eyes that no amount of concealer could erase. A son at home who would be asleep by now, his small body curled around a stuffed wolf that he called “Moon,” his golden eyes—Sebastian’s eyes—closed in dreams she hoped were kind.
She checked her phone. 11:49. Quinn had texted at 10:15: *Leo conked out at 9:45. Built a fortress out of couch cushions and declared himself king. He wants you to know he pardoned the stuffed animals but the cat is on probation.*
Valentina smiled, a small, tired curve of her lips. Quinn was the only person she trusted with Leo. The only person who knew the full shape of the secret she’d been carrying—not just a child, but a truth that could get them both killed.
The bell above the door chimed.
Valentina’s head snapped up. Her hand went instinctively to the button beneath the counter—the silent panic alarm that Cole, the pack’s security chief, had installed three months ago when the first black SUV had started circling the block.
“We’re closed,” she said, her voice steady despite the adrenaline spike. “I’m sorry, I can’t—”
The man who walked through the door was not one of Jasper Langley’s henchmen.
He was taller than she remembered. Broader through the shoulders. His black coat was tailored, expensive, the kind of garment that belonged in a boardroom rather than a downtown coffee shop at nearly midnight. His hair was longer, swept back from a face that had aged six years in all the ways that mattered—the hard line of his jaw, the new tension around his mouth, the shadows under his eyes that mirrored her own.
But his eyes. Those silver-gray eyes that had once looked at her like she was the only light in a dark world.
They were fixed on her now, and they held nothing but cold distance.
“Sebastian.” The name escaped her before she could stop it, a breath, a wound, a question.
“Valentina.” He didn’t step closer. He stood just inside the door, one hand in his coat pocket, the other loose at his side. His posture was controlled, deliberate. She’d seen him move like that before—right before a fight. “You’re working late.”
It wasn’t a question. It was an observation, flat and unreadable.
“I close on Fridays.” She gripped the edge of the counter, her knuckles white. “What are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“It’s been six years.” The words came out harder than she intended, a fractured edge cutting through her shock. “You can’t just walk in here like—like nothing happened.”
Something flickered in his expression. Pain, maybe. Or anger. She’d never been good at reading him when he shut down, and Sebastian Blackwood had always been a master of emotional lockdown.
“Nothing happened,” he said quietly. “That was the problem.”
She flinched. He saw it.
“Val.” He took a step forward, then stopped himself. “I didn’t come here to fight. I came here because—” He stopped. His jaw worked, and for a moment he looked almost human, almost vulnerable. “I came here because Jasper Langley is moving on something. I don’t know what. But I’ve been watching his operation for the last three months, and—”
“Watching his operation.” She laughed, a bitter, broken sound. “You’ve been in the city for three months? And you waited until now to find me?”
“I didn’t know you were here.” His voice dropped, rough and low. “I didn’t know you were in Silver Creek at all. I thought you’d left. I thought you’d gone back to your family’s territory after—after everything.”
After he’d accused her of sleeping with Owen Langley. After he’d believed Jasper’s lies over her truth. After he’d walked out and left her alone to face a future he’d never even known existed.
“I didn’t leave,” she said. “I stayed. I built a life here.”
He studied her face, and she felt the weight of his gaze like a physical touch. He was searching for something—the cracks in her armor, the lies beneath her words. She held herself still, refusing to give him anything.
“A life,” he repeated. “What kind of life?”
The question hung between them, charged with everything he wasn’t saying. She thought of Leo, asleep in his cushion fortress, his stuffed wolf clutched to his chest. She thought of the way his small hand fit perfectly in hers, the way he laughed when she tickled his ribs, the way his golden eyes crinkled at the corners—exactly like his father’s.
She thought of the secret she had kept for six years, and the weight of it threatened to crush her.
“That’s none of your business,” she said.
“It is my business if the Langleys are watching you.”
The air left her lungs. “What?”
Sebastian moved closer, and she saw it now—the tension in his shoulders, the way his eyes kept cutting to the front windows, where the street was dark and empty.
“They’ve been tracking you, Val. I don’t know why. I don’t know how long. But Jasper has people in this neighborhood. I spotted one of them two days ago, parked outside your apartment building.” His voice dropped. “What do they want with you?”
She couldn’t breathe. Her apartment. They’d found her apartment. Leo. Oh, God, Leo.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. It was a lie, and they both knew it.
“Valentina.” He said her name like a command, but there was no heat in it. Only fear. Only the same bone-deep terror she felt clawing up her throat. “Tell me what they want. Tell me what you’re hiding.”
The timer on the espresso machine clicked over. 11:51. Nine minutes until she could run. Nine minutes until she could call Quinn and tell her to take Leo somewhere safe, somewhere the Langleys couldn’t find them, somewhere—
“I’m not hiding anything.” The lie tasted like ash.
Sebastian’s silver eyes caught hers. He was close now, close enough that she could smell him—cedar and rain and something darker, something wounded. He reached out, and his fingers brushed her wrist, and the touch sent a shiver through her that was equal parts memory and warning.
“You always were a terrible liar,” he said softly.
And then the lights went out.
The blackout was absolute. No streetlights. No neon sign. No glow from the espresso machine. The coffee shop plunged into darkness so complete that Valentina couldn’t see her own hand in front of her face.
Sebastian’s hand tightened on her wrist. “Don’t move.”
She heard it then—the low hum of an engine. A vehicle idling somewhere on the street. Then footsteps. Deliberate. Measured. Moving toward the front door.
“They’re here,” she breathed.
“How many?”
“I don’t know. I’ve seen them before—two men in a black SUV. They circle the block. They watch. They never—” She swallowed. “They’ve never come inside before.”
Sebastian released her wrist. She heard the subtle shift of his weight, the near-silent click of something metallic. She didn’t ask what he was carrying. She didn’t want to know.
“Get in the back,” he said. “Lock the door. Don’t come out until I tell you.”
“Sebastian—”
“Now, Val.”
She moved. Her legs felt disconnected from her body, numb and mechanical. She fumbled through the dark, her hands finding the edge of the counter, the door to the back room, the lock that clicked into place behind her. She pressed herself against the wall, her heart hammering so hard she could taste copper.
The front door rattled.
She heard Sebastian’s voice, calm and steady. “We’re closed. Come back tomorrow.”
A pause. The rattle of the door again, harder this time. Then a voice she recognized—the high, cold tone of Owen Langley, heir to the Langley fortune and the man who had once tried to destroy her life.
“Sebastian Blackwood. We’ve been looking for you.”
“You’ve found me. Congratulations. Now leave.”
“We’ll leave when you give us what we want.” Owen’s voice was slick, amused. “The girl. The one you’re hiding. Jasper wants to have a conversation with her.”
“She’s not here.”
“Don’t lie to me. We’ve been watching her for weeks. We know she works this shift. We know she leaves at midnight and walks home alone.” Owen’s tone sharpened. “We know about the child.”
Valentina stopped breathing.
“There is no child,” Sebastian said, and the lie was so smooth, so practiced, that she almost believed it herself.
“Our intelligence says otherwise. A boy. Age six. Lives with a woman named Quinn Foster at the Maplewood Apartments. Attends Silver Creek Elementary. Likes dinosaurs and—how did the file put it?—‘unusually attached to a stuffed wolf.’”
The world tilted. Valentina’s knees buckled, and she caught herself on a shelf of cleaning supplies, her fingernails digging into plastic bottles.
They knew. They knew everything.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sebastian’s voice hadn’t changed, but she could hear the violence behind it now, the predator barely leashed.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way, Blackwood. You know how Jasper operates. He’s not a patient man. And he’s very, very interested in why your ex-lover has been raising a child that looks exactly like you in the middle of his territory.”
Silence. Then Sebastian said, “It’s not my child.”
“Then you won’t mind if we take it. For examination.”
The crash was deafening—glass shattering, wood splintering, the roar of something primal and furious that didn’t sound human. Valentina pressed her hands to her ears and counted her breaths, one two three four five six seven eight nine ten—
The back door slammed open.
She screamed.
A hand clamped over her mouth. “It’s me.” Sebastian’s voice, ragged and urgent. “We need to go. Now.”
He pulled her through the dark, through the back alley, through the maze of dumpsters and fire escapes and broken pavement. She stumbled, and he caught her, and then they were running, her hand in his, his heartbeat a frantic rhythm against the night.
They didn’t stop until they reached his car—a black sedan parked three blocks away, invisible in the shadow of a derelict warehouse. He shoved her into the passenger seat, slid behind the wheel, and gunned the engine before she had her seatbelt on.
The streetlights flickered back on as they sped past. Behind them, in the rearview mirror, the silhouette of a man stood in the middle of the road, watching them go.
Owen Langley.
And he was smiling.
Valentina couldn’t stop shaking. Her hands were wrapped around her arms, her nails digging crescents into her own skin. Sebastian drove with his eyes fixed on the road, his jaw set, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.
“The child,” he said, and his voice was hollow. “Tell me it’s not true.”
She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t breathe. She thought of Leo’s golden eyes, his sticky fingers, his small voice calling her “Mama” in the morning light. She thought of the secret she had kept for six years, the lie that had become her shield and her cage.
“Tell me it’s not true,” Sebastian repeated, and this time his voice broke.
The road stretched ahead of them, dark and endless. The city lights blurred into streaks of gold and red. Valentina pressed her forehead against the cold glass of the window and closed her eyes.
“You have a son, Sebastian. And they want him dead.”