Crow exhaled slowly.
He didn’t hesitate.
He typed four words.
“I’m on my way.”
A Man With a Reputation
Marcus Dalton wasn’t supposed to be a hero.
If you Googled his name, you’d find mugshots from the early 2000s. Assault charges. Possession. A bar brawl that left three men hospitalized. He’d spent time inside—enough to harden him, but also enough to teach him exactly what kind of man he never wanted to be again.
He’d grown up watching his own father hit his mother.
The sound of yelling through walls never really left you.
Crow paid his tab, stood, and walked outside where his Harley waited—black, loud, unmistakable. He pulled on his helmet and kicked the engine to life. The roar cut through the night like a warning.
He texted again.
“Stay where you are. Don’t let him see the phone.”
The reply was almost instant.
“Ok.”
Crow rode.
He didn’t know where he was going. Not yet. But Bakersfield wasn’t big, and a blue house with a black truck and screaming inside it was easier to find than you’d think.
Lily’s Room
Lily sat cross-legged on her bed, clutching the phone so tightly her knuckles hurt.
She was eight years old.
Her room smelled like crayons and old stuffed animals. The walls were covered in drawings she’d taped up herself—flowers, stick figures, a picture of her mom smiling before everything got bad.
Outside her door, the yelling continued.
Her mom’s boyfriend, Rick, had moved in three months ago. At first, he brought pizza and joked and let Lily sit in the front seat of his truck. Then the yelling started. Then the grabbing. Then tonight.
She’d never seen him hit her mom before.
Not like this.
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