Page 6 of Maddening Fixation

The contrast struck with such force that it stole the air from my lungs.

The memory crashed over me like a freight train.

One second I was standing outside Ravencliff, tasting freedom for the first time in ten years.

The next, I was nineteen again.

Standing in the grand foyer of Flynn Manor, moments before my entire world came crashing down.

It was the night of the Flynn family’s annual gathering.

Every year, the seven most powerful Irish mafia families gathered beneath our roof to celebrate alliances, negotiate business, and remind the rest of the underworld who ruled Florida.

The manor had never looked grander.

Crystal chandeliers poured warm golden light across polished marble floors. A string quartet played softly from the gallery above while servants drifted through the crowd carrying crystal flutes filled with champagne older than most of the men drinking it.

Politicians laughed beside killers.

Judges shook hands with smugglers.

Priests accepted generous donations from men whose souls had long since been sold.

Expensive perfume mixed with cigar smoke and aged whiskey until the ballroom smelled of wealth, power, and corruption.

Anyone looking in from the outside would have mistaken it for a gathering of respectable aristocrats.

They would never have guessed every smiling face in that ballroom had ordered someone’s death.

I hated every second of it.

I’d spent the entire evening pretending to smile while counting down the hours until my sister, Sarah, and I could finally disappear.

For weeks, I had planned our escape in absolute secrecy.

Every detail had been checked and rechecked.

Fake passports. New identities. Cash hidden inside the lining of an old suitcase.

A contact willing to move us across the border before anyone realized we were gone.

Everything was ready.

By sunrise, the Flynn family would wake to discover that their unwanted bastard son had vanished forever.

I wasn’t running because I feared them.

I was running because of Sarah.

She was the only pure thing left in my life.

And I had promised our mother, as she lay dying, that I would protect her.

No matter the cost.

I never imagined I would fail.

The memory twisted painfully inside my chest.