While Vincent and Carlos faced the aftermath of blood and bullets, Jennifer had spent the night at Veloura Models.
The studio was half-dark, only the neon glow of the city seeping through the wide windows. She had worked herself past exhaustion, her sketches scattered across the long table, fabric samples pinned with hurried notes. The launch of the new line was days away, and Cookie, relentless as always, had insisted they burn through the night to polish every final detail.
When she finally changed back into her jeans and sneakers, tying her hair into a careless knot, her body ached. Cookie went off to fetch their usual coffee, and she lingered by the mirror. The girl staring back looked strained—dark circles bruising her eyes, lips pale, spirit thinner than her reflection.
As she stepped into the hall, passing models brushed against her, whispering remarks loud enough to sting. Gold-digger. Felicity's mistake. Bought her way in.
Tracy's last scheme had left a stain that clung no matter how hard she scrubbed it away. Here at Veloura, where reputation was sharper than any blade, Jennifer was no longer untouchable. Even the ones who smiled at her in passing now looked with skepticism.
She clenched her jaw and said nothing. She couldn't defend herself; words meant nothing without proof. So she poured her frustration into work, into every cut of fabric and every sleepless hour.
Still, she couldn't stop herself from reaching for her phone. For the hundredth time that night, she checked for his name—Vincent. One message. One sign that he hadn't changed his mind about her. But the screen was barren. Silence. She had laid her heart bare to him, confessed what she should have guarded, and now… now she wondered if she'd ruined everything. Perhaps she'd rushed. Perhaps he was only her storm, never her shelter.
She shoved the phone aside and swallowed the knot in her throat.
That was when she heard it—commotion in the lounge. A small chorus of voices rising, chairs scraping, the buzz of panic and curiosity.
"Turn it up!" one of the models demanded. "They said Moretti Homes—"
Jennifer froze. The name clawed at her chest. She moved quickly, her pulse rising, until the screen's glow painted her face.
Cookie returned just then, two mugs in hand. The rich smell of coffee swirled around them, but Jennifer barely noticed.
"What's happening?" she asked, her voice unsteady.
Cookie's accent thickened when he grew nervous. "An… assassina-shon, Mees Jennifeur." His voice cracked around the word.
And then the anchor said it. The name. Father Andrew.
Jennifer's heart stopped. She saw the footage—Carlos bent over the priest, blood staining his shirt, chaos ringing through the crowd. She couldn't breathe. The room tilted, the voices dulled into static. The mug in her hand clinked against the table as she set it down with trembling fingers before she staggered toward the door.
Cookie rushed after her, alarm shadowing his face. "Mees Jennifeur!" he called, hurrying to fetch a glass of water.
Her breath came ragged, her hands trembling so badly she almost dropped the glass when he offered it. She drained it in one gulp, her throat burning.
"Ahre you oh-kay, Mees Jennifeur?" Cookie asked again, his eyes soft with worry.
Jennifer forced a nod. "I'm fine. Just… tired." The lie tasted bitter on her tongue.
Cookie hesitated, then gave a gentle bow. "Zen take ze rest of ze day off. We continue to-morraw."
Minutes later, she was gone, slipping into the back of a cab.
The ride back to the estate was a blur. Her eyes burned, but the tears wouldn't fall yet. Only questions came, merciless and relentless. What happened? How did Father Andrew end up outside Moretti Homes? Did Vincent know? Did he try to protect him—or fail him? The city lights streamed past, blurred and cruel, as if mocking her spiraling thoughts.
By the time the cab stopped at the gates, her legs moved on instinct alone. She hurried through the doors of the estate, her pulse still pounding in her ears.
Inside the study, Carlos stood with Vincent, reports spread before them like pieces of a puzzle they couldn't solve. Father Andrew's name echoed between the lines, every word weighted with what had been lost.
Then Jennifer burst in. Her eyes were red, her cheeks wet with the tears she'd failed to hold back. The sight made Carlos stiffen. He bowed his head once and slipped silently from the room, leaving them in a silence too heavy to breathe through.
Vincent rose instantly. The second he crossed the room, his mask cracked. He pulled her into his arms, and that was all it took—Jennifer broke, sobbing into his chest. The grief was raw, keening, her shoulders shaking violently as if the weight of the whole night had collapsed onto her fragile frame.
Vincent held her tighter, his own throat constricting. Father Andrew's blood still haunted his mind, but this—the way Jennifer's world crumbled against him—cut deeper than any bullet could.
His heart sank. Had he failed her already? If not for his intrusion into her life, would the priest still be alive? Was she crying because of him, because death followed wherever his name was spoken?
Her sobs rattled him, and still, he said nothing. His arms were the only thing he could give her, while his mind cursed him over and over again. The man who had built walls so high, so unbreakable, could do nothing now but hold the woman shaking against him and wish—for the first time—that he could trade places with the dead.
She sobbed until the sound itself ran dry. The shoulders that had been trembling a moment before went slack, and the tears thinned into long, salt tracks down her face. She felt Vincent's hands on her back—steady, immovable—his heartbeat a firm, slow metronome against the hollow of her ear. The study spun gently around them: leather-bound books, a glass decanter that caught the lamplight, the hush of the house like a held breath. Outside, somewhere in the estate, the night settled down into a soft cloth of dark; inside, the small room seemed to expand and condense with every breath she took.
When the last wet sob left her chest, the silence that followed was not empty. It was heavy with questions, with the taste of fear and anger, with the rawness of loss. She didn't pull away. For the first time since the chaos began, she let someone hold her without flinching.
"He was my shield," she said finally, voice small and raw as unspun wool. "Father Andrew. He used to—he used to make sure we had shoes that didn't fall apart, that there was a bowl of stew when the winter got mean. He read to us at night. He'd sit—right there in the corner"—she tried to gesture, then caught herself—"and he would make the orphans laugh. Even when they were shaking, he'd make them laugh."
Vincent's chin rested lightly on the crown of her head. "Tell me," he murmured. There was nothing demanding in it, only the ache of someone who wanted to know, to understand the shape of what he had vowed to protect.
Jennifer breathed in, heavier now on the telling than on the tears. The words came haltingly at first, then with a steadier stream. "I was small," she said. "Too small to make sense of anything. My cheeks were always hollow, and I learned the corners of my eyelids before I learned what a mother sounded like. He'd tuck the blanket up to our chins and say, 'Tomorrow's a new song,' like he could change the world with a lullaby." She let out a half laugh that had no humor in it. "He called me his little stubborn rose. He used to say I'd bloom no matter how rocky the soil."
Vincent's hand tightened, a warning and a comfort at once. She felt the tremor in his fingers and wondered, briefly, at how many private scars he'd concealed behind that controlled calm.
"He saved me from nights that were colder than they should've been," Jennifer continued. "He'd listen when I had nightmares. He would stay up and just… be there. He was stubborn in a way I understand now—refused to let bad things take root where children learned to live." Her voice dropped; she swallowed the rest. "When the church moved him away—he said it was ''for reasons of the diocese'—I waited. I waited to see him in the morning again and he never came."
The words stalled between them. She left out the men who had come for her that day—left out the way Father Andrew had tried to block them and the shove, the pleading, the sound of her own small boots on the pavement as she was dragged away. She left out the face of the man whose shadow she still sometimes saw flaring in the bright of a train station. She left out the details because the telling of them did something to the room—made it colder, more fragile—and she wasn't ready to give that away.
Vincent made no move to press, only listened. It was enough. Listening was a kind of sanctuary she had rarely been permitted. He smelled faintly of smoke and cologne, but under that was something softer—leather, rain—the residue of a world she barely knew. He shifted so he could see her profile in the soft lamplight.
"Did you—ever see him again?" he asked.
She shook her head. "No. I waited at the gate until dawn. I asked and asked. They told me Father Andrew had been moved to a different parish. They wrote me a note and he never came back. I looked for him for years in every priest's collar I passed." She laughed, a sound like a cracked bell. "I thought maybe he'd sneak in one day, tuck a child into bed and pretend nothing terrible had happened."
Her chest pressed tighter where he held her; Vincent's breath hitched in sympathy. The room seemed to constrict around her memories, the way certain nights constrict around the throat. For a long moment they stood there, the two of them held in a stillness that felt like a truce.
In the quiet of his arms, something in her shifted. The fury that had been a raw, blind thing—the kind that had made her curl into corners and whisper threats she never meant to act upon—calmed into a precise, white-hot line. Father Andrew had protected them with nothing but his presence and some stubborn, ordinary decency. He had tried to finish what he started; someone had decided that truth was far too dangerous.
She thought of the models with their indirect glances and the way the tabloids had made a name out of her in a single morning. She thought of Voss's voice on the phone—smooth and low—and the way those men had laughed at her because to them she was merchandise and not a person. Feeding that anger had always been easier when the stakes were private. Now the stakes were public and terrible.
"Maybe he knew something," she said, softer now, almost to herself. "Maybe he was going to tell someone. Or maybe… he just knew enough to be trouble."
Vincent's grip tightened. He let out a single breath, as if swallowing a curse. "If that's true," he said slowly, "then they should have taken me first."
She looked up. The fury in her eyes had become something fierce and small, like a candle blown purposely into a pinpoint, steady and bright. "They didn't want you, Vincent," she said. "They wanted him. He could have put words where they'd listen. He could have—" Her throat closed. "He could have mattered."
He said nothing right away. Then: "He did matter," he answered. "He mattered to you. That's enough. They made him a target for a reason. I swear to you—whatever reason that was, I will find it."
The vow hung between them like a challenge thrown down on a stone floor. It was a promise, but not the sort that erased fear. It was a kindling that might burn them both. Her chest pounded because she knew how easily kindling could combust; she knew men like Voss watched for sparks and then stoked the blaze.
"I don't want to run anymore," she said, voice steady now in the way that surprised even herself. "Running… it's all I ever did. I woke up and moved away from danger because it was the only thing I knew how to do. But running is how they win. They chase us with shame and fear and cards that say you have nowhere to go. I want—" She hesitated, swallowed. "I want to use what I can. If modeling gives me a stage where they can't touch me so easily—if it gives me a place from which I can stand and be seen—then I'll take it. I'll learn. I'll fight back. Not by their rules. By my own."
He made a sound then, something like a ragged laugh and a sobriety pooled with pride. "You will make them regret ever thinking they could buy or bully you. But not because I said it. Because you mean it."
Her eyes filled again, but this time not from the sudden jag of grief—they shone with something brave and raw. She had always believed scars were prisons. Now she saw them as maps. Each one marked a territory she had crossed and survived. The idea of stepping onto the world stage as herself—scarred, stubborn, alive—felt like stepping into a suit of armor she'd sewn from the fragments of her life.
She saturated the promise with a small, fierce laugh. "They painted me as a theft," she said. "A bargain. Maybe I'll be better at bargaining than they expect."
Vincent kissed the crown of her head then, a soft, private benediction. "On Saturday " he murmured, "Carlos will drive you. He'll hover. He hates models but he'll pretend not to. Felicity will admire and you'll hate how pretty the dressing room smells. But do it. Run through it. Learn to stand."
She imagined the dressing rooms and the long mirrors, the lights that made every bone glow. She imagined herself, not as merchandise, but as a woman stepping into a line of light and taking it for her own.
"Will you be there?" she asked finally—because asking was necessary, because she needed to slot that piece of certainty into the exact hollow it would fill.
He hesitated, then said, "I'll be anywhere I'm needed."
She let the words settle. There was no glittering heroism in them—only an honest, stubborn commitment. It was enough to make her chest loosen by the smallest degree.
They stood together until the house sighed and the evening thinned into night. The toll of grief had not lifted—how could it?—but grief had sharpened into resolve. She thought of Father Andrew's small acts of resistance—feeding, reading, tucking blankets—and promised herself she would transpose that softness into something that could not be dismissed.
When she finally pulled back to stand on her own two feet, the room felt different. The lamplight was the same, the books were the same, but she carried an ember now, and embers could be coaxed into a blaze. She touched her palms to her cheeks, feeling the warmth of Vincent's hand still on her skin, and whispered into the quiet, half confession, half vow: "I will not hide. Not anymore."
Outside, the night was vast and indifferent. Inside, she gathered herself and walked toward a future she'd never allowed herself to imagine—one step at a time, fierce as needed, fragile when she had to be, and always, in tiny unspoken ways, unwilling to be owned.