Melody POV
I woke up to silence. Not the scary, heavy kind. Just... empty. The kind of silence that lets your mind speak louder than its should. Pain hummed behind my eyes, dull but persistent. My throat was dry, my arms was heavy. But I was awake. And I remembered.
The shooting. The masked man. The tattoo.
I closed my eyes for a second, hoping the images would fade. They didn't. They never do. When I opened them again, something caught my attention. A folder. It hadn't been done there before. Brown. Sealed no name no markings just sittings on the beside my bed like a ghost had it dropped it off. I glanced the door. No footsteps. No voices. No one has entered since the nurse.
So how...?
My fingers trembled slightly as I reached for it. Peeling it open slowly felt like opening a wound I didn't know I had.
Inside three things:
-A photo of the man with the sunny-dark tattoo. Grainy. Security footage?
-A small black card. One word embossed in gold:
S.H Group.
-And a note handwritten, clean, sharp penmanship
"The man you saw isn't the end. He's a hand not a head. He used to work for me. Now he work against me. And the moment he saw you became his next job. If you want answers... come back. M.H (Marvis Harper)"
My hands tightened around the paper. The word buzzed in my head like electricity.
He used to work for me?
So Marvis knew him. Hired him. Trusted him once. But something went wrong. And now the same man who murmured my parents had turned on him too. The tattoo wasn't a random nightmare. It was thread. And Marvis? He was holding the other end. I looked at the photo again. It was blurry like pulled from street cam footage. But the tattoo was unmistakable. The sun with a black halo. I had stared into those same eyes when I was ten years old, upside down in a shattered car. And now they were staring back at me from a peice of paper.
A hitman. Not the mastermind. Which meant... The real killer was still out there.
My stomach twisted, but it was not fear anymore. It was something else. Fire, cold, slow burning fire.
He made a mistake leaving me alive.
I placed the folder back on the table just as the door opened again. This time, it wasn't a nurse.
It was a tall man in a dark suit, quiet steps, emotionless face.
"Miss Quinn," he said. "Mr. Harper sends his regards. A car is waiting outside when you're ready" I blinked.
He wasn't asking. The war had already started.