It happened on a Thursday.


No warning. No text. No cryptic note.


Just a scream outside Maya’s building, and then tires screeching off into the night.


Maya dropped her lip gloss kit mid-fill and ran to the window.


Crowd forming.


Someone on the ground.


She threw on her jacket and ran.


She pushed through bodies, breath catching in her throat as she saw the hoodie first. Black. Blood soaking through the left sleeve. A chain she recognized.


“Darius!”


He was on the ground, clutching his side, gritting his teeth but still conscious.


Devin was already there—out of uniform, hand pressing on the wound, barking into his phone for backup and EMTs.


“He’s alive,” he said. “But barely.”


Maya dropped to her knees beside him.


“You dumb, stubborn boy,” she whispered, tears slipping free.


Darius smirked weakly. “Still showed up though…”


“Don’t talk,” she said. “Just hold on.”


Zaire was with her aunt.


Thank God.


At the hospital, Maya paced the sterile white hall like a lioness waiting for her cub.


Devin came out two hours later, shirt blood-stained, face grim.


“He’s gonna make it,” he said. “But they meant to kill him.”


Maya sat down hard, hands shaking.


“This was your plan? Use him as bait?”


Devin didn’t answer.


Didn’t need to.


She stood slowly. “Then he better not die. Because if he does… that’s blood on both your hands.”


In the recovery room, Darius lay half-awake, oxygen tube in his nose, beeping machines counting his survival in digital blinks.


Maya stepped in.


She took his hand.


Squeezed it.


“I hated you for so long,” she whispered. “But right now… all I care about is you staying alive. For him. For me. For you.”


Darius blinked once.


Then again.


Then his lips parted just enough to rasp: “Still here.”


He had been marked.


He had been shot.


But he hadn’t been silenced.


And that made him more dangerous than ever.