Chapter 1
The moment my daughter, Jane Madison, had a knife pressed to her throat by a gangster, I looked at my husband, Shane Madison.
He was the top sniper in the entire city, yet at this moment, he was searching for another woman through his rifle scope.
"Especially in moments like this, I can't play favorites," he said.
Then he pulled the trigger and saved his first love, Lola Diaz.
My daughter's throat was slashed. I broke down, confronting him in hysteria.
Shane said flatly, "We can have another child if this one's gone."
He then turned to Lola, his eyes rimmed red. "But if she's gone, she's gone forever."
I held my daughter's body, already growing cold, in my arms and jumped off the rooftop.
When I opened my eyes again, I had traveled back to the very day when my daughter and Lola were taken hostage by the gangsters separately.
This time, without hesitation, I pressed the barrel of my gun to the back of his head.
"Since you refuse to play favorites, you'll join our daughter in death with me," I said.
After all, my daughter was gone.
There was no point in holding onto this family or this husband.
*****
On the rooftop, the November wind cut across my face like a knife.
My hair whipped into a mess, but I couldn't care less.
All my attention was fixed on the man thirty feet away.
A man in a gray jacket had his left arm locked around Jane's neck, his right hand gripping a fruit knife, the blade pressed right against her soft throat.
Jane was only six years old.
She wore the pink sweater I had knitted for her by hand, which I had dressed her in that morning. There was a smudge of paint on the cuff, left there when she had drawn the day before.
Right now, the sweater was all crumpled from the gangster's grip. Jane's face was bright red, her cheeks streaked with tears, but she was too scared to cry out.
Every small shift of the blade left a faint new cut on her neck.
"Mommy..." She saw me, her tiny body squirming in the gangster's arms, her voice quivering, thick with tears. "Mommy, I'm scared."
It felt like my heart was being torn apart, raw and brutal.
"Jane, don't be scared. Mommy's here, Mommy's right here," I said.
I didn't know how I forced the words out. My throat felt heavy, as if filled with lead, and each word hit my heart like a ton of bricks.
"Stay back!" the gangster shouted, pressing the knife even harder against Jane's throat. "Get me a car with a full tank of gas and 1.5 million dollars in cash. Or I take her kid down with me."
My gaze shifted past him, landing on the other "hostage" sixty feet away.
Lola was crouched on the ground, hugging her knees, her shoulders trembling as she sobbed, tears streaming down her face.
Her hair tumbled over half her face, making her look heartbreakingly fragile.
There wasn't just one gangster.
The man holding Lola stood at the very edge of the rooftop. His knife was nowhere near as close to her as the one at Jane's throat.
He only pointed it at her from a distance, shouting curses and urging his partner to hurry.
I sneered.
Lola was in a position ten times safer than Jane.
That gangster was obviously a newbie. His hand shook as he held the knife. He could barely stand steady, let alone slit someone's throat.
But my husband didn't see it that way.
I turned my head, eyes landing on the man sprawled flat on the ground sixty feet away, Shane.
He was my husband, the top sniper in the city, the ace of the SWAT team. At that moment, he was looking through his scope, assessing the situation with the hostages.
"Captain Madison, have you confirmed the target?" The deputy captain, Antonio Torres, asked in a low voice beside him.
Shane didn't answer right away.
I watched his fingers shift slightly. He adjusted the muzzle of his gun in a nearly imperceptible movement. He moved it two feet to the right, away from my daughter.
He aimed directly at Lola.
"Captain Madison?" Antonio called again.
"Copy that," Shane replied, his voice low and steady. "I'm assessing the risk."
Assessing the risk?
I knew that look all too well.
Every time before a mission, he'd be like this: calm, professional, never showing a hint of emotion.
This time, however, his gaze lingered longest through the scope on the woman crouched on the ground, crying.
It was Lola.
She was the woman he had grown up with. Her photo was tucked in the hidden pocket of his wallet.
Whenever Shane talked about Lola, his eyes would always soften.
"Especially in moments like this, I can't play favorites," he once told me.
Back then, I thought he meant sticking to his cop principles.
Now I understood the truth. When he said he couldn't play favorites, he meant he couldn't prioritize saving Jane because she was my daughter.
And Lola? She wasn't a favorite to him.
She was his whole world.