Kira Vex's Arc

Chapter 3 of 6

Voss's words hung in the warehouse dark. Kira's mind ran the clock. If her route was sold this morning, buyers were already moving on her home. Her mother. Her sister. She pulled her phone and sent one word to her sister: Out. Now. Library. Then she ran. She cut through back lots toward the slum block. The shared courtyard came into view — cracked concrete, sagging clotheslines, the ring of metal chairs where neighbors drank tea. Two men she didn't know stood by the door. Wrong coats. Wrong shoulders. Kira slowed behind a wall and watched her sister slip out a side window, pulling their mother by the wrist. They'd gotten the message. They were moving. Kira waved them toward the vine-choked archway at the back of the lot. The flowered passage spilled into a narrow path almost no one used. Her family ducked through it. Kira followed, heart hammering, and pulled the gate shut behind them. Behind her, a shout went up in the courtyard. The buyers had figured it out a breath too late. She brought her family to the old brick library with the frosted glass doors — her fallback, used twice before. Inside, her mother sat shaking. Her sister stared at her, not asking, already knowing. Kira locked the door and breathed. Her family was safe for tonight. But the leak was still in their house, the job wasn't done, and every coin she'd saved would now go to hiding them. Again.