“Yes. She died in a hit-and-run five years ago.”

Dominic shook his head, a grim smile touching his lips.

“It wasn’t an accident,” he said. “She was my father’s trusted nurse. She hid my firstborn son years ago. Leo found out and silenced her.”

The air left my lungs.

My mother’s death had been a murder.

Before I could process the words, a car engine roared in the alley behind the diner.

Headlights swept across the frosted glass of the pantry’s small window.

“They’re here,” Dominic whispered, his voice suddenly calm, cold.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a heavy, ornate silver key.

He pressed it into my blood-stained hand.

“Take the twins,” he said, drawing a black pistol from his waistband. “There is a lakeside cottage. The address is on the key tag.”

“I can’t leave you,” I whispered.

“I am dead anyway, Clara,” he said, leaning his head back against a shelf of canned tomatoes. “But you have to save Martha’s legacy.”

Outside, the heavy metal back door of the diner shuddered under a massive blow.

A man’s voice shouted over the rain.

The handle began to turn.

“Go,” Dominic hissed, his grip tightening on the pistol.

“The coal chute behind the freezer,” he whispered, coughing as a fleck of blood caught on his lip.

“It leads to the side alley.”

The metal door groaned as another heavy shoulder slammed against it from the outside.

“I can’t just leave you to die,” I said.

My hands shook as I gripped the handles of the double infant carrier.

“You are not leaving me,” Dominic said, his voice straining.

“You are saving my children.”

“And you are saving yourself.”

A gunshot cracked through the wood of the back door, leaving a jagged, splintered hole.

Plaster dust rained down on my shoulders.

I grabbed the heavy carrier, my muscles straining under the sudden weight of the two babies.