mirasolenwrites
SEVEN DAYS
~ Mira Solen
"A cage went in search of a bird."
- Franz Kafka
Seven days before her death, investigative journalist Keira Vasquez receives an anonymous message.
No name.
No motive.
Just a countdown.
At first, she thinks it is another threat. Another angry man hiding behind a screen. Another story getting too close to the truth.
Then the messages start knowing things they should not know.
The view from her apartment window.
The streets she walks home through.
The people sitting at her kitchen table.
Someone is watching her in real time.
Velhari was the kind of city that swallowed things whole.
People. Evidence. Girls who knew too much.
And somewhere between fear and obsession, Keira realizes something far worse:
She was never supposed to be the story.
The only person who believes her is the man she swore she would never need again - Rian Mathur, a criminal defense lawyer with blood on his conscience and a history with Keira that ended in silence sharp enough to wound.
Beautiful in the way sharp objects are beautiful.
Controlled to the point of cruelty.
Dangerous in the way only someone who once knew you completely can be.
Forced back into each other's orbit by anonymous threats, buried case files, and a city rotting quietly beneath expensive buildings and political smiles, Keira and Rian begin uncovering a pattern connected to a dead journalist, a scandal that should have stayed buried, and someone patient enough to wait years for revenge.
Because the most terrifying thing about being hunted is realizing the person watching you already knows how your story ends.
And the most dangerous thing about secrets is this:
They do not care who they destroy on the way out.
"One person we loved so completely that finding out the truth about him almost broke us more than anything else."
Maybe that was the first warning.
Or maybe it was this:
Nothing was the same color after that.