Chapter 1

The rain hammered against the thin metal walls of our trailer, a constant, miserable drumbeat that matched the frantic pounding in my chest. Inside, the air was thick and damp, smelling of rust and sickness.

My son, Leo, coughed again, a weak, rattling sound that tore right through me. His small body was burning with fever, his breaths shallow.

Pneumonia, the clinic doctor had said, a five-minute consultation that cost me the last of our grocery money. He needed real medicine, a real hospital, not the cheap off-brand pills I could afford.

The eviction notice was still taped to the door, the paper warped and soggy. We had a week.

Desperation was a cold knot in my stomach. That' s why I was looking at the greasy business card from the bar owner, a man whose eyes had lingered on me for too long when I served him coffee at the diner. The job he offered wasn't waitressing. I knew what it was. But it was money, fast money, and Leo needed a doctor.

I picked up my phone to call the man, my thumb hovering over the number.

Just as I was about to press it, my vision flickered. Strange, vivid images flooded my mind, sharp and intrusive, like comments flashing on a screen.

I saw my husband, Ethan, not struggling on his army base in Germany, but laughing in a bright, sunny cafe. He was sliding a credit card across the counter, buying a fancy cake for a woman named Maria.

Another flash. Maria and her daughter, wearing new clothes, moving into a spacious, clean apartment on the base, a home paid for with Ethan' s combat pay. My husband's money. Our money.

Then the images turned dark. I saw myself, taking the bar owner' s job. I saw Leo, home alone, locked out of the trailer after a storm.

I saw him shivering, crying for me, his small hands beating against the door. The vision showed me his funeral. It showed Ethan, standing there not with grief, but with grim satisfaction, using Leo' s death to divorce me and marry Maria, securing her future with the military benefits that were supposed to be for me and my son.

The horror was so absolute it felt like a physical blow. The phone dropped from my hand, clattering on the linoleum floor.

I stumbled back, gasping for air. The bar owner's card was poison. That path was not just my ruin, it was Leo' s death sentence.

"No," I whispered, my voice shaking. "No."

I ran to Leo's side, scooping his hot, limp body into my arms. His future, our future, was not going to be what those visions showed me. I would not let it.

I had to get to Germany. I had to face Ethan. I had to take back what was ours.