A loud crash split through the narrow alleyway. A woman was thrown against a cracked stone wall, her back hitting hard before she slid down, coughing up blood. Her trembling fingers pressed against the wound at her side, but her eyes—wide, terrified—went straight to her two children.
A boy and a girl, no older than eight, struggled in the hands of three burly men. They looked just like her—same amber eyes, same soft brown curls—and right now those eyes were filled with tears and fear.
The leader of the three, a man with messy spiky hair that made him look like a half-plucked pufferfish, smirked as he kicked the woman square in the face. The same drunken idiot that had brushed Luther.
"Thought you were tough, huh?" he spat, wiping his boot on the ground. "What happened to that fire you had, sweetheart?"
