Raven blinked and slowly turned her head toward the boy who had stepped out from behind her. The kid was sulking as if the man in front of him just ruined his perfect entertainer.
"Daddy, you ruined all the fun." Leo scowled.
'Daddy.'
For a moment Raven felt as if someone had punched her square in the face.
Her gaze shifted from the boy to the man standing a few steps away. Then back to the boy again.
The resemblance was impossible to ignore. Same sharp jawline. Same dark eyes. Even the arrogant little tilt of the chin matched.
Honestly, even a dead person could tell they were father and son.
'How the hell did I not know he had a son?'
When Raven accepted the mission, she had done her homework. A thorough background check. The man in front of her was the CEO of a multibillion-dollar company. Powerful, influential, annoyingly untouchable.
Yet when it came to his personal life, there had been nothing. No wife. No girlfriend. No children. Not even a suspicious goldfish.
Which was exactly why she had failed to sneak into his schedule when he was supposed to meet the woman she shot.
Raven's thoughts abruptly halted as she looked back at the man again.
He was staring at her like she had just committed a crime against humanity.
Great.
'Don't tell me he is planning to torture me now.'
From Raven's perspective the situation was quite simple. She had been captured by the man. Then she had secretly escaped. Now she had been caught again.
That combination rarely led to hugs and forgiveness.
As tension slowly crawled through her nerves, another car screeched to a stop nearby. The door flew open and a man in a black suit sprinted toward them.
Raven's eyes widened the moment she recognized him.
It was the same man who had shot her in the stomach that night.
'Surrender'—those words from him echoed in her mind like a bane.
Well, that explained why her body still felt like it had been run over by a truck.
"Boss, we couldn't find Miss Ivy—" the man reported, slightly out of breath.
Raven frowned.
Miss Ivy? Who exactly was that?
'Did this lunatic kidnap multiple women for entertainment or something?'
Before Raven could overthink it further, the man called Xander casually pointed in her direction, causing the man in the suit to turn his head too.
"How will you find her when she is busy fighting our men to save my son?" Xander said calmly.
One of the men lying on the ground suddenly groaned in pain.
"Ah, boss. She doesn't listen to us and kept fighting."
"Yes, boss," another man added miserably while clutching his arm. "She is crazy."
A third one nodded in agreement from the pavement like a defeated soldier.
"Absolutely crazy."
Raven stared at the injured men in shock. Then she looked at Xander. Then back at the injured men again.
Her brain was struggling to keep up.
'Who the hell was Ivy and why was he calling her that?'
At first Raven assumed it was some strange psychological trick to make her surrender.
'Nice try'
Unfortunately for him, she was not that gullible.
Deciding that standing around listening to nonsense was a waste of time, Raven slowly turned her head, already scanning the area for a possible escape route.
She stopped when her eyes caught something in the tinted window of one of the SUVs.
A reflection that left her froze.
'Just what in the world—' Raven almost screamed in her mind because the woman staring back at her was not her.
Different face. Different eyes. Different everything.
"...."
The reflection stubbornly remained the same.
Who the hell is she?
Her heartbeat stuttered as a cold realization slowly crept up her spine.
And more importantly…
What on earth am I doing in her body?
Raven had never been someone who believed in miracles.
In her line of work, miracles usually came with a bullet, a knife, or a very unpleasant bill afterward. So when she had woken up alive after falling off a cliff and getting shot in the stomach, she had briefly considered the possibility that maybe, just maybe, the universe had decided to give her a second chance.
Clearly, the universe had a very twisted sense of humor.
Because if this was its idea of kindness, Raven would very much like to file a complaint.
'Don't tell me I woke up just to find myself in the body of the woman whom I shot!'
****
A deafening silence filled the car as Raven silently cursed her fate.
Of all the ridiculous situations she had imagined in her life, waking up in the body of the woman she had shot had definitely not been on the list.
She leaned her head back against the seat, staring at the ceiling of the SUV while replaying everything in her mind.
How had she not noticed when she had sneaked out of the hospital earlier? Had she been too focused on escaping to look at herself properly?
Her brain had been screaming "run," not "admire your reflection."
And now here she was back in a car, heading straight to the very hospital she had just escaped from.
Brilliant.
"Absolutely brilliant."
Raven sighed internally. If bad luck were a sport, she would have been a world champion by now.
"I am perfectly fine," she suddenly announced, breaking the thick silence inside the car.
Xander turned his head slightly to look at her. His sharp gaze studied her for a moment, but before he could say anything, Leo spoke first.
"Is it true you were shot in your chest?"
Raven lowered her eyes toward the boy sitting beside her.
His usually sparkling eyes were dim with concern, and his small brows were furrowed as if he were thinking very hard about the situation.
For a second, Raven felt strangely awkward. No one had ever looked at her like that before.
However, her hand instinctively moved to her chest where the injury should have been. She nodded.
Leo's expression grew even more serious.
"Does it hurt?" he asked quietly.
Raven shook her head.
"It's nothing," she replied calmly.
That was not entirely a lie. After surviving gunshots before, the pain barely registered in her mind anymore. What truly hurt at the moment was the ridiculous situation she had landed in.
'I need to get out from here,' she reminded herself one more time despite failing not just once but twice.
Xander, who had been watching the exchange from the side, narrowed his eyes slightly.
The conversation between the two was oddly natural.
Too natural.
A woman who had just fought several trained men should not be speaking this gently to a child moments later.
Still, he said nothing.
Instead, he leaned back in his seat and looked ahead while Leo continued talking to the woman who had just saved him.
"Those men were really bad fighters," Leo said suddenly.
Raven blinked.
"Oh?"
"Yes," Leo continued confidently. "You knocked them down very quickly."
Raven almost laughed.
Kid, if you saw what I usually do, you would probably faint. But she kept that thought to herself.
"Daddy, fire them all," he announced, looking at his father, who did not say anything but hummed.
How could he keep those men who had failed twice to protect his son?