I slip inside, shutting it behind me with careful precision.
The room is darker than the rest of the house, lit only by low lamps and the glow of monitors in sleep mode. The desk sitsperfectly organized, nothing out of place. It’s a secondary office of some sort, or a surveillance room, maybe?
Control made physical.
I move to the desk first, fingers gliding over the wood, searching for what matters. Passport. Documents. A key. Anything that proves there’s a way out for me somehow.
The top drawer is locked.
I pick it, quicker than I should be able to, adrenaline sharpening my hands. The drawer slides open.
Inside is a passport.
My passport.
The forged one I used to get here. The one I kept in the safe in my hotel room, the one I checked three times before I left the hotel.
It’s sitting in his drawer like it’s always been there.
My blood turns cold.
I lift it slowly, staring at it like it might dissolve. It doesn’t. It’s real. It’s mine.
Or it was.
I set it down with shaking fingers and keep searching because if he has that, he has everything. He has my routes, my papers, my names, my options.
I reach into the drawer again and pull out a small stack of photographs.
There I am, leaving the hotel. There I am in the bar. There I am on the street outside, glancing over my shoulder like I can feel the eyes on me.
He didn’t just find me tonight. He’s been with me the whole time.
My throat closes, panic clawing, hot and fast.
I back away from the desk, breath coming in short bursts, and that’s when I see it.
On the far corner of the desk, angled like it’s meant to be noticed, sits another framed photograph.
Not the one from the party.
This one is from the vault.
Me, in black, hair pinned tight, turning my head slightly like I can sense the camera. The moment before the alarm screams. The moment before the chase begins. The moment I saidgoodbyelike it meant something.
He framed it.
Like art. Like ownership. Like worship.
My stomach twists, heat and fear tangling so tight I can’t separate them. Because there’s something about that frame, about the care taken to place it there, that isn’t just obsession.
It’s reverence. And that’s the thing that scares me most. It’s not because he caught me. Or that he locked every door he didn’t want me to go through. But that he’s been watching me long enough to know exactly who I am… and wants me anyway.
Behind me, the door clicks.
I freeze, the blood in my veins turning to ice.
“Found what you were looking for?”
