Security Alert: Back Door Breach—Home Alarm Triggered.
I grabbed the phone so fast it nearly slipped from my hand. My thumb hit the security app before I could blink, and grainy footage flickered to life—someone, blurry and hooded, slipping through the back door of my house. The motion sensor lights flashed on. The alarm began to shriek, jagged and violent.
My heart slammed against my ribs.
I didn’t think. I just acted. I hit Mina’s name in my contacts with shaking fingers. It rang once. Twice.
“Come on, come on,” I whispered, pacing the floor now, sweat already dampening my palms.
The third ring felt like it stretched on forever. I couldn’t breathe. Something was wrong—I could feel it deep in my chest like a warning bell going off inside me.
And I wasn’t going to sit in a damn hotel room while it happened.
I didn’t breathe. Not really. Not between the second and third ring. My pulse roared in my ears, each beat like a hammer driving a spike into my chest.
Then she picked up.
“Nikolai?"
“What happened?” My voice came out low, rough, barely tethered to calm. “You sound?—”
“It’s nothing, really. Just a mistake.” A beat. “I forgot the code to the alarm when I got home.”
Bullshit.
My hand clenched around the phone. “Mina. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine! Just clumsy, that’s all,” she said, chipper enough to set my teeth on edge. “I was just… coming home from Paige's place."
But she hesitated. I caught it—the tiny crack beneath the surface. Her cheerfulness felt like a mask slipping. And I knew her well enough now to recognize fear when it whispered beneath her words.
I swallowed hard. “Are you alone?”
A pause. Too long. “Of course! It’s just me and… your hoodie.”
That pause again. Subtle, but enough to spike the cold dread in my chest.
“You sure?” I pressed, hating how my throat felt like it was closing in.
“I’m sure.”
She tried to sound sincere, but the warmth wasn’t real. I knew it. She was covering for something. Or someone.
A silence stretched out between us, thin and taut like fishing line about to snap.
Then she said it softly, gently: “Goodnight.”
I swallowed hard. “Goodnight.”
She ended the call.
And the second the line went dead, I was already moving.
I tore open my duffel, shoving my gear in without care, heart jackhammering behind my ribs. Every muscle in my body buzzed with a cold urgency. The alarm didn’t go off by accident. And that lie—that flimsy, brittle thing she tried to pass off as reassurance—shattered whatever calm I had left.
I could hear it in her voice. The fear she didn’t want me to hear. The kind of fear you get when someone is standing too close.
“Fuck,” I bit out, slamming the zipper closed.
