Towering. Motionless. Their bodies are coiled, tense, ready. Each one is clad in black from head to toe, their faces hidden behind grotesque skeletal masks. Hollow eyes. Twisted grins. The kind of masks that elicit nightmares.
A sickening wave of dread washes through me.
They aren’t just standing there. They’re holding crowbars, ready to pry open my safe. The half dozen red roses I bought for my desk are spilled on the floor, trampled, petals scattered like crimson confetti.
My body locks up, frozen in place as the weight of terror crushes me. I blink, willing the sight away, but it’s burned into my brain. And then my gaze lands on the man in the middle.
My father.
Sweaty. Bug-eyed.
Standing among them like hebelongsthere.
“L-Lucky,” he stammers. “You’re here? A-at night?”
“I live in the apartment upstairs,” I answer automatically, my voice flat, distant. My brain is struggling to process what I’m seeing. What could he possibly be doing here? Why is he withmasked men?
Why do they look like they just stepped out of a horror movie? Nothing makes sense.
My father stares at me, hands jittering, arms twitching. There’s somethingwrong, something I should understand, but my mind refuses to connect the pieces.
“What’s going on?” I ask. The question barely scrapes past my lips before one of the men reaches up, fingers curling around the edges of his mask.
Slowly, he peels it down.
I watch, my breath stuck in my throat, eyes tracing the movement until the mask drops to the floor.
The sight slams into me hard. My stomach twists. My pulse jackhammers against my ribs, a wild, erratic rhythm.
I know that face.
It’s the tattooed stranger. It’s him. It’s fucking Trouble.
Chapter Five
He looks at me with cold, wolf-like eyes. Sharp. Feral.
The three men beside him remove their skull masks too. But they’re nothing more than fuzzy silhouettes to me. All my focus is on the mysterious, tattooed stranger. How did he find out where I was? Did he look for me? I don’t understand.
“What are you doing here?” I ask him, my voice tight.
One of the other men, much older, clad in black, glances between us. “You two know each other?”
The tattooed man shrugs. “Never seen her before. Don’t know who she is.”
The words slice through me, swift and brutal. My heart stutters. I rip my gaze away and fix it on my father instead, ignoring the burn in my chest.
“I—I tried calling you,” my father stammers, snapping me out of my daze. He takes a hesitant step toward me, but one of the men clamps a rough hand on his shoulder, stopping him cold.
“Well, isn’t this a surprise?” The man shoves my father aside and strides toward me, towering over everyone in the room. Hispresence is suffocating, even more menacing thanTrouble. My father grunts as he collides with the wall.
I don’t think this has anything to do with Trouble and me.
“Oh fuck,” I whisper, my eyes darting between the man and my father.
The man smirks, his lips curling with amusement. “You must be Lucky.” He drops the words like a stone, one by one.
“I don’t answer to Lucky. It’s Lo… Marlowe.” Every muscle in my body tightens as I force myself to stand tall, fighting the urge to run. “Who are you? And why are you here?”
