She opened her hand.
Red fragments clung to her skin. She let them fall.
The sidewalk didn’t feel empty.
But it felt watched.
A cab idled at the end of the block.
A couple argued outside a bodega, their voices rising sharp against the cold.
Three cars down, a black sedan sat tucked in shadow.
Too still.
Her jaw tensed.
She couldn’t see inside.
But someone could see her.
She didn’t flinch.
The door clicked open and slammed shut. Locks engaged.
Her fingers curled around thesteering wheel.
She forced her breathing to even out.
Tomorrow, she’d go back to the Krav Maga studio.
And the coward who left the rose?
They weren’t going to break her.
Not again.
Not this time.
CHAPTER 22
A Fire in the Dark
The cold hit hard, sharp in her throat, but the heaviness in her chest didn’t budge. She breathed out, the cold air catching it for a moment before it disappeared.
The city stirred: footsteps, steam, that sharp shriek underground she could never quite tune out.
She let out a slow breath and rolled her shoulders, but the tension stayed.
The rose lingered in her mind. That perfect, blood-red bloom: too pristine, too exact. Its smooth, thornless stem haunted her palm.
She hadn’t slept much, but she’d woken up with one thought:Not again.
Upstairs in a converted warehouse, the Krav Maga studio pulsed with heat, windows misted over from the blur of bodies inside. That room was heat. Noise. Sweat. Control. Exactly what she needed.
The kind of place where fear had no footing.
Arden took the stairs in quick strides, hands flexing as if bracing for impact, reflexes already primed.
