Reluctantly, I shove away from him to retrieve it, receiving a warning snarl in return.I ignore it.
My phone’s screen glows harshly in the dark entryway.
UNKNOWN number.
My thumb hovers over the notification.Dread pools cold in my stomach—a different kind of cold than Shadow Daddy’s touch.
I open the text.
It’s short, only six words that make the floor drop out from under me.
Leave my wife alone, Penelope.
Everything stops.
The air.My breath.Time itself.
Penelope.
My real name.The name I buried with the girl I used to be.The name only one person in this city would text me like it’s a threat.
Vincent.
The phone trembles in my hand.
My shadow daddy feels my spike of terror instantly.The shadows in the room writhe, agitated, reaching toward me like grasping fingers.The temperature plummets, and my breath mists in the air.The floorboards groan and crack.
He knows.Vincent knows who I am.What I’ve been doing.That I contacted his wife and gave her photos of him.
Heknows.
A low, inhuman growl builds from everywhere at once.The house itself shudders with rage.
Then red and blue lights flash through the windows.
No sirens, just lights.
My head snaps toward the front window.I move on instinct, my phone still clutched in my shaking hand, crossing the living room in three strides.
Outside, a county sheriff department car crawls past my house at a predatory pace.The lights wash over the peeling paint, the dying lawn, announcing a foreign presence like a neon sign.
I can’t see through the driver’s side window, but I know it’s him, and I hear exactly what he’s telling me.
I see you.
I know where you are.
I know who you are.
The car disappears around the corner.The lights fade, leaving only darkness and the PI in my driveway straining his neck to see if the car comes back.
I stand frozen at the window, my breath fogging the glass.
But as the initial terror begins to settle, crystallizing into something harder, sharper, I realize something.
He thinks I’m still the same broken girl he destroyed years ago, that he can do whatever the fuck he wants and get away with it yet again.
He’s wrong.
