And I'd been running ever since.
"Anna? Geez, you were miles away."
A touch on my shoulder jolted me back to the present. I flinched violently, my heart vaulting into my throat, the phantom thud of the impact echoing in my bones.
"Sorry!" Marcy from Pristine Services blinked atme, her hand held up in surrender. "Didn't mean to scare you."
We were in the bland, fluorescent-lit locker room of our cleaning service headquarters. The familiar smells of industrial cleaner, coffee from the break room, and Marcy's vanilla perfume slowly anchored me back to reality.
I forced a breath, then my practiced, placid smile. "Sorry. Long night," I murmured, the standard excuse that explained everything and nothing.
"Tell me about it. Don't forget, you've got the Spencer penthouse today. Your regular Friday."
I nodded, grabbing my cleaning caddy. "Right. Thanks, Marcy."
Eighteen months, one week, and four days. That's how long it had been since Carter Wilson was sentenced to fifteen years for vehicular manslaughter and fleeing the scene. I kept the count in my head, a numerical anchor against the gaslighting fog of my memories. Sometimes, in the dead of night, I still wondered if I'd imagined the sheer evil in his eyes, their calculating coldness. The count from his sentence reminded me it was all real.
The legal case had been swift. A closed hearing, fast, efficient and brutal. The plaintiff's identity had been shielded from the media for reasons I never understood. I never saw the victim's family, never learned her name. She was just "the deceased" in the dry legal documents I'd obsessively read online afterward. But in my mind, in my nightmares, she was somuch more. She was the flash of life Carter extinguished, the scarring memory that followed me and the final catalyst in my foolish relationship. She was a woman who'd gone out for an evening jog and never came home. A daughter, maybe a mother, maybe someone's best friend. A ghost who haunted every quiet moment of my waking life.
My silence had been bought with terror, but it felt like a choice I made every single day by continuing to breathe, pretend, and go through the motions of living. The guilt was a stone lodged in my chest, growing heavier with time instead of lighter. Some nights I lay awake wondering if I should have spoken up anyway, prison be damned. Feared my cowardice made me complicit in her death.
I climbed into my old, inconspicuous sedan, checking the locks twice before pulling out of the lot. At every red light, my eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, a habit etched so deep into my nervous system I barely noticed anymore. He was behind bars. The legal documents said so. The news articles confirmed it. He couldn't touch me.
The logic did nothing to calm the primal fear that lived in my subconscious, that whispered in Carter's voice:I will destroy you.
Driving into the opulent heart of the city felt like crossing into another universe. The buildings gleamed, immune to the grime and fear of my cramped studio apartment in a neighborhood where sirens wailed at night. The Spencer residence was in the most exclusivetower, a monument to wealth and control, all glass and steel reaching toward a sky I'd never touch. I used my service elevator key card, the gentle ding a world away from the slam of car doors and breaking glass that still echoed in my dreams.
The penthouse doors opened silently. The air inside was cool, scented faintly of lemons and something else, something clean and indefinable that I could never quite name. It always felt like the apartment was holding its breath. The space was impeccably tidy despite my weekly visits, yet profoundly empty, like a museum after hours. Beautiful, hollow and waiting for something.
I was bending to lock the brakes on my cleaning caddy when a small missile of warmth launched itself at my legs.
I looked down. Daisy Spencer had her arms wrapped tightly around my knees, her face buried in my jeans. She didn't say a word. She never did. But in her fierce, silent hug was a welcome more genuine than any I'd known in years.
My heart, so often tied in a knot of anxiety, softened. A real smile, small but true, touched my lips. I knelt to her level, returning the embrace. "Hey, sweet pea," I whispered into her soft, dark hair. "You're my official welcome committee, huh?"
She pulled back. Her gray eyes, so solemn and ancient for a five-year-old, were scanning my face with an intensity that sometimes unnerved me. Like she was searching for something. Or looking throughsomething to see what I kept hidden underneath. She nodded once, decisively, then slipped her small, trusting hand into mine.
For a moment, I wondered what she saw when she looked at me like that. What secrets lived behind her silence? I'd been cleaning this penthouse for six months, and I still didn't know why she didn't speak. Mr. Spencer never mentioned it, and I'd learned long ago not to ask questions that might cost me my highest-paying job. But sometimes I caught her watching me with those knowing gray eyes, and I wondered if she somehow sensed the guilt I carried, the secret that weighed on me like stones in my pockets.
In that simple, wordless connection, I found a moment of pure, uncomplicated peace. This child, in this cold, luxurious space, was my one bright spot. A tiny refuge of innocence in a world that felt increasingly dark.
Squeezing her hand gently, I let her lead me further into the penthouse. She settled on the plush carpet with her coloring books while I began my routine, starting with the master bathroom. The marble gleamed under recessed lighting. I pulled cleaning spray from my caddy and began wiping down surfaces that were already pristine.
Mr. Spencer was at workâhe always was on Fridays. I'd only met him a handful of times in six months. He was polite, professional, and never inappropriate. But there was something in the way he watched me sometimes when our paths crossed, aweight to his attention that made my skin prickle. Those gray eyes, the same shade as his daughter's, seemed to see too much. To know too much.
I told myself it was paranoia, a trauma response. Everything felt like a threat now. Every man was Carter until proven otherwise.
If only I knew who he truly was and what he knew about me.
2.Jack
Two years ago today, I became a widower.
Today, I was going to destroy the woman who helped make me one.
The date glowed on the dashboard: March 14th. Not a number anymore but a geology, a permanent stratum dividing my life into before and after. I sat in the underground garage of my building, engine off, staring at those numbers and wondering if Elena would recognize the man sitting here. The man in the five-thousand-dollar suit with a billion-dollar company at his fingertips, who felt more like a ghost haunting his own life.
Before Elena, I'd been a perfectly engineered machine for success. My father, Christopher Spencer, was a brilliant, distant star whose approval was a mathematical equation I could never quite solve. He measured love in achievements, test scores, awards, and eventually stock portfolios. A handshake was affection.A nod was pride. Anything more was weakness, and weakness was intolerable in the Spencer household.
