My name is Julien Mercier. I abuse women. You can find me at the park at the intersection of Rue de Turenne and Rue des Francs-Bourgeois. I have drugs in my pocket. Come quickly.
Pressed Send.
I wiped the phone down. Put it back in his pocket. Stood.
Julien groaned, still unconscious.
I looked down at him one last time, then turned and walked away.
I didn't know much right then.
But I sure as hell knew I felt better knowing one more asshole was off the streets of Paris for a few months.
Maybe longer, if the police found everything he’d been up to.
I walked back to Mila's block. Took up position a block away, hidden in the shadows, out of sight.
Her window was still lit. She was awake.
Safe.
I stood there for an hour. Then two.
The light finally went out.
I stayed another thirty minutes, just to be sure.
And the whole time, I wished I had the balls to go knock on her door.
To warn her. To ask if she was okay.
But I didn't.
Because men like me didn't get to have women like her.
We just got to watch from the shadows and hope that was enough.
8
MILA
In daylight, everything seemed less dramatic.
Last night’s fear had thinned with the morning sun, dissolving into something almost laughable. Like I’d let my imagination run wild because Paris had taught me to see meaning in shadows.
The message—You should lock your door—sat in my phone like a bruise I kept pressing just to see if it still hurt, but the city outside my window looked ordinary. Deliveries. Dogs. Couples with coffee. A woman in heels yelling into her phone like it was the most normal thing in the world.
Maybe it had been a wrong number.
Maybe someone had meant it as a joke.
Maybe my nerves had been frayed and I’d let them make a story out of coincidence.
By late morning, I could almost convince myself nothing had happened at all. That I wasn’t being watched. That the reflection in the shop window hadn’t been him—hadn’t been anyone. That I hadn’t stood at my own window with my heart in my throat.
Daylight made me brave.
Or careless.
