How many of them are still alive?
How many are in shallow graves or at the bottom of the Schuylkill or in barrels at a dry cleaner that never actually opens for business?
My chest tightens. Dahlia’s ring pulses against my hip—not the searing heat that means danger, but something softer. Sadder.
“I have to ask,” I say quietly. “The women who disappeared. Were they all?—”
I can’t finish the sentence. Can’t say what I’m thinking.
Alaina understands anyway.
“Not all of them,” she says. “But most. Young women without connections. Without resources. Women whose families couldn’t afford investigators or lawyers or the kind of pressurethat makes police actually look.” She pauses. “Women who looked like easy targets because no one with power would miss them.”
Women likeme.
If I weren’t standing here as Marcus’s public date—if I were just some paralegal he met at a bar—would anyone even notice when I stopped showing up?
Alex would. Alex would tear this city apart.
But Alex doesn’t have a grandfather on City Council. Alex doesn’t have fifty years of favors to call in. Alex is just as disposable as I am.
That’s why we’re dangerous, I realize. Because we have nothing to lose that they haven’t already taken.
Movement across the room.
The crowd shifts. Parting.
I see him before I hear him—that fur coat cutting through the suits like a blade. He’s smiling. Shaking hands as he moves. But his eyes are scanning.
Looking for me.
The serpent at my spine wakes up. Fully. Finally.
Alaina sees him too. Her hand finds my arm. Squeezes once.
“Remember,” she says quietly. “You have my number. You have all of our numbers. Use them.”
Marcus’s eyes find mine across the ballroom.
That smile widens.
He starts walking toward us.
Sixteen
I don’t watchhim approach.
Some instinct says don’t track him like prey watches a predator—it only makes them hungrier.
So I keep my eyes on Alaina, keep my breathing steady, keep performing calm until?—
“There you are.”
He’s beside me now. Too close. His hand landing on the small of my back before I can step away.
That wrongness that makes my spine coil. That copper taste flooding my mouth.
Alaina’s hand tightens on my arm. Brief. Warning. Then releases.
