Alone. Always alone, despite the friends and colleagues who populated her days. There was a loneliness to Gabrielle Blanchard that the investigator's report couldn't capture, but that I recognized instinctively. The loneliness of someone who performed connection without ever truly feeling it. Who smiled and laughed and made small talk while some essential part of herself remained locked away.
I knew that loneliness. I lived inside it every day.
Perhaps that was why I couldn't stop watching her. Why I'd memorized her schedule, her coffee order, the route she walked to the subway. Why I sat outside her building night after night like some lovesick teenager, when I should be focused on the empire that demanded my constant attention.
She was a civilian. Soft, sheltered, completely ignorant of the world I inhabited. I had no business thinking about her, no business wanting her with this gnawing intensity that kept me awake at night.
But I couldn't stop.
The light in her window clicked off. I imagined her settling into bed, pulling the covers up, closing her eyes. Did she dream? Did she have nightmares about that cold, demanding father the investigator had described? Did she ever dream of being swept away from her small, anxious life into something larger? Something darker?
"Take me home," I told Kirill, though every instinct screamed at me to stay, to keep watch, to make sure she slept safely through the night.
The SUV pulled away from the curb, and I watched her building recede in the side mirror until we turned the corner and it disappeared from view.
This fascination would pass. It had to.
But even as I told myself that lie, I was already planning tomorrow's surveillance. Already calculating which of her usual coffee shops I might visit in the morning. Already wondering what she would do if I simply walked up to her, introduced myself, let her see the man beneath the monster.
Wondering what she would do if she knew what I really was.
Chapter 3 - Gaby
I woke to the sound of my alarm screaming and the gray light of an overcast morning pressing against my window. For a moment, I lay there disoriented, the remnants of a nightmare clinging to me like cobwebs—something about being chased through empty streets, footsteps behind me that I couldn't outrun.
Then the memory of last night crashed back. The bar. The SUV. The paranoid certainty that someone had been watching me.
I sat up too fast, my head pounding from the beers I shouldn't have had on an empty stomach. The clock showed 6:32 AM. I had to be at the office by eight for my presentation to Mr. Brown, and I looked like I'd slept in a dumpster.
The shower helped, marginally. I stood under the spray until the water ran cold, trying to wash away the lingering unease that had settled into my bones. In the harsh bathroom light, I examined my reflection—dark circles under my eyes, skin pale and tired, my wet hair hanging limp around my face. I looked exactly like someone who'd spent half the night at the window, watching an empty street and feeling like an idiot.
Because that's what I was. An idiot. The SUV had probably belonged to someone visiting a neighbor. The feeling of being watched was just anxiety given form—my therapist from college would have had a field day with this.You're catastrophizing, Gabrielle. You're projecting your internal fears onto external circumstances.
I'd stopped seeing that therapist when I couldn't afford the copays anymore. Another thing I couldn't tell my father.
I dried my hair and applied makeup, doing what I could to disguise the evidence of my sleepless night. Then came the ritual I dreaded every morning: getting dressed.
My closet was full of clothes that almost fit. Size fourteens I kept hoping I'd shrink into, size eighteens that swallowed me in fabric but felt safe. I settled on a charcoal sheath dress that a shop owner had called "flattering for my figure." A diplomatic way of saying it hid my stomach and minimized my hips. I added a structured blazer to broaden my shoulders, to create the illusion of proportion that fashion magazines promised was achievable with the right silhouette.
The mirror showed me a woman who was trying very hard to look like she belonged in a Manhattan office. Whether I actually belonged there was a question I couldn't afford to examine too closely.
***
The subway was its usual morning chaos—bodies pressed together, the smell of coffee and perfume and human proximity. I squeezed into a corner and held the pole, trying to make myself smaller. A man in a suit glanced at me, then away, his gaze sliding past like I was part of the architecture. I was used to that. Invisible in a crowd, unless someone needed to push past me with a pointed sigh, annoyed by the space I occupied.
I checked my phone compulsively, reviewing my presentation notes for the hundredth time. The quarterly marketing report was solid. I'd spent three weeks on the consumer behavior analysis, two all-nighters on the demographic projections. It was good work. Maybe even excellent work.
But Mr. Brown would find something wrong with it. He always did.
The train lurched, and I grabbed the pole tighter, my knuckles white. Through the window, I caught a glimpse of a black SUV keeping pace with the train on the street above. My heart stuttered—but then we plunged underground again, and I couldn't see anything except my own pale reflection in the dark glass.
Stop it, I told myself.You're being ridiculous.
***
The presentation was scheduled for 8:30 in the main conference room. I arrived at eight, wanting to test the projector and arrange the handouts and do all the small preparatory tasks that made me feel in control. The room was empty, which was both a relief and a disappointment. I'd half-hoped someone would be there to distract me from the anxiety coiling in my chest.
I connected my laptop, ran through the slides twice, and arranged the bound reports at each seat with geometric precision. By 8:25, my palms were sweating. By 8:28, I'd checked my teeth for lipstick three times.
