A memory of the night she’d tried to run Chloe down surged up vividly.The burst of adrenaline.Screaming tires.The split second where everything narrowed to a single, vicious thought.
Take it away.Take her shine.Take her certainty.
She’d missed but tried again and misjudged the angle, the timing, and Kayne’s reflexes.
Danica hadn’t been thinking clearly.She’d been blinded by rage.
The crash had been brutal, metal screaming against metal, her body snapping forward as the seatbelt wrenched her back into place.The car she’d paid a thousand dollars cash for was too old for airbags.Even now, her ribs ached with phantom pain.
She’d walked away somehow, furious and shaking.She was untouched enough to convince herself she’d just been unlucky, not unhinged, that she was still under control.
Breaking into Chloe’s apartment had been child’s play.Easier than it should’ve been.
Danica had laughed afterward when she told Chloe she knew the spare key was hidden inside the light sconce by the door, as if it was some sisterly secret she’d stumbled onto by accident.Chloe had smiled, unsurprised, trusting as always.
The truth was messier.Older.Danica had made a copy of the key months ago, back when Chloe thought they were building something.She’d left her purse unattended on the kitchen counter, back turned and heart wide open.It had taken less than a minute.
Danica had moved through the apartment as if she were a specter, touching everything, knowing exactly where Chloe kept the things she loved.From her favorite mug to the worn throw blanket that had belonged to her mom.She knew about the drawer that stuck unless you lifted it just right.
The plants had been the best part.Snapping stems and crushing leaves of lovingly tended-to flora had given her a rush.She relished watching green life wither beneath her hands.
Chloe nurtured things and believed in growth and second chances.Danica had ground all of it into the floor and felt powerful then, giddy with it.She was finally carving her mark into a world that had ignored her for far too long.
Now the memory made her nauseous.
Chloe had never deserved any of it.
That truth landed with a dull, aching weight, heavier than the chains biting into her skin.
Chloe had been kind, absurdly so.She’d offered Danica a generous salary, real responsibility, and a place that could have led to belonging if Danica had let it.She’d welcomed her as a sister with open arms, no suspicion, no hesitation.
Danica had taken that generosity and twisted it into a weapon.
Her throat tightened.What had she done?
A sound broke the silence, the faint scrape of something shifting nearby.A reminder that she wasn’t alone after all.
Her heart hammered so hard she was sure whoever had taken her could hear it.
Am I going to die?
The question surfaced quietly.No hysteria, just cold logic.People didn’t kidnap you and chain you up because they planned to let you go.
Tears slid beneath the blindfold, hot against her chilled skin.For the first time, stripped of excuses and adrenaline and justifications, Danica saw herself clearly.She was petty and afraid, consumed by envy until nothing recognizable remained.
She thought of Chloe’s smile.The real one she’d offered freely, repeatedly, to a sister who had only ever pretended to accept it.
“I’m sorry,” Danica whispered into the dark.
Not because she expected forgiveness, but because the truth finally had nowhere left to hide.
There was no answer.Only the cold, the hunger, and the growing certainty that consequences, long delayed, had finally come due, and there would be no bargaining with them.
#
The safe house wasquiet in the way that never fooled anyone who’d learned to listen past silence.
Kayne stood at the kitchen counter long after the call ended, phone dark in his hand.No hits on Danica.Not a whisper.She’d vanished like smoke.Sandy’s house had been ruled arson.The body count kept climbing in his head no matter how hard he tried to compartmentalize it.Joel Erickson.Robin Day.Sandy.Her husband.Four people dead, each one a link in a chain that felt as if it was being pulled tighter by the hour, constricting with every unanswered question.
