Looking back at my phone, I pulled up the surveillance feed of Lyla’s apartment.
She was asleep.
Curled on her side, with one hand tucked beneath her cheek, she lay half-uncovered. The sheet was tangled low around her hips. Her skin glowed softly in the pale light. Her hair fanned across the pillow in loose curls, and her lips were parted in sleep. No fear. No fire. Just unguarded innocence.
My thumb drifted across the screen, brushing over the image of her.
She looked…touchable.
Like something sweet and good that didn’t belong in a world like mine.
And yet, here she was.
I watched her chest rise and fall in a steady rhythm, taking in the slow flutter of her lashes.
She had no idea what was coming.
No idea who I really was.
Or what I would become to her.
This was the calm.
The moment before the storm hit.
And when it did?
Nothing in her world would ever be the same.
I closed the app.
And didn’t say a word for the rest of the ride.
Chapter fourteen
My breath puffed in the cold air as I tugged the sleeves of my sweatshirt down over my hands. The streets were mostly empty this early in the morning. An occasional delivery truck passed me by, and a few coffee vendors were out prepping for the morning rush. The quiet was strange. It would have been almost peaceful if I hadn’t been so wired.
I adjusted the strap of my bag and picked up my pace. My shift at Cipher started in fifteen minutes, and I needed to get a move on. No matter how early I got up, I always managed to run late. It must have been some sort of genetic malfunction.
Since moving to Manhattan, I’d worked nonstop—eagerly taking any temp job that paid, any opportunity to learn. I’d hustled for every audition, participated in every free workshop, and attended any acting class that fit into my schedule. Six months of grinding, of surviving. Of going without sleep. Of getting close but never close enough.
And now, somehow, everything had changed in a matter of days. It was as if the universe had slammed the best and worst of life into a single, breathless collision.
I still couldn’t process what had happened at the club on Halloween. Carlos had shot that man as if it were nothing. A man had died right in front of me. I’d watched his skull split open and spray blood all over the place. A shudder ran through me. Just another night at The Sacrifice, apparently. God, what had I gotten myself into?
I hadn’t told a soul except Nat and Jae. Not even the cops. Because I knew how that would go. Even if I could prove that man had been shot dead by Carlos, I doubted anyone would care. Men like Carlos and Ciro Delgado didn’t answer to the law.
They made legal problems disappear. Madepeopledisappear.
Pulling my scarf tighter around my neck, I kept walking.
I wasn’t stupid. If I wanted to survive in this city, I had to pretend none of it had ever happened.
If I kept my head down, smiled, danced, and acted as though everything was fine, maybe they’d leave me be.
And if not?
Well, I didn’t want to think about that.
