Chapter 1
DAMIEN
The sound of the tap drips louder at night, each drop falling with the kind of slow, metallic insistence that threads itself through the dark and settles beneath my skin like a warning I can’t ignore.
Or maybe I’m just hearing more things now—things I didn’t used to notice, things that didn’t used to matter.
The slow, tin-sharp clicks of water hitting the sink.
The creak of the floorboards when the old heating system shifts like bones settling under the weight of another sleepless hour.
The soft scrape of Raven’s thigh against the couch leather when she curls in on herself, tucking her knees tighter to her chest as if making herself smaller will make the night less oppressive.
The world used to be quieter.
I used to be quieter.
But something’s changed—something small at first, a hairline crack running through the version of myself I keptsealed and contained. Now it’s widening, groaning through me, impossible to ignore, impossible to fix, impossible to bury under all the other dark things I’ve already swallowed.
Something’s cracked, and I can’t glue it back, can’t seal it up with spider silk and pretend it never happened, can’t choke it down like I’ve choked everything else.
I’ve combed the feeds.
I’ve traced the signal paths, the building entry logs, every flicker of static, every glitch in the lens, every fragment of shadow where something shouldn’t be.
Over and over and over, until it feels like I’ve peeled the skin off the problem and still never found the bone. It keeps slipping sideways, out of reach, just out of sight, taunting me with what it reveals and what it hides.
And he’s still out there.
I can feel him.
Crawling in the walls of my head, threading himself through the seams of my thoughts, leaving fingerprints where he doesn’t belong.
The photo. The rosary.
The fucking note.
You took her once. I’m just taking her back.
The words gnaw like teeth against my skull, scraping slow and deliberate, because I know exactly what they mean, even if I haven’t said it out loud. I don’t have to. They echo through me anyway, bruising everything they touch.
I know what they mean.
The lock clicks.
I’ve checked it five times tonight.
I check it again, the cold metal pressing back against my thumb as though the deadbolt alone is supposed to keep the world out. It’s not enough. It’s never enough. The air in here sits too heavy, too humid against my ribs, thick with the heat of her breathing and my inability to sit still.
Because when I sit still, I see him—standing where I should have stood, pressing his thumb against her lip the way I do, threading his fingers through her hair the way I do, watching her sleep the way I do.
Except he’s not me.
Except maybe he was first.
The thought coils around my spine, tight and cold.
I tighten the strap on my gun like it might hold the rest of me together.
