I slump into the chair and pick up the fork, stabbing a potato and putting it in my mouth.
It’s cold.
He’s right. I need to heat it.
Chapter 4
Phoenix
She ate.
That’s trust.
It’s progress.
That’s her giving me an inch, and me pretending I won’t take the whole fucking mile.
I checked on her a couple of hours after I left and watched her sleep for longer than any sane man should. Her body was curled beneath the blanket, vulnerable and inviting, and then I started to move.
I’ve been doing this dance for years. I know how to move like a ghost, how to slip in undetected. I could walk through her apartment blindfolded and never make a sound.
There have been times when she’s stirred, and I’ve had to melt into the walls and become the dark, but my pulse almost always gives me away, pounding against my ribs like it’s begging her to wake up and find me.
But she never has.
She’s never caught me.
However, tonight she’ll be expecting me.
I know she’ll lie there with her eyes closed, trying to make her breathing look natural. Her body will be perfectly still, lashes fluttering just enough to fake a dream, waiting for me to step too close. She’ll draw me in like a moth to her heat.
To be fair, it would be an excellent way for her to fuck me over. I intrude, she attacks, claims self-defense, and I’m either dead or rotting in a cell while she walks away free.
Game over.
She wins.
It doesn’t matter if I know this is a trap. I’ll walk straight into it with my eyes wide open and my hands ready to hold her anyway.
Stepping inside, as I have a thousand times before, I don’t bother with the lights. I know every inch of this place—the scent, the silence, the heartbeat that doesn’t fully belong to me… yet.
I’m halfway down the hall when I come to a complete stop, my eyes landing on her bedroom door standing open at the far end. Not once in all the years I’ve watched her has she ever left that door open.
I know she used to lock herself away when she was younger—little hands shaking as she pressed her body against the bedroom door, hiding from the sound of footsteps and the monsters she was born to.
But that’s done now. I made sure of it.
Goodbye, Mommy.
Goodbye, Daddy.
You pair of useless, decaying cunts.
She’s safe now.
But she never leaves it open, which means this is for me.
She’s inviting the wolf inside.
