Parents killed in a head-on by a drunk who walked away with a broken wrist. Once headed for a Berkeley lab career—chemistry, molecular modeling, all the makings of someone who should’ve ended up in a research journal instead of a cramped New Jersey apartment.
She works reception at a vet clinic. Financials: barely breathing.
Criminal ties: none.
Red flags: none.
Just a woman doing what she has to do.
I don’t do surveillance. And yet I’m here… In person, watching her apartment like I don’t have an empire to run.
I should’ve handed this off. I don’t loiter in cars like some lovesick idiot or twitchy cop, but I can’t get her out of my head since the party.
The apartment door swings open. Ella steps out first—sharp chin, neat bob, and fast eyes. She scans the street like she expects trouble and is already calculating how to outsmart it. There’s a wariness in her walk that doesn’t belong on someone her age.
Then Violet steps out behind her, and the air around her shifts in a way that makes the world tilt.
She looks nothing like the woman from Cami’s penthouse. No mask, no glitter, no calculated allure. Her cardigan slides off one shoulder. Her jeans don’t fit quite right. Her hair is scraped into a bun that’s losing the fight. She looks exhausted and real. Not a threat in any traditional sense. She looks like someone who makes coffee with powdered creamer and prays her paycheck doesn’t bounce.
She calls after Ella, holding out a lunch bag. There’s exhaustion in her movements, worn-in like an old coat. She doesn’t glide or strut like she did that night at the party. Ella leaves. Violet lingers—just a second—before stepping back inside. And I’m still watching her doorway like it’s going to explain anything.
I should turn the key.Drive away.Go handle actual problems.
But when she comes outside again and gets into her car, I already know I’m going to follow.
The vet clinic looks like every other small-town operation I’ve ever seen—bad siding, worse signage, and the faint smell of wet dog lingering around the entrance. But through the floor-to-ceiling windows, she transforms the place.
She moves like someone who doesn’t know anyone’s watching her. And that alone is arresting.
I watch her greet an elderly dachshund like it’s royalty. See her laugh softly with coworkers who orbit her without noticing they do. Observe her soothing a terrified cat with a gentleness people like me don’t get to keep.
She’s grounded. Steady. Kind.
And somehow that makes me angry.
This can’t be it. The woman I saw at the party was bold, magnetic, and impossible to ignore. These two versions of her don’t match—and the part of me that thrives on order, on knowing what every variable does, can’t accept that.
I’m about to leave when something flickers at the edge of my vision. A man standing near the far end of the lot, half-hidden by a sedan. I can just see the subtle glint of a phone camera as he raises it and snaps a picture of my car—ofme.
Motherfucker.
The cold settles into my chest instantly.
He bolts the second our eyes meet. I’m out of the SUV before the door even swings shut. He cuts across traffic, down an alley, fast enough to tell me this isn’t some local idiot with curiosity issues. This guy is fast—faster than I expected—but I’m fueled by rage, by the knowledge that I just made a mistake.
A fuckingrookiemistake.
I chase him across asphalt and concrete, matching his stride, climbing a fence in one fluid movement. Then he makes a sharp left into an abandoned lot. A dead end. Or at least it should’ve been.
But he’s gone. No tracks. No sound. No chance.
I clench my jaw, trying to catch my breath. This wasn’t random- he knew exactly what he was doing, and he got what he needed.
I fucked up.
Forcing my pulse to steady, I pulled out my phone and dialed Maverick. He answered on the second ring.
"We’ve got a problem," I say, my tone cold. "Someone just took my picture outside her work."
