I stand there for a moment, my hand raised to knock, my heart pounding against my ribs with a force that surprises me. When was the last time anything made me nervous? When was the lasttime I stood before a closed door and worried about what waited on the other side?
The wish burns against my chest. My watch ticks steadily against my wrist, counting down the seconds of a life I've let slip through my fingers for too long.
This is it. This is the moment everything changes.
I imagine her opening the door and falling into my arms.
I imagine gratitude and relief and the beginning of something I've spent eighteen years being too afraid to name.
I'm so goddamn wrong about all of it.
But I don't know that yet.
I knock, the sound sharp and final in the quiet hallway, and I wait for Katriana Bellrose to open the door and show me exactly how wrong a man can be about the woman he wants to save.
Seven
Katriana
The knock shatters the silence of my apartment like a gunshot.
My heart seizes in my chest, the sudden jolt of adrenaline flooding my veins with ice water and fire all at once. The book I'd been pretending to read tumbles from my fingers and lands on the worn carpet with a soft thud that sounds impossibly loud in the wake of that knock.
One week, Victor's voice slithers through my memory, cold and patient and absolutely certain. One week to pay the balance in full, or I collect what I'm owed in other ways.
It hasn't been a week. It's been two days. Two days of jumping at shadows and flinching at footsteps and lying awake in the dark counting the hours until my deadline arrives to swallow me whole.
He's early. The bastard is early, and I should have known better than to trust a monster to keep his word.
Another knock, harder this time, and my body moves before my brain catches up. I'm on my feet and across the room in threeheartbeats, my fingers closing around the baseball bat I've kept propped against the wall by my bedroom door ever since Victor's last visit. The wood is smooth and solid in my grip, familiar from all the nights I've held it while listening to the building settle around me.
My eyes dart to my nightstand. My phone. I need my phone.
I snatch it from the nightstand and my glasses. With trembling fingers I dial Gemma's number, pressing the device to my ear while I creep toward the front door. The ring tone pulses against my skull, once, twice, and then my sister's sleepy voice fills my ear.
"Kat? It's after midnight. What's going on?"
"Gemma, stay on the line." My voice comes out steadier than I feel, which is a small miracle. "If something happens, call the police."
"What? Kat, you're scaring me. What's happening?"
I ease out of my bedroom and into the living room.
I don't answer her. I can't. All of my focus narrows to the door in front of me, to the shadow I can see moving in the gap between the wood and the frame, to the third knock that makes the cheap hinges rattle in their housings.
I'm wearing pajamas. The realization hits me like a slap, absurd and irrelevant and somehow important all at once. Soft cotton shorts that barely cover anything and a tank top thin enough to leave nothing to the imagination. No bra. My nipples are probably visible through the fabric, hardened from the cold fear coursing through my blood.
Not remotely appropriate for visitors. Especially not visitors who want to drag me off to work in their establishments until I've paid a debt I never owed in the first place.
Fuck it. I’m not here trying to be proper and polite.
I grip the bat with one hand, and yank the door open with every intention of swinging first and asking questions never.
The bat arcs through the air with all the force I can muster, aimed at the shadowy figure filling my doorway. I put my whole body into the swing, channeling five years of fear and fury and helpless rage into a single desperate strike.
A large hand catches the bat mid-swing.
The impact jars up my arms like I've just hit a concrete wall, the shock of it rattling my teeth and sending a spike of pain through my shoulders. But the bat doesn't move. It doesn't budge a freaking inch.
