No one's been here. No one could have been here.
I'm being paranoid.
But then I remember the way Luca looked at me. The things he knew that I never told him. The certainty in his voice when he talked about my work schedule, my commute home.
I know when you're short-staffed, you pick up extra shifts.
I know you take the subway home at two in the morning.
How does he know that?
How does he know any of it?
I turn off the lights and climb into bed, the tea forgotten and cold on the counter. I close my eyes and try to sleep.
But the feeling that something is just slightly off, like something is wrong remains.
I remember the time I thought a book wasn’t the way I left it. Or a chair that was out of place. I tell myself it's nothing. That I'm reading into coincidences, seeing things that aren't there. That meeting Luca has made me jumpy, made me imagine threats where none exist.
I tell myself a lot of things.
But somewhere deep in my gut, beneath the rationalizations and the explanations and the desperate need to believe I'm wrong, I know.
The things he knows about me and my life. The coffee he ordered without asking. The work schedule he shouldn't know.
I pull the blanket up to my chin and stare at the ceiling, listening to the sounds of my apartment—the radiator clanking, the couple arguing upstairs, the traffic on Ninth Avenue below.
Then, as sleep claims me, I smell it. Faint. Almost imperceptible. Something I’ve smelled before in my apartment. Clean and expensive, with an edge of danger underneath.
His cologne...in my apartment.
5
LUCA
She's beautiful when she sleeps.
I stand in her bedroom doorway, motionless, my eyes tracking the rise and fall of her chest beneath the blanket. The glow from the streetlight filters through her window, casting her face in soft shadows. Her dark hair spills across the pillow, with one curl draped over her cheek. Her lips are slightly parted, and she's breathing deep and even.
She's peaceful. Protected. Because I'm here.
My watch reads nearly midnight. I've been standing here for long minutes, just watching her. My fingers itch to touch her, to brush that curl away from her face, to feel the warmth of her skin, to trace the curve of her jaw the way I did outside her building hours ago.
She tilted her face up, waiting for me to kiss her, and it took everything in me to walk away instead.
Too soon.
When I kiss Francesca, when I finally put my mouth on hers, she needs to understand what it means. That she's mine. That I'm never letting her go. That every part of her—body, heart, soul—belongs to me.
She's not ready for that truth yet.
I step deeper into the room, my movements careful, deliberate. I've been in here before, of course. Numerous times during the past months, each visit when she was at work. The first time was just to confirm the layout, to understand her space, to breathe the same air she breathes. By the sixth visit, I walked through every room, opened every drawer, memorized every detail.
But tonight is different... tonight she's here.
I stop at the foot of her bed, close enough to reach out and touch her ankle through the blanket. Close enough that if she woke, she'd see me immediately. The thought makes my pulse quicken—her eyes opening, finding me here, the shock and fear before she realizes there's no escape.
Not yet.
