Heavy. Left side favoring slightly.
Not Claudio. Claudio walks evenly, weight distributed, balls of his feet. This is someone else.
The footsteps pass my door without stopping. The compound breathes and settles around me, and I stand in the dark and chew my unlit cigarette and wait for someone to tell me what the fuck just happened.
Nobody comes. Not for a long time.
I sit on the edge of the bed. Then I stand up. Then I sit again.
I think about the conference room at Marchetti Holdings. The three men at the table. The scar on the left hand of the man I recognized. The way he looked at me through the slit in the door, and the way my body went cold, the kind of cold that starts in your stomach and radiates outward until your fingers go numb and your vision narrows to a pinpoint.
He saw me. I know he saw me. And now people are dying in corridors because of what I saw, and I'm sitting in a locked room with an unlit cigarette pretending I don't have the one piece of information that could stop all of it.
You're selfish, Charlotte. You're a selfish, scared woman holding a grenade because you're too afraid that letting go of it means you stop mattering.
Maybe. Probably.
But selfish women survive. I've got three years of proof.
The door opens without a knock.
Claudio fills the frame. His eyes are hard, shoulders tense. There's dust on his face. A cut on his lower lip, small, already clotting. Blood on his hands that isn't his.
He looks at me.
I look at him.
I'm standing by the window, dressed, shoes on, jacket over my arm. Ready. I've been ready for forty-five minutes, waiting for something to happen.
His eyes move over me. Not the way men usually look at me, not the slow up-and-down assessment that makes my skin crawl. Quick. Efficient. Checking for injury, checking for panic, checking to see if I'm going to be a problem or an asset in the next five minutes.
"We're leaving," he says.
"Where?"
"Away."
I almost laugh.Awayis the destination of every woman who's ever been in danger. Not a city, not an address, not a plan. Justaway.I've beenawayfor three years. It doesn't feel as far as it sounds.
"The men in the corridor," I say. "How many?"
"Three."
"Dead?"
"Very."
"And you killed them."
"Yes." He says it without remorse. Without pride or shame or the performative toughness that violent men usually coat their violence in. Just a fact. He killed three men. Now he's here.
"Someone inside gave them access," he says. "Keycards. Codes. Layout. They knew where to find you, and they knew how to get here. The compound isn't safe anymore."
My fingers find my neck. I press. One vertebra. Two. Three.
You're still here.
"Okay," I say.
