Was it the hollow eyes? The way I kept touching my throat? The way my hands shook when I lifted the cup?
I didn't know. I couldn't see myself the way others saw me. I couldn't hold onto a single version of my own face long enough to recognize it.
The door opened. A man walked in—tall, dark hair, eyes that scanned the room too quickly. My hand moved to my waistband before I could stop it, fingers brushing the knife's hilt.
Predator.
Or prey?
He ordered coffee and left without looking at me. My heart was hammering. My palms were sweating. I couldn't remember the last time I'd been this afraid of nothing.
Or maybe it wasn't nothing.
Maybe I was being followed.
Maybe someone knew what I'd done.
Maybe someone was coming to make me pay.
I left the coffee untouched and walked back out into the grey.
The warehouse district was quiet at this hour.
I'd found it by accident—or maybe on purpose, maybe my feet had known where they were going even when my mind didn't. The buildings were old, brick and corrugated steel, their windows dark and their doors padlocked. Graffiti covered the walls in layers, years of it, names and dates and messages that had lost all meaning.
I walked until I found the address.
Adams Street. A warehouse at the end of a dead-end road. The number was painted on the loading dock in faded yellow letters—almost invisible, almost gone, almost like someone wanted it to stay hidden.
11 PM.
That was hours from now. But the door was already open.
I stood in the shadows and watched.
Someone was inside.
I could see the flicker of a flashlight through the grime-coated windows. A silhouette moving between the aisles. Waiting. Hunting. Preparing.
For me?
Or for someone else?
My hand found the knife again. The ceramic blade was cool against my palm, familiar in a way that made my chest ache. Gabriel had given this to me. Gabriel's hands had placed it in mine. Gabriel's voice had told me how to use it, where to cut, how deep to go.
"A good girl knows how to end things cleanly."
I crossed the street.
The door opened with a whisper of rust and neglect, and the darkness swallowed me whole.
I didn't remember leaving the warehouse.
I didn't remember my hands finding the man's throat. I didn't remember the knife sliding between his ribs, the wet gasp of his last breath, the way his eyes went wide and then went empty. I didn't remember dragging his body into the corner, covering it with a tarp, wiping the blade clean on my jeans.
I didn't remember any of it.
But my hands were red when I came back to myself.
