Dark Bratva Stalker (Dark Bratva Island #1)

Chapter 1 - Gaby

The cursor blinked at me accusingly from my computer screen, marking the end of yet another paragraph I'd rewritten three times.

My eyes burned from the relentless glow of the monitor, and when I rubbed them, mascara flaked onto my fingertips like tiny beetles.

Ten-thirty at night. The office had emptied hours ago, the fluorescent lights clicking off one by one as my coworkers escaped to their real lives—the ones with Thai takeout and Netflix queues and people who actually cared if they made it home.

I had a marketing report due to Mr. Brown by eight tomorrow morning, and every cell in my body screamed that it wasn't good enough. Would never be good enough.

"Gabrielle, you're not stupid," I muttered to myself, fingers hovering over the keyboard. "You graduated summa cum laude. You've been here three years. You know what you're doing."

But the voice in my head—the one that sounded disturbingly like my father—whispered back: Do you, though? Or have you just been lucky? How long until someone realizes you don't belong here?

I scrolled through the report again, analyzing every sentence for flaws Mr. Brown would inevitably find.

The quarterly projections looked solid. The consumer behavior analysis was thorough.

The recommendations were backed by data.

And yet, my stomach churned with the certainty that I'd missed something crucial, some glaring error that would expose me as the fraud I really was.

Imposter syndrome. That's what the self-help books call it. As if naming the beast made it any less hungry.

My phone buzzed, making me jump. A text from Lisa: Still there? You promised you'd leave by 9. Come get drinks with me!

I should go home. Shower. Sleep. Start fresh in the morning with clear eyes and a functioning brain. But what if I'd made a mistake in the demographic segmentation? What if the font choices weren't professional enough? What if—

Another buzz. I'm not taking no for an answer. Meet me at Finnegan's in 20.

I slumped back in my chair, the leather creaking in the empty office. Through the window behind me, Manhattan glittered with a thousand other lives being lived. People laughing. Touching. Existing without this constant, gnawing fear that they were seconds away from being revealed as inadequate.

My father had taught me early that love was transactional.

You earned it through achievement, through perfection, through never showing weakness.

Every A-minus was a disappointment. Every second-place finish was a failure.

When Mom died during my sophomore year of college, he'd given me exactly three days to grieve before reminding me that "Blanchards don't fall apart. "

So I didn't. I became the daughter he wanted: driven, successful, impeccable. I climbed every ladder, checked every box, and somewhere along the way, I forgot how to exist as anything other than a list of accomplishments.

I saved the report—for the ninth time—and shut down my computer. Lisa was right. I needed to get out of here before I started seeing errors that didn't exist.

The elevator ride down felt longer than usual, my reflection in the polished doors showing a woman who looked older than twenty-five.

Dark circles shadowed my eyes. My auburn hair, usually neat in its bun, had started escaping in wisps around my face.

My navy blazer had a coffee stain on the cuff I hadn't noticed until now.

Pathetic.

Finnegan's was a dive bar three blocks from the office, the kind of place where the wood was sticky and the music too loud and nobody cared what you did for a living. Lisa had already claimed a corner booth when I arrived, two shot glasses and a pitcher of beer waiting on the scarred table.

"There she is!" Lisa's face lit up as I slid in across from her. "The woman of the hour. Come on, we're celebrating."

"Celebrating what?" I accepted the shot glass she thrust at me, the vodka sloshing dangerously close to the rim.

"You finished the Brown report, didn't you? That's worth celebrating." She raised her glass. "To my brilliant, workaholic best friend who needs to learn the meaning of work-life balance."

I clinked my glass against hers and tossed back the shot. It burned going down, harsh and medicinal, but the warmth that spread through my chest afterward was almost pleasant. Almost enough to quiet the voice telling me the report still wasn't perfect.

"So," Lisa said, pouring beer into two glasses, "tell me you're at least going to take a personal day this week. You've been working yourself to death."

"I'm fine."

"Gaby." She fixed me with that look, the one that said she saw right through my bullshit. "When's the last time you did something just for fun? When's the last time you went on a date, or saw a movie, or did anything that wasn't work-related?"

I couldn't remember. Didn't want to remember. Fun felt dangerous, like if I let myself relax for even a moment, everything I'd built would crumble.

"I like my work," I said, which wasn't entirely a lie. I liked the structure of it, the clear metrics of success and failure. You either hit your targets or you didn't. You either impressed your boss or you got fired. Simple.

Lisa sighed and took a long drink of her beer. "You know what your problem is? You think if you're not constantly productive, you're not worthy of existing."

Her words hit too close to home. I forced a smile, trying to deflect. "That's not—"

"It is, though." Her voice softened. "And I get it. I know your dad's a piece of work. But you don't have to prove anything to anyone, Gaby. You're already enough."

I am not enough, the voice whispered. I will never be enough.

The bar was getting crowded, bodies pressing in around us. A group of guys in suits pushed past our booth, one of them jostling my shoulder hard enough to slosh beer onto the table. He didn't apologize. Lisa shot him a dirty look and mopped up the spill with a napkin.

"Assholes," she muttered.

But I barely heard her. The back of my neck prickled with the sudden, unshakable sensation that someone was watching me.

I turned, scanning the crowd, but saw nothing unusual.

Just the typical after-work crowd: tired professionals drowning their day in alcohol, a few college kids playing darts in the corner, the bartender wiping down glasses.

Still, the feeling persisted. That prey-animal awareness of unseen eyes tracking your every movement.

"You okay?" Lisa asked.

"Yeah, just... do you ever feel like someone's staring at you?"

She glanced around. "In a bar full of drunk people? All the time. Come on, let's get another round. You need to loosen up."

But I couldn't shake the paranoia. Even as Lisa chattered about her latest Tinder disaster, even as the alcohol started to soften the edges of my anxiety, I felt exposed. Vulnerable. Like I was standing under a spotlight in a dark room, unable to see the audience but knowing they were there.

Watching.

Waiting.

"I should probably head home," I said after the third beer. My words came out slightly slurred, and I realized I'd drunk more than I'd intended on an empty stomach.

"You sure? We could go dancing. There's that club—"

"I'm sure." I stood, the room tilting slightly. "Early meeting tomorrow."

Lisa hugged me goodbye, making me promise I'd actually sleep tonight instead of lying awake cataloging my failures. I agreed, knowing I probably wouldn't keep that promise.

The night air hit me like a slap when I stepped outside. October in New York, that liminal space between summer's warmth and winter's bite. I pulled out my phone to call a cab, my fingers clumsy on the screen.

That's when I saw it: a black SUV parked across the street, windows tinted so dark I couldn't see inside. Nothing unusual about that. Half the cars in Manhattan were black SUVs. But something about it made my skin crawl.

You're being paranoid, I told myself. You're tired and drunk and your anxiety is in overdrive. Nobody's watching you. Nobody cares enough to watch you.

A yellow cab pulled up, and I slid into the backseat gratefully, giving the driver my address. As we pulled away from the curb, I glanced back at the SUV.

It pulled out behind us.

My heart kicked into a higher gear. I watched through the rear window as we turned onto Fifth Avenue. The SUV turned too. We stopped at a red light. It stopped three cars back.

"Everything okay, miss?" the driver asked, catching my eye in the rearview mirror.

"Fine," I lied. "Just tired."

I was being ridiculous. This was New York. Hundreds of cars traveled the same routes. The SUV probably wasn't even following us. Just another vehicle heading in the same direction.

But when we turned onto my street—a quiet residential block in the West Village—the SUV turned too.

I paid the driver with shaking hands and watched the cab pull away. The SUV had parked half a block down, engine still running. Through the tinted windows, I couldn't see if anyone was inside, but I knew. The way prey knows when the predator has marked them.

I hurried to my building, fumbling with my keys. The doorman had gone home hours ago, leaving me alone in the small, dimly lit lobby. I jabbed the elevator button repeatedly, pulse hammering in my throat.

You're safe, I told myself as the elevator lurched upward. You're in your building. You're fine.

But when I reached my fourth-floor apartment and locked the door behind me, I immediately went to the window. Parted the curtains just enough to peer down at the street.

The black SUV was still there.

I let the curtains fall closed and backed away, heart racing. This was insane. I was being insane. I should call someone—but who? Lisa? She'd tell me I was paranoid. My father? He'd tell me I was being weak. The police? And tell them what, exactly? That a car parked on a public street?

I forced myself to move to the kitchen, to pour a glass of water, to breathe.

The apartment suddenly felt too small, the walls pressing in.

I'd lived here for two years, and I'd never felt unsafe before.

The neighborhood was good, the building secure.

I was just tired. Stressed. Letting my anxiety spiral into irrational territory.

My phone rang, the shrill sound making me yelp. I grabbed it off the counter, expecting Lisa. Instead, the screen showed "Dad."

I considered not answering. But Blanchards always answered their phones.

"Hi, Dad."

"Gabrielle." His voice was clipped, businesslike. "You're up late."

"Just got home from drinks with a friend."

A pause. I could practically hear his disapproval. "I trust you're still on schedule with the Brown report."

Of course that's why he was calling. Not to check if I was okay, not to say he missed me. To make sure I wasn't failing.

"It's done," I said. "Submitting it first thing tomorrow."

"Good. I've been speaking with some colleagues at the firm. They tell me a senior position might be opening up soon. I expect you to put yourself forward for it."

"I will."

"No room for second-guessing, Gabrielle. The Blanchard name means something. You will not tarnish it with mediocrity."

"I won't."

Another pause. I waited for him to ask how I was, to show even a flicker of paternal interest. Instead: "I have an early meeting. Don't disappoint me."

The line went dead.

I stood in my kitchen, phone pressed to my ear, listening to the dial tone. Don't disappoint me. The words I'd heard my entire life. The condition of his love.

I set down the phone and walked to the living room window. The SUV was gone.

See? I told myself. Nothing. You imagined the whole thing.

But as I brushed my teeth and changed into pajamas, as I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, I couldn't shake the feeling that something had shifted tonight. That I'd been noticed by something dangerous.

And I had no idea how right I was.