Prologue - Gabriel #2
It's easy. The lock on her door is flimsy, the kind that can be defeated with a credit card and patience. The window in her bedroom doesn't latch properly—I noticed this during my surveillance, the way she has to force it closed, and the small gap that remains.
I enter through the front door at 2:05 AM. The apartment is silent except for the hum of the refrigerator and the soft, rhythmic sound of her breathing coming from the bedroom.
I start with the living room, where she really lives. Every surface is covered with flowers in various stages of preparation. Buckets, vases, scattered petals, the sweet-rot smell of vegetation. Her workspace is chaotic but not random—there's a system here, a method that only she understands.
Her sketchbook is on the coffee table. I shouldn't look. I've already crossed lines tonight, more lines than I usually cross during surveillance. But I pick it up anyway, flip through the pages.
Flowers, mostly. Studies of petals, stems, the way light falls through leaves.
But there are other things too. A woman's face, repeated several times—her mother, I assume, based on the age.
A series of hands, some gentle, some grasping.
A sketch of the estate's ballroom, surprisingly detailed given how briefly she was there.
And, on one page, a serpent.
It's coiled around a flower—a dahlia, black-petaled. The serpent's mouth is open, not to strike, but as if it's about to speak. To whisper something to the bloom.
She drew this after visiting the estate. After seeing the serpent motifs everywhere. After sensing something watching her from the gallery.
I tear the page out carefully, fold it, slip it into my pocket.
I shouldn't. It's reckless, the kind of thing that could make her suspicious. But I want it. I want something of hers, something she made, something that proves she felt me even then, even before she knew my name.
In the kitchen, there are dishes in the sink—a single plate, a single glass. She eats alone. The refrigerator contains half a lemon, a block of cheese, two bottles of wine, and something in a container that might once have been soup. She doesn't cook much, or doesn't eat much, or both.
In the bathroom, her shampoo smells like rosemary and mint. I open it, breathe it in, close it again. Her toothbrush is blue. There's a crack in the mirror that she's covered with a piece of tape, a small act of denial about something broken.
I save the bedroom for last.
She's asleep, curled on her side with the sheets tangled around her legs. One arm is tucked beneath her pillow, the other stretched across the empty half of the bed as if reaching for someone who isn't there. Her hair spills across the pillowcase, dark against white.
I stand in the doorway, watching her breathe.
On the nightstand, a book lies open, spine up—The Secret History by Donna Tartt.
She must have fallen asleep reading. I know this book.
I read it years ago. A story about beautiful, damaged people who commit murder and tear each other apart in the aftermath.
I remember thinking it was overly romantic about violence, too focused on the aesthetics of destruction.
But she's reading it. She's chosen this, out of all the books she could read.
Interesting.
I step closer. Close enough to see the flutter of her eyelids—she's dreaming. Close enough to hear the small sounds she makes in her sleep, not quite words, not quite sighs. Close enough to smell her, warm skin and rosemary shampoo and something underneath that's just her.
I could touch her. I could brush the hair from her face, trail my fingers down her arm, feel her pulse jump beneath her skin. I could wake her, watch her eyes fly open, see the moment she realizes she's not alone.
I could do anything I wanted. She would never be able to stop me.
The thought doesn't excite me the way it should. Or rather, it excites me differently than I expected. I don't want to frighten her. Not yet. I don't want to take anything she isn't ready to give.
I want her to know me first. To see me clearly, the way she saw me in that sketch—the serpent whispering to the flower. I want her to understand what I am and choose me anyway.
I want her to come to me willingly, even knowing she shouldn't.
I stand over her for a long time, watching her sleep, memorizing the way she looks in the thin light that bleeds through the curtains. Then I step back, silent.
I leave the way I came. She'll never know I was here.
***
The next evening, I'm in the ballroom when she arrives. She's been at the estate for hours already, setting up arrangements, transforming the space. I've watched her work through the security feeds, but that's not the same as seeing her in person.
She's on her knees, adjusting a cascade of black dahlias. The same focus I saw before. The same tenderness.
The guests are arriving. Josiah is at the door, Benedict somewhere causing trouble. I should be playing host.
Instead, I'm watching her.
She looks up. Across the room, through the crowd of masks and bodies, our eyes meet.
I see recognition flicker in her face. Not of me specifically—she doesn't know who I am, not yet—but of something. The feeling of being watched. The prickle at the back of the neck that prey feels when predators are near.
She should look away. Most people do, when they sense danger.
She doesn't.
She stares.
And I know, with a certainty I've never felt before, that I am going to take her apart piece by piece until I understand what she is. Until I own every corner of her mind, every secret she's kept, every dark thought she's never spoken aloud.
I'm going to know her better than she knows herself.
And then—only then—will I decide what to do with her.
Someone touches my arm. Josiah, his voice a low warning: "Gabriel. The Harringtons."
I don't look at him.
"Gabriel."
"I heard you."
I make myself turn away. I make myself be Gabriel Ambrose, the philanthropist, the perfect host. I shake hands and smile and say all the right things.
But something has shifted.
For eighteen years, I've hunted because I needed to. Because the noise demanded it, because the silence afterward was the only peace I knew.
Tonight, for the first time, I want something different.
Not just silence.
Her.