Chapter 20
Jordan
My hand quivers. I can’t stop the tremors.
Kirill doesn’t bluff. I’ve seen what his fingers can do, how violence is as natural to him as breathing. The memory of his grip on my arm still lingers.
I know the pain is imminent. Waiting is almost worse.
But the seconds spin out, stretching thin, held tight by anticipation.
A detect a careful shift across the carpet.
I risk a tiny peek. Just enough to see without giving up my defense.
Kirill stands at the window, speaking Russian into his phone. Shadows carve sharp planes into his face. He talks quickly in a low voice, his words clipped. The call ends with his thumb sliding across glass in a final, practiced gesture. The threatening energy that usually radiates off him softens.
Not gone, but changed.
Tuned down. Like he’s closed some inner circuit.
I pull my hand back, hardly daring to breathe. He hasn’t forgotten me, I know, but the dynamic is different.
I can feel the transformation, though I can’t name the shift. My every muscle anticipates his next move. “What—”
He’s back at full attention. The shadow of vulnerability disappears, leaving behind sharp hyperfocus.
He taps on his phone again before angling the screen toward me.
My heart shrivels. My lips form a “no” that my lungs can’t push out.
The Thorne Identity.
My podcast logo.
The little graphic I obsessed over, the one I bought instead of three weeks’ worth of groceries. My voice, digitized and trapped, sits in his palm. The only real thing I’ve ever created.
“No.” I grab for the phone in a hopeless reflex. “Kirill, don’t. I don’t want you—”
He’s already slipping an earbud in place and tapping play.
He’s no longer just in my space. Now, he’s in my mind, dissecting, judging, and poking through everything I considered safe.
I never thought he’d search for my videos, my work. I never thought he’d care enough to listen to anything I said.
I lunge forward. “Give me that.”
His eyes remain locked on the screen while he lifts the phone higher, out of my reach. I stare in horror as I hear myself talk about energy and alignment, my voice tinny through his earbud.
“Quiet.” His shoulders shifts to the side. “I’m listening.”
I want to curl up in the corner and hide. Instead, I brace myself for his reaction. A sneer or flash of scorn.
He just stays motionless, his face as still as frost.
When the tension rises to an untenable point, I start to pace. Five steps from the bed to the window and then back again like a caged animal, the circle drawing tighter each time.
Calm has flown right out the door, along with my box breathing. When I work up the courage to search his expression, I only manage to stare.
So far, I spy no sign of amusement or ridicule on his face. He listens intently to every word I ever recorded, dragged out for his private review.
This is so much worse than a broken finger.
I retreat to the bathroom, shutting the door. I can’t drown in the silence anymore.
The stranger in the mirror, with her red cheeks and wide eyes, startles me. I look alive and utterly naked. Not at all reminiscent of the persona I put on for the world. This version of me is real and raw, with every piece of armor peeled back.
Slamming the taps on, I yank off my gloves and splash handfuls of cold water on my face. If only I could wash him out of my brain as easily.
But I know it’s too late. He’s inside my head, threading through my spiels and slogans, mapping the places I left unguarded. All my affirmations and pretense, hollow in the echo chamber of his mind.
When I leave the bathroom, I find him with the phone still in his hand. He clearly hasn’t moved. How long has it been? Thirty minutes? More?
How much of my innermost self has he mined from my archive?
I sit at the edge of the bed, gripping my hands so tightly, my knuckles ache.
The black dress—the one he selected, the one that means I belong to him right down to my marrow—clings to my skin. I should strip. Take a shower. Let the endless beat of water mute the nerves dancing under my skin.
He finally stirs, just enough to break the spell. The earbud dangles loose as his cool eyes drift toward me.
“Your intro is too long. You ramble for ninety seconds before you get to the topic. That loses people.” He lays the facts out flat, like he’s reporting rather than insulting.
I’d braced myself for violence, mockery, or even threats.
Not a constructive critique.
I can’t even comprehend what’s happening right now. “What?”
“And your audio is inconsistent. It sounds like you’re recording in a closet.”
He tucks away the phone without even glancing at me. Like we’re equals at a conference table, not a monster and his hostage. In this moment, he could pass for a podcast producer.
“Oh.” To be fair, that’s what I’d been doing. The closet setup, the discount foam tiles, the mic I bought used and hoped would last. I realize I’m not polished. I know the sound bleeds, sometimes picking up my neighbor’s television. But no one’s ever pegged the exact spot like this.
He inches closer. “Your voice is compelling. The delivery has charisma. You’re wasting your assets.” He scans me, and for once he doesn’t appear to be hunting for weaknesses. He’s…appraising. Assessing potential. “All of them.”
All of them? I search his face for irony but find none. Just that cold, methodical interest.
Kirill shakes his head. “But your tagline is weak.”
I automatically come to my own defense. “It’s… No, it isn’t.” I built everything around my tag. All my posts, my image, my show. To have my hard work dismissed so easily stings like lemon juice on paper cuts.
“‘Attracting Abundance’?” His tone strips the words of meaning, leaving only empty syllables behind.
I reel. A protest forms on my tongue but dies on my lips because…he’s right.
The meaning behind the tagline only works for the people who already understand. Not for the ones who need to learn or the audiences I want to reach.
The realization creeps in and makes a home for itself. Maybe my whole life is just a string of diluted taglines, spun out and recycled until they equate to nothing. Attracting Abundance. What does that even say about me? About my work?
That’s just one tiny bit of what I talk about.
I clear my throat. “Right.” The admission weighs a ton.
He cocks his head. “What do those words mean?” He studies me, wanting to see exactly where my philosophy crumbles.
“It means…” The pat answer I’ve used a thousand times feels wrong, too trite and vague. “Drawing good things to yourself. You use your mind, the kinetic energies, to…manifest things.”
“Like what?”
I freeze.
Though a simple question, I can’t answer without the ground shifting underneath me. I try to tally them up. All the things I’ve manifested, all the bounty I claim to attract.
The list is bleakly short.
No family. The mother who tried to mold me in her own image, who erased my father like he was a stain, is gone. I left her world at sixteen and never looked back. Haven’t heard her voice in nine years.
I have few friends. No one who might notice my recent week-long disappearance.
Only Ashley, and I’ve managed to put her in the crosshairs just by existing in her orbit.
My apartment is a disaster of salt lamps and crystals, cleansing properties long since choked out by dust. I record a podcast in a cramped closet with paper-thin walls. My bank account skims the surface of zero, always threatening to vanish beneath.
Hope is a word for elsewhere.
My only ambition is to survive the month, dodge the next utility cutoff, and cough up another episode of spiritual advice I hardly believe myself some days.
I feel like I’m sinking in invisible quicksand. Drowning in all the empty places abundance was supposed to fill.
Maybe it was always a trick. Manifesting. Aligning. Cosmic ordering. Words, words, words, spun like threads over a hollow nothing. Not one of them mattered. Not really.
Not until this shark journeyed into my bland little river and sank his teeth into my soul.
That was the first real pulse I’d felt in years. Maybe ever. In danger, yes. Afraid? Absolutely. But for once, undeniably alive.
He’s right.
About everything.
No sugar to coat the taste, no gentle edits. Just the unflinching, jaw-snapping truth.
Kirill fixes his gaze on me, dissecting every twitch behind my eyes. “What exactly have you manifested?”
The answer slams into me with hurricane-like force, and I blurt it without thinking. “You.”
He stills before his expression sharpens to a razor’s edge. “Don’t say that. You don’t manifest a guy like me, Jordan. You survive. If you’re lucky.”
The room contracts. The air thins.
My lungs struggle to inhale.
This man doesn’t offer dreams or sugar-spun lies. He knows what he is. And he makes sure I know too.
My vision blurs.
Tears, maybe.
Or just the collapse inside me, the fake optimism that kept me upright all these years finally folding and buckling. My limbs feel waterlogged as my will leeches away.
No sense in denying that I’m a wreck.
“Maybe I’m tired of only surviving.”
Kirill doesn’t respond, but for a second, I swear he sees me. Not the podcast voice or the crystal hoarder or the fraud.
Me. The real me.
I never manifested abundance. Or healing. Or hope.
I only ever managed to summon this dangerous killer. And the worst part?
For the first time in as long as I can remember, I feel awake and alive.