Chapter 22 Nadia
NADIA
There’s a prickle at the base of my neck, so subtle that it’s almost imperceptible. A steady kind of awareness creeps in before reason can catch up. The air becomes heavier. Tighter. Until it’s so thick, I feel like I’m choking on my own breath.
I close the door behind me, the deadbolt clicking back into place with a metallic finality, and the silence swallows me whole. It greets me not like comfort but like an unwelcome guest sitting in the dark, waiting. And it reminds me that I’m alone. Completely and utterly alone.
I should be relieved to be home. This tiny slice of heaven away from the blinking lights and the metallic tang of blood should serve as my sanctuary.
But it doesn’t, because more than anything else, it reminds me what a lonely mess my life has become.
I’ve spent the entire day surrounded by people, buried in the noise of the hospital—and now the silence should feel like sanctuary.
But tonight, the silence feels wrong.
I shrug off the day the same way I shrug off my bag.
It lands on the armchair by the door with a dull thud, keys clattering into the ceramic dish beside it.
Habit. Normalcy. Rituals that should tether me to something safe.
My jacket follows, but my gaze has already drifted past it, narrowing as my gut knots tighter.
Something’s off.
The air smells different.
It’s a smell that overpowers even the antiseptic scent that’s sunk so deep into my skin I almost don’t notice it anymore.
It veils the faint tang of coffee grounds I left in the filter this morning.
It’s a smell that counters all others, overwhelming and threatening to consume everything in its path.
This is something else. Something alien. Something that doesn’t belong in my space. And suddenly the silence isn’t just wrong. It’s dangerous. And I feel it in the deepest, darkest edges of my marrow.
Oud. Sandalwood.
The ache of recognition coils low in my stomach before I can fight it.
That scent. God, I know that scent. It used to cling to my sheets, my hair, the hollow of my collarbones, lingering there like a claim.
I would know that smell anywhere, because there was none like it, and it lived in my skin long after he was gone.
Lucian.
The name flares in me like a wound ripped open.
I swallow hard, shaking it off. Impossible. It has to be my imagination, another phantom memory stirred by exhaustion and the way grief distorts everything.
But the air is thick with it, and for a moment, I almost believe he’s here.
Lately, I’ve been dreaming the past into the present. Waking with the taste of him still on my tongue, the weight of his hand pressed into the small of my back as if he never left. Some mornings I can’t tell if I’ve slept at all or just replayed the same memory until it frays.
It’s been a year. I tell myself that. A full year since Ford burned to the ground, since the news fed on his death like vultures. Yet still, I see him.
In the crush of bodies on the street, in the flicker of movement at the corner of my eye, in every shadow that lingers too long.
Sometimes it’s a face in the crowd that looks too much like his.
Sometimes it’s the way a stranger tilts his head, or the quiet patience of a man waiting in line.
He’s everywhere and nowhere, stitched into every moment, scraping against my soul like he refuses to let go.
I know it can’t be real. I know it’s only wishful thinking - phantoms my mind conjures because it can’t bear to live without him. And yet, the doubt is there, whispering, digging claws into the back of my mind.
I wonder if I should see someone. A therapist. A doctor. Anyone who can untangle this blur of memory and madness. Because I don’t trust myself anymore. My judgment is cracked, my reason fractured. I can’t tell the difference between grief and delusion, between what was and what will never be again.
But then my eyes start to catch details I shouldn’t notice.
The balcony door is still locked, just as I left it this morning. The latch hasn’t been forced, no scratches around the frame, no sign of entry. It should reassure me. But it doesn’t. Because outside, on the small table by the railing, the ashtray has been disturbed.
I’ve never smoked a cigarette in my life.
Not once. And yet there they are: two fresh butts, pressed down with deliberate care, not tossed or forgotten, but extinguished with precision.
The faint tang of smoke clings to the night air that seeps through the tiny crack at the frame.
It curls into my lungs, acrid and alien, and my chest tightens as if it’s trying to push me back.
And then my eyes drift to the kitchen counter. Tucked into the corner where it doesn’t belong, sits a single flower. But it’s not just any flower. A gardenia. White. Delicate. Fragrant. My favorite.
The flower I used to keep in vases all over my apartment, small clusters of them brightening spaces that didn’t deserve their beauty. I stopped buying them years ago. After Lucian. After the trial. After the fire. Gardenias became another ghost I couldn’t live with, one more thing I buried.
No one else knows that. No one alive should remember that detail. And yet here it is.
I step closer, each movement deliberate, cautious, like I’m approaching an IED that might detonate if I breathe wrong.
My gaze fixes on the bloom, its fragile white petals almost glowing under the dim kitchen light.
My pulse thrums in my ears, my heart hammering too hard against my ribs, betraying me.
Trauma doctors aren’t supposed to break. We patch bullet holes, stop arterial bleeds, carve through chaos with hands that don’t shake. I’ve walked into operating rooms slick with blood and death hanging heavy in the air, and I never faltered.
But this? A flower. Two cigarette butts. A scent on the air. This unravels me in a way blood never could. Because it’s not random. It’s not coincidence. It’s personal.
I move through the apartment like it’s a crime scene, every step measured, every nerve stretched to breaking.
Some one has been in my apartment. My eyes catalog details with surgical precision, but it’s my skin that prickles first. The silence is thick, unnatural, the kind of silence that feels placed here, staged, like someone tucked it into the corners of the room and left it waiting for me to walk into.
At first glance, everything else is untouched.
My books are stacked in the same neat tower on the shelf.
The half-finished cup of coffee I abandoned this morning still sits on the table, a thin film curdling across the surface.
My throw blanket is folded with careful precision on the arm of the couch, just the way I left it.
But the air… the air isn’t right. It knows.
It presses against me like a second skin, charged, watchful, alive with something that doesn’t belong.
But then I notice something…something so small, half-hidden beneath the coaster on which the coffee sits. A scrap of paper. Nothing extraordinary. Nothing that should stop my heart. But it does.
My hand hesitates, trembling despite myself, before I reach for it. The paper crinkles under my fingers, fragile, deliberate, as though it has been waiting for me all day.
Two words. Still waiting.
My breath catches sharp, a knife in my throat. My whole body jolts like I’ve brushed against a live current, electricity snapping through every vein.
For one breathless moment, the world tilts. I swear I can feel him, as though he’s stepped into the room with me. The shadow I once loved, the man who carried his scent like a warning: oud and sandalwood, cigarettes curling on a balcony, the heavy weight of his stare pinning me down.
Lucian.
It has to be him. Who else would know? Who else would dare to play with the fault lines of my memory?
But then, my stomach twists, tightening until I feel hollowed out. My chest caves, the rush of adrenaline collapsing into something sharper.
Because the handwriting isn’t his. And he didn’t respond to any of my numerous letters when he was in prison. Why then, would a dead man now start corresponding with me after all these years from beyond the grave?
The absurdity of the tricks my mind is playing on me makes me scoff.
I look down at the note, smooth a hand over the paper.
This isn’t from Lucian. I would know his scrawl anywhere.
Jagged, slanted, letters leaning like they’d been carved in stone rather than written in ink.
This isn’t that. This is cleaner. Neater.
Smaller. The strokes careful, deliberate.
And heartbreakingly familiar in an entirely different way.
Michael.
My pulse spikes, slamming against my ribs. Heat rushes up my throat, bile burning as the room around me spins.
Lucian’s ghost may haunt me. But Michael? Michael is very much alive. And this, this is the game he likes to play.
I can see his face as clearly as if he’s standing in front of me now - that smirk he used like a weapon, the quiet brand of psychological warfare he perfected.
The sharp flare of his temper that could ignite faster than a struck match.
If he had his way, Michael Jeter would have me convinced I’m an emotional wreck - fragile, hysterical, impossible to believe.
We broke up months ago, and yet he still lingers like a virus I can’t shake.
A bad case of unwilling-ex-boyfriend syndrome.
Of course it’s him. I wouldn’t put it past Michael to sneak into my home and plant things he knew would mess with my head.
That’s how he works; he’s insidious, clever, cruel.
He doesn’t break down doors or shout his threats into the night.
He seeps in through the cracks, like smoke, choking you before you realize you’re breathing him in.
He bends what’s real until you can’t trust your own senses - until you start to wonder if the ghosts are his… or yours.
And he knows about Lucian. He knows how deep that wound still runs, how raw it still is even after all this time. Of course he’d use it against me.
The flowers. The note. The phantom scent in the hallway. He wants me unraveling - questioning myself, questioning reality. That’s just the kind of psycho he is.
I drop the scrap of paper on the counter like it’s toxic, my fingers recoiling as if I’ve touched something dead.
Every muscle feels heavy as I force myself toward the bedroom, the air thick and clinging to my skin.
By the time I reach the bed, I can’t think about undressing. The fabric of my clothes sticks to me, damp with sweat, memory, dread. I sink onto the mattress and stare at the ceiling until the edges blur. I whisper the reminder like a prayer, though it cuts my tongue on the way out.
Lucian is gone. Dead. Buried.
Nothing more than a shadow I’ve kept alive too long. But when my eyes finally close, the dark doesn’t bring peace. And it isn’t Michael who waits for me there in the depths of my mind. It’s Lucian. The ghost who never really left.