Chapter 3
December didn’t end so much as it happened to me.
It came in sequined invitations and “quick calls” that turned into hour-long strategy meetings.
It came in lunches where I smiled until my cheeks ached, and in panel prep notes where I underlined the same sentence twice because my mind kept sliding sideways—back to a letter I shouldn’t have written.
Charleston dressed itself up for the holidays the way it always did: magnolia wreaths on iron gates, garlands tucked into balconies, strings of white lights threaded through palmetto fronds like the city was trying to make itself look innocent.
I knew better.
So did my body.
After the letter, I’d told myself it would pass. A lapse. A stress response. A private rebellion that would cool off once the routine reasserted itself.
But the routine didn’t erase it.
It sharpened it.
Because every time I sat across from a donor—every time I spoke about community intervention, de-escalation training, and violence prevention—it felt like I was holding two versions of myself in the same skin.
The Lia Quinn everyone knew.
And the woman who had asked to be tracked.
On December fifteenth, I stood on a stage at the Francis Marion, under chandeliers and soft applause, and delivered my keynote on measurable outcomes in violence reduction—how investment in after-school programs and credible messengers statistically reduced retaliatory shootings, how policy could change culture if people stopped treating cruelty like entertainment.
The room nodded. Smiled. Took notes.
Afterward, a woman in pearls pressed my hands between hers and said, “You’re such a force.”
I said the only polite thing I could. “Thank you.”
But inside, something in me whispered, I don’t want to be a force. I want to be caught. Held. Pinned.
I drove home afterward with the radio off, my throat tight, the car windows slightly cracked to keep the air cold enough to sting. It was the only thing that helped—temperature. Physical sensation. Something real.
The condo was too quiet when I walked in. Too pristine. Too controlled.
I hung my coat, set my keys down in the same bowl by the door, and stood there a moment longer than I needed to, staring at the lock like it could confess something.
No knock.
No shadow.
No consequence.
Which should’ve been a relief.
Instead, my stomach dipped with disappointment so sharp it felt like humiliation.
“You idiot,” I whispered to myself, and the word bounced off glass and clean surfaces and the perfect, expensive silence I’d chosen because I thought it would make me feel like an adult.
I kicked off my boots and padded to the window. Outside, Charleston glittered in that soft holiday way—quiet streets, distant laughter, a carriage clip-clopping past like the city was selling itself a fantasy.
I pressed my palm to the glass and felt the chill seep into my skin.
The thing I’d invited didn’t come.
But it didn’t leave, either.
It stayed inside my head like a live wire.
And the closer Christmas got, the more my body reacted to everything like it was a sign.
A man’s laugh in a restaurant.
Footsteps behind me on the Battery.
A stranger’s gaze held half a second too long.
I kept waiting for the moment the world shifted.
For the moment my front door became a threshold between who I was and what I wanted.
It never happened.
Christmas came, and I spent it at my friend Harper Maffetti’s house, perched on a velvet couch with a glass of champagne while her family argued lovingly over board games.
Harper’s husband, Luca—sweet, earnest, entirely safe—called me “Lia” the way people do when they think they’re grounding you in the version of yourself they prefer.
“How’s work?” he asked, refilling my glass like he could pour normalcy into it.
“Busy,” I said. “Always.”
Harper’s mother hugged me and told me I looked thin. Harper’s father asked me if I’d met anyone “serious.” I laughed. Deflected. Smiled.
I didn’t tell them that my body had been on edge for weeks because I’d written one letter and it had changed the air around me, even if no one else could see it.
I didn’t tell them that sometimes, late at night, I stood in my own kitchen barefoot and tried to imagine what it would feel like to hear my lock turn from the outside.
I didn’t tell them that the thought made me wet with shame and heat and something dangerously close to hope.
After Christmas, Charleston slid into that strange lull—tourists thinning out, the city exhaling, everyone pretending they were resting while quietly scrambling to reset their lives for January.
Work didn’t slow down.
If anything, it intensified.
Violence didn’t take holidays. Neither did the donors who wanted to feel helpful without ever getting their hands dirty. Neither did the politicians who called me when a headline went bad and wanted a statement that sounded like empathy but didn’t cost them votes.
That was what I did.
I was the woman cities hired when blood was on the pavement and they needed to look like they cared.
Officially, my title was Director of Strategy at the Lowcountry Justice Initiative—a nonprofit coalition that worked with city councils, school boards, and law enforcement oversight committees to implement violence prevention programs. Unofficially, I was a fixer with a moral code.
A policy whisperer. A translator between rage and legislation.
I’d built my reputation on being calm while other people panicked.
I was the one who could sit across from a police chief and a community organizer in the same room and keep them from tearing each other apart.
I was the one who knew how to make money move.
How to make language soften hard men.
How to take violence and turn it into something you could put on a spreadsheet.
That was the version of me the world trusted.
But there was another version.
Cecilia, under Lia’s skin, listening to her own hunger like it was an animal in a trap.
And that hunger had been getting louder.
On New Year’s Eve, Harper insisted I come downtown with her—just the two of us, a girls’ night, because “you’ve been weird lately,” which was Harper-speak for I can see you unraveling and I won’t let you do it alone.
We went to a rooftop bar overlooking the harbor. Charleston wind cut between buildings, cool enough to justify Harper’s faux-fur coat and my long wool wrap coat that made me look like I belonged in a political drama.
Harper leaned into me at the bar, her lipstick sharp, her eyes too knowing.
“Okay,” she said. “Talk.”
“What?” I took a sip of champagne, bubbles hitting my tongue like tiny pinpricks.
“You’ve been … twitchy.” She made a vague gesture at my face. “Like you’re always waiting for someone to jump out and scare you.”
I laughed too quickly. “I’m just tired.”
“No.” Harper’s eyes narrowed. “This isn’t tired. This is …” She lowered her voice. “This is horny.”
I nearly choked.
“Harper.”
She grinned. “Lia Quinn, the woman who can stare down a mayor, just got flustered.”
“I did not.”
“You did.” She clinked her glass against mine. “So. Who is he?”
“There is no he.”
Harper arched one brow, unimpressed.
I stared at the crowd instead—people laughing, leaning close, swaying to music that felt too loud and too happy. Couples were already claiming each other, hands low on backs, mouths too close.
My body registered it all like hunger.
Harper followed my gaze. “Okay. So there’s no he … yet. But there’s something.”
I swallowed, throat tight. If I told her, it would become real. It would become something I couldn’t take back.
And I couldn’t have that. Not with Harper. Not with anyone.
So, I did what I always did.
I smiled. Deflected. Made it about work.
“I’m stressed,” I said. “The city’s pushing for another funding vote in January and—”
Harper leaned closer. “Lia.”
Her voice was softer now. Less teasing. More friend.
I held her gaze for a second and felt the truth press against the inside of my teeth.
I almost said it.
I almost told her about the letter.
About Alpha Mail.
About the way I’d been walking around for weeks like a woman who’d opened a door in her own mind and couldn’t shut it again.
But the countdown started, and the crowd surged, and Harper turned toward the skyline, shouting joyfully with strangers as midnight approached.
I stayed still.
Staring into the dark harbor.
Feeling like my life was split down the middle: the version everyone saw and the version no one was allowed to touch.
“Ten!”
The numbers roared.
Harper grabbed my hand, squeezing hard. “Nine! Eight!”
I let her, because it grounded me in something. Her warm palm. Her laugh. The way she assumed I was still simply Lia Quinn.
I wondered what she would do if she knew what I’d asked for.
If she knew that under my coat, my body was humming like a woman on the edge of something.
“Three!”
Harper’s face was bright. Joyful. Safe.
“Two!”
I swallowed, thinking of my condo door. Thinking of silence. Thinking of winter.
“One!”
The rooftop exploded into cheers. Confetti. Kisses. Music.
Harper threw her arms around my neck. “Happy New Year!”
“Happy New Year,” I said, and my voice sounded like it belonged to someone else.
A man near us kissed his girlfriend so deeply her knees buckled. Somewhere behind me, someone screamed happily. Fireworks flared over the water, bright and brief.
I smiled for Harper. I smiled for the world.
But the second she turned to hug someone else, I felt my phone vibrate in my coat pocket.
My entire body locked.
Not because I thought it was dangerous.
Because my body had been waiting for this for weeks.
I pulled it out with fingers that didn’t feel like mine.
Unknown number.
One message: Lady.
My throat closed.
It wasn’t a question.
It wasn’t a greeting.
It was a claim wrapped in one word.
The cold rushed up my spine so fast I went dizzy, like my body recognized a predator in the dark even when my mind tried to deny it.