Chapter 20
Nika
She was getting frustrated with all the questions that I kept asking her. She didn’t know because she had lain dormant inside me. The mishap in Croatia awakened her and when she pressed her thoughts against me, I heard her.
It was because of her that my leg healed, that my eyes improved. I had a feeling that being in the dark for twenty-eight years had left her a little—
Careful, she warned.
Do you deny that you are unstable? I asked cautiously.
By whose standards?
Damn it. She had a point.
I was sitting on the living room floor. Not for any particular reason—I hadn’t made a conscious decision to sit on the floor. I’d just ended up here, back against the sofa, legs stretched out in front of me, looking at the room in the grey morning light.
The scratch marks were still there. Four clean lines gouged into the wood where her claws had scrambled for purchase.
I ran my finger along one of them. Deep.
Definitive. The floor was going to need sanding and I was going to have to come up with a story for the landlord that didn’t involve the words I turned into a wolf.
There was a dark stain near the skirting board that I wasn’t going to look at directly.
I looked at it directly.
Leave it, Bad Girl said. Trophy.
I got up and went to get the carpet cleaner from under the sink.
What is Conrí Gallagher? I asked, working the cloth into the stain.
A low rumble began in my chest.
The enemy, she spat.
He’s also my boss.
I don’t care.
I sat back on my heels and looked at the patch of floor. Better. Not perfect, but better. The scratch marks were another problem entirely. I’d have to look up whether wood filler worked on claw gouges. Probably not a Google search I wanted in my history.
I ran my hand over the area that Finley had kicked. There was nothing broken and the bruising was gone. It was as if the incident never occurred.
I checked my phone again.
There were no dog attacks in the news.
We can just kill him, Bad Girl suggested.
I can’t believe he attacked me, I said glumly.
If we’re lucky he won’t be able to procreate. I did the world a favour. Where is my recognition? My reward.
Do you want me to buy a steak?
Hm. That would be nice. You need more real meat inside of you.
When she began to giggle I rolled my eyes.
I knew I was in trouble when I began to smile.
She was funny. It was like having my little sister back.
That should have scared me.
But that was the old me.
??
??
??
I re-read Claire’s email for the third time.
Dear Nika,
Re: Notification of Salary Increase
I am writing to formally confirm your salary increase, which follows your recent performance review.
The management team and I appreciate your hard work and dedication, particularly the most recent project. As a result, I am delighted to inform you that your annual salary will increase from ￡32,740 to ￡46,490.
This change will take effect from the 1st of May 2026 and will be reflected in your salary payment on the 19th of May 2026. All other terms and conditions of your employment contract remain unchanged.
So all I had to do to highlight my talents was make everyone ill.
Once it was in my contract they couldn’t retract it.
Oh my god. It was mine. All of it.
I skimmed the rest. The letter will be in the post, congratulations, blah, blah, blah.
I set the phone down on the sofa cushion and sat with it for a moment.
The flat was quiet. The morning light was coming through the gap in the curtains the way it always did, hitting the same patch of floor it always hit.
Except the floor had claw marks in it now. If I ever moved out, I would need to fix that before I got my deposit back.
I picked the phone back up and called my parents.
It’s a trap, she said lazily, as my dad answered. A filthy trap, by a filthy bastard.
My dad was busy putting me on speaker phone while Bad Girl went on to plot another murder of Mr Conrí Gallagher.
Me? I didn’t give a damn.
I could pay rent and my bills quite comfortably without Finley.
No more hunting for food in the reduced aisles.
No more checking the unit price on everything.
No more accidentally leaving a light on and spending the rest of the evening doing mental arithmetic about the energy bill.
I could buy fresh food. Normal food. The kind that didn’t come in a paper bag or out of a freezer I’d stocked myself and labelled for someone who hadn’t appreciated it.
Buying all those ingredients for the cake had been a worthwhile investment.
It was inspired, Bad Girl agreed, momentarily distracted from her assassination planning.
Andy was going to be raging when he got back.
If I was lucky he’d get the sack for not managing the project funds.
The budget creep had his name on every sign-off.
That wasn’t my problem to manage anymore—it was Conrí Gallagher’s, and from what I’d seen of him in that conference room he struck me as the kind of man who did not let things like that go quietly.
I wondered how Finley’s dick was faring.
The fear and horror would ensure he would never be back at my door again.
He was not a brave man—I knew that better than anyone.
He was the kind of man who made other people do his difficult things for him.
Every complaint, every awkward conversation, every moment that required someone to actually hold their ground—that had always been me.
I was the one who booked everything. I was the one who went and complained when he wasn’t happy about something.
Yet he’d thought he could come into my home with a knife.
I knew why. He thought I was still the same pushover. The same gullible girl he’d met and decided was useful. Every day, every week, every month—I had faded a little more, until Croatia. Until the moment I’d found my nerve.
My balls, Bad Girl corrected pleasantly.
I should have been disgusted. Or at the very least gone to scrub my mouth again. But I remembered the feeling—the moment of it, the pop—and found I couldn’t locate the disgust anywhere.
Your name suits you, I told her.
I know, she said, entirely without modesty.
Bad Girl.
I wasn’t the good girl anymore. I was hovering somewhere in between—not quite who I’d been, not yet sure what I was becoming. I touched my face where my glasses used to sit. The habit of it. The memory of reaching for something that was no longer there.
This was just the beginning.