Beautiful Monsters (Beautifully Ruined #2)

Chapter 1 Samira

Samira

I locked the office door and slipped my earbuds in without playing anything. I didn’t want music. I wanted the illusion that the world was at a distance I could control.

It was late. My shoulders ached in that deep, grinding way that came from hours of scrubbing floors that would be filthy again by noon. But there was some relief—no matter how small—in having a job where I didn’t have to be around people.

I walked the way I always did at this hour.

My keys were threaded between my fingers, my gaze fixed ahead.

It was generally safe in these parts, but experience had taught me to be cautious at all times.

My steps were even as I walked along the street.

It was the same small routine, repeated night after night, because it was my comfort, my safety zone.

My mind wandered, going exactly where I didn’t want it to go.

The rent I’d barely made this month. The numbers that didn’t add up no matter how many times I redid them.

The voicemail from the debt collector sitting untouched in my inbox, growing heavier by the day.

That low, constant warning lodged under my ribs—the sense that something bad was circling, that luck always ran out, that silence never stayed dormant.

I tried to drag myself back to the street. The glow of the lamps. The cracked sidewalk. The far-off hiss of traffic.

But my thoughts wouldn’t let me stay there.

Instead, I was thinking about fear. About how it lived in my body. How it didn’t announce itself—it just took. It stole my voice first, every time. There were still nights I opened my mouth and nothing came out. No sound. No scream. Just air.

Silence felt safer than sound. It always had. I’d learned that at a young age. Noise hadn’t saved me then. It hadn’t stopped anything. And some part of me still believed it never would.

That was why I missed the turn.

I was already halfway down the wrong street before something in me went cold.

The glow from the shops vanished. Streetlights thinned out.

Brick walls pressed in on both sides, tall and close, swallowing the open air I’d just come from.

The city noise faded into something hollow—no engines, no voices.

Just my own footsteps and the rasp of my breath.

I slowed.

My skin prickled, every nerve going tight. This wasn’t my route. I knew every crack in the pavement out here, every flickering light, every corner where I could duck if I had to. This street was wrong. Too suffocating. Too narrow. A dead end that ended nowhere.

I stopped.

For a second, I just stood there, heart knocking against my ribs, listening. The silence felt thick, heavy, like it was waiting for something to happen.

Then I heard it.

Footsteps.

Not mine.

They came from behind me—slow, unhurried, more than one set.

I didn’t turn right away. Instead, I squeezed my eyes hard and pretended I could just wake up and find myself in bed, awake after a particularly bad nightmare.

My grip tightened around my keys, metal biting into my palm as if that could somehow make me braver.

A voice cut through the dark.

“Hey.”

My stomach dropped. I took a step forward, then another, but the alley ended only a few yards ahead, a solid wall of brick waiting to stop me cold.

I turned to look over my shoulder. Four shapes peeled out of the shadows, spreading wide as they walked, blocking the mouth of the street behind me.

Panic crawled up my spine.

This was it. This was the moment I’d felt vibrating up my spine all evening.

Their smiles didn’t reach their eyes. They weren’t friendly, their eyes flickering over me with malice.

One of them came closer, boots scraping softly against the pavement. Another shifted behind me, blocking the way I’d come with a single, lazy step.

My chest tightened hard and fast, breath locking halfway in. I took a step back without thinking, then another, until my heel hit cold brick and I was boxed in, with nowhere to run.

They took their time advancing, voices low and casual, words tossed back and forth like they were discussing something trivial. Their laughter was low, tamed, making my skin crawl. I didn’t catch every word, but I didn’t need to.

The tone told me everything.

They weren’t lost or drunk. And I wasn’t an accident they’d happened upon. I was the biggest opportunity to fall into their laps today.

I backed into the brick until it scraped my spine, rough and cold through my jacket. My fingers crushed around my keys, metal cutting into my skin, but I barely felt it. My heart was slamming so hard it made me dizzy, each beat loud enough I was sure they could hear it.

Say something.

Move.

Do anything.

My mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

One of them stepped closer, slow and deliberate, like he had all the time in the world. His eyes dragged over me, from my face down to my shoes, stripping me bare without ever touching me.

“You lost?” he asked, his voice smooth in a way that made my stomach turn.

I tried to answer. Tried to scream.

But all that came out was a thin, broken breath.

It was automatic. The second fear hit, my voice shut off. Like a switch had been flipped inside me. My heart slammed so hard it roared in my ears, every beat jagged. Whatever sound I tried to make died in my throat.

I shook my head. Took a step sideways, trying to keep space between us.

I didn’t get far.

A hand snapped around my wrist. Fast. Sure. Fingers digging in like they already knew how hard they could squeeze before it broke me. A thin sound slipped out of me—more air than voice. It didn’t stop them.

Another hand slid to my hip. Fingers caught the fabric of my shirt, tugging, testing how easily it would move. Someone laughed, close enough that I felt his breath on my neck.

“Relax,” one of them said, bored. “We’ll be gentle.”

The alley tilted. My vision narrowed, the edges going dark. My body remembered before my brain could catch up—tight spaces, hands that didn’t ask, silence slamming down like a lid.

Freeze.

Every nerve fired at once. My muscles locked and slipped, useless and out of sync. I forced air out, trying to make it a word, a scream, anything.

What came out was thin. Breakable.

It didn’t even slow them down.

I swung at the closest shape, nails scraping skin through cloth. I kicked next, wild and off-balance. My foot hit something solid, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t buy me space.

Hands were on me. Too many. I slashed my hand in the air, trying to connect my keys with a body part. But I was terrible at defending myself.

Someone grabbed my hair and yanked my head back. Pain tore through my skull, bright and blinding. For one second, it cut through the fear.

Then my body shut down.

Not screaming. Not fighting. Just… gone.

My arms froze. My legs failed. My breath stalled in my chest like it forgot how to finish.

The switch flipped.

The same one I’d spent years trying to break.

I knew freezing was death. I knew what stillness invited. I knew how much damage silence could do.

My body didn’t care.

Nothing moved. Nothing answered. Everything drifted far away, like I was watching myself from outside my own skin.

This was how I survived once.

And this was how I would survive now.