Chapter 17
Seventeen
The weekend passed quietly after Saturday night. Mostly with me constantly checking the missing persons database every hour on the hour.
Nothing.
No Jane Does matching her description. No reports of blonde women gone missing from Center City. No bodies discovered in alleys or rivers or empty lots.
It’s like she never existed.
I refresh the Philadelphia Inquirer again. Scroll through the crime blotter. Local news. Nothing. Not a single mention of a missing woman. Not a whisper about a body.
Dom’s cleanup crew is that good.
The journal entry from last night stares up at me from my phone as I walk toward my desk—every detail I can remember about the VIP lounge. The bartender. The fluttering curtains. The warning about the hot stove. The cryptic direction toward club ownership.
I need more proof. Something concrete.
But first, I have to survive Monday morning at work and that means putting the phone away.
“Did you hear?” Alex materializes at my desk like she’s been summoned. Leans in close, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Just got here.” I look around, finally noticing what I somehow missed when I walked in. There’s a strange feeling in the air. Everyone has their heads down, some secretly texting. Others are blatantly gossiping in hushed clusters by the coffee station. “Okay, what’s happening?”
“First—the club.” Alex pushes her glasses up her nose. That nervous tell. “The Dahlia is registered as a fictitious name. The actual entity is Dahlia LLC.”
“Okay...” I wait for more.
“I haven’t traced the LLC yet. Need to pull corporate filings, see who the registered agent is, who the actual members are. Could take a few hours, maybe until tonight—”
“Do it. As soon as you can.”
She nods, but her expression shifts. Goes from investigative excitement to something else. Something darker.
“But that’s not why everyone’s acting weird.”
The base of my spine tingles—that specific warning that starts soft then spreads. Not the ice-heat from the stairwell. Not the same system that kept me alive that night.
This is different. Worse.
It twists. Coils. Like something is wrapping around each vertebra one by one, squeezing until I swear I can feel them crack. That serpent-spine thing. The one that only happens when my body knows something my brain hasn’t caught up to yet.
Danger. Real danger. Here. Now.
“Right, so—” Alex grabs my arm and yanks me toward my desk. Physically moves me. Her eyes dart around the office before she leans in even closer. “Marcus Ashford is here.”
The name doesn’t register immediately. I’m already shrugging off my coat, tossing it on my chair. “Who?”
Alex leans closer, drops her voice even lower. “He walked in wearing a fur coat.”
Everything stops as my brain finally connects the dots.
Marcus Ashford. Philadelphia’s newly elected City Controller. Playboy politician. America’s eligible bachelor.
The man in the fur coat.
The man whose voice I memorized while he confessed to murder.
The serial killer Dom protects.
“I’m gonna puke.” The words come out strangled.
Alex yanks out my chair and presses me into it, shoving my head between my knees. “Breathe,” she hisses at me. “Fuck, here comes Sharon. That nosy—Hey Sharon!”
Oh no. Not Sharon. She needs to just retire already.
“What’s wrong with Dylan?” Sharon’s voice drips with disapproval. Hands on her ample hips, those weird glasses with the chain, and a frown so hard it pulls her wrinkles down like a pug.
Alex has written sonnets about it.
“Hangover.” Alex says it with syrupy sweetness that could give you a cavity.
See, I can’t hide the fact that I hate Sharon. But Sharon’s not miserable—she’s survived forty years in law firms by making herself indispensable to partners and untouchable to everyone else. She’s what happens when you play the game long enough that you forget there were other options.
But Alex? Oh, Sharon loves her.
It’s a superpower.
“Well,” Sharon replies, her mouth opening and closing twice before she finds the words. But Sharon likes Alex so much she’d never say something bad about me to Alex. Now if she catches me alone? Different story. “Tell her to just go home.”
“Thanks, Sharon.” Alex’s sweetness is going to rot my teeth. “We’re so lucky to have you as such a caring receptionist.”
Sharon harrumphs and those old-school loafers march away.
I sit up, glaring at Alex. “Thick.”
She shrugs. “She brings me sweet treats.”
“Seriously?”
She smiles dreamily. “Homemade Rice Krispie treats today. And then she showed me a picture of her son who is so hot.” She pauses. “I think I’m gonna ask for his number. He’s a forensic accountant for the FBI.”
“I cannot believe you right now,” I hiss, shaking my head. But it’s working—the panic is receding just enough. Alex knows exactly what she’s doing. “Marcus.”
I look around, making sure no one heard me say the name.
“Right.” She draws it out. “That’s it. That’s all I know. No one knows why he’s here. Not a single—”
My desk phone lights up. Room 1. Dom’s office.
“No, no, no, no, no, no.” The words tumble out singsong. My throat closes around each syllable.
“You need to answer that.” Alex picks it up for me before it can hit the second ring because she knows Dom will get mad.
I grab it from her. “Sir.”
“Office. Now.” He hangs up.
I’m dead. I am absolutely dead.
“What did he say?” Alex asks as I stand. My legs don’t feel attached to my body.
“I have to go in there.” I turn to her, and I know my eyes are too wide. “Go. Save yourself.”
“Don’t be dramatic.” She rolls her eyes, but she squeezes my arm. “Call me when you’re free.”
Then she walks away. Back to her desk. Like this is a normal Monday.
Her shoulders are set in that particular way that means she’s worried but won’t show it. The same posture from when we were seventeen and I got caught with vodka in my locker.
Am I being dramatic?
I don’t think so.
These thoughts cycle on repeat as I walk down the hall toward the elevator. Then up a floor to Dom’s office.
Box breathing. I can do that.
In for four.
Hold for four.
Out for four.
Hold for four.
Except I keep forgetting to actually breathe.
Step one foot in front of the other. One. Two. One. Two.
His hallway has never felt this long.
I can do this. I’ve done harder things. I survived the stairwell. I survived the VIP lounge. I can survive whatever this is.
Except I know what this is.
He’s here. In this building. Maybe twenty feet away from me right now.
The ring around my neck suddenly feels like a noose.
Dom’s door is open.
The fur coat hits me first.
Draped across the arm of the leather loveseat like it belongs there. Like it’s been there a hundred times before. Cream-colored. Expensive. Unmistakable.
“I was wearing one of my fur coats, you know the ones.”
His voice from the stairwell echoes in my head. That entitled casualness. The way he mentioned the coat like it was a character trait. A signature.
“I’m infamous for the fur coat.”
My feet stop moving. My lungs stop working.
It’s him.
“Dylan.” Dom steps into the hallway, frowning at me. “You drank too much.”
I can’t answer. Can’t move. The coat is right there. Twenty feet away. Evidence I can’t touch, can’t report, can’t admit into any proceeding that matters. Just like the ring around my neck—proof of a crime with no case file, no docket number, no court that would hear it.
Why does everyone think I’m hungover?
“I did.” I sigh, rubbing my stomach. Playing along because what else can I do?
Does he say go home, Dylan, get some rest?
No.
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a mint. A fucking mint.
“Eat this.” He unwraps it and holds it up. “Open.”
I open my mouth like the obedient duckling I am. He pops it in.
“Drink some water and get your game face on.” His voice drops. Hardens. “Don’t fuck this up.”
There it is.
I can’t respond—there’s a mint dissolving on my tongue, sharp and cold. So I just blink at him.
I’m so disoriented right now. The coat. The mint. The casual cruelty of don’t fuck this up like I’m about to give a presentation instead of meeting a serial killer.
“Good. Let’s go.” Dom gestures for me to walk in.
My feet feel like concrete.
But somehow they obey. Unfortunately, I can’t lift them properly—can’t make them do the normal human thing of walking.
So I shuffle. Actually shuffle into Dom’s office like a zombie in heels.
And there he is.
Marcus Ashford.
I knew he was here. Alex said as much. I saw the coat.
But seeing him—the actual man, in the flesh, breathing the same air—
He’s lounging on the loveseat. Arms spread wide across the back, one ankle resting on the opposite knee. Taking up space the way powerful men always do. That stupid fur coat right beside him like a pet.
He’s handsome. I’ll give him that. But just that.
Because there’s something wrong about him. Something that radiates off him like heat shimmer on asphalt. The wrongness makes that serpent around my spine constrict tighter, squeezing until I can barely breathe.
Dirty blond hair styled with too much product. Tall. Slim build in an expensive black pinstripe suit. Blue eyes the color of an early fall sky—bright, so fucking bright it’s almost aggressive.
And a goatee. Barely. Like he can’t quite grow a full beard and this sparse thing is what he settled for.
The only remotely decent thing about him is that suit.
But he makes even that feel icky.
Swallowing my fear, I dissociate.
There’s no other way I’m getting through this.
I go to that weird place in my mind. That room with no windows where Dylan Wells lives when the world gets too dangerous.
I bury her. Bury her so deep that the only thing left on the surface is the performance.
Dominic Draven’s paralegal. Professional. Competent. Harmless.
Not the woman who heard him confess to murder.
Not the woman wearing his victim’s ring around her neck.
Not the woman who knows exactly what those hands did in an alley over a week ago.
Just a paralegal. Meeting a client. Doing her job.