Chapter 3
DAMIEN
The door slams behind me, but I don’t hear it. Not really.
I hear my heartbeat, a heavy, rhythmic thud against my ribs. I hear the cold drag of the gun against my palm. I hear the hum of the emergency locks as they seal the building, the steel bolts sliding home like a final sentence.
And I hear him.
His footsteps three floors down. Measured. Casual. Like he’s not walking into his own death. Like he thinks he’s the hunter.
I take the stairs fast, three at a time, silent and precise. My boots catch the edges of the concrete, my breath sharp and controlled, my grip on the rail tight enough to blister.
The building is too quiet, the air stagnant and thick with the scent of dust and impending violence. The exits are sealed. The feeds are tracking. He’s trapped in my cage now.
The stairwell door creaks ahead. I hear it. So does he. I pause, blending into the shadows. So does he.
I lean into the corner, slow, steady, pistol raised. I catch a flick of movement in the corner of the feed on my handheld. Grey hoodie. Gloved hands. The weight of a man who doesn’t know how close his bones are to breaking.
He’s not the one. Not the second stalker. Not the ghost I’ve been chasing. This one’s just a puppet. A pawn sent to test the wires.
I’ll take him apart anyway.
I move fast, my boot slamming into the door, catching him mid-step. He stumbles back, arms raised, scrambling for a footing he’ll never find.
I press the barrel of the gun between his ribs, the cold metal biting through his hoodie, and slam him against the concrete wall.
His breath punches out of him in a wet gasp. His eyes blow wide, reflecting the sterile fluorescent light.
“Please—” he chokes.
I press harder, the front sight of the pistol digging into his sternum. “Start talking.”
He’s young. Sloppy. Sweat is already beading on his hairline, his pulse kicking against his throat like a trapped moth.
“I—I was just—” His voice breaks, high and thin.
I slam his head against the wall. Not hard enough to knock him out. Hard enough to remind him where this is going. Hard enough to make the world tilt for him.
“Wrong answer.”
“I don’t know him!” he screams, the sound echoing upward into the empty shaft. “I don’t know—I just—I just got paid to plant it—”
“Plant what?”
“The camera—” His breath hitches. Tears pool at the edges of his eyes, fuelled by pure, unadulterated terror. “He told me where to put it. He told me which room. He told me you wouldn’t be watching that angle.”
“He told you wrong.”
I press the gun under his jaw, lifting his chin, forcing his eyes to mine. I want him to see the abyss before he falls into it. “What else did he tell you?”
“N-Nothing—he just—he just said to put it there and leave—I wasn’t supposed to get caught—please—”
His hands tremble. His legs buckle. I tighten my grip on his throat. “You think begging’s going to save you?”
His throat bobs. His breath shudders.
“You know what happens to little voyeurs who don’t ask permission?”
He sobs. I slam his head against the wall again. The crack echoes down the stairwell, a sharp, final sound. Blood drips from his nose, hot and bright against the grey concrete. He crumples to his knees, gasping, coughing, shaking like a leaf in a storm.
I squat in front of him, tilting his chin up with the barrel of the gun.
“You watched her.” His breath stutters. “You watched her beg for me.” His jaw trembles. “You think that makes you part of us?”
“N-No—please—I won’t—I won’t—”
I jam the gun between his teeth. His sob cuts off into a metallic rattle. His eyes go wide with panic, the whites showing all the way around. His hands claw at the barrel, shaking his head, but I push deeper until I hear his lips split.
“Tell me,” I murmur, low, steady. “Did you like watching her cum for me?”
He gags. Chokes. The scent of his fear is filling the stairwell now, sour and thick. I cock the gun. The sharp, mechanical click makes him jolt so hard his teeth clatter against the steel.
“Because I didn’t give you permission to cum,” I whisper.
His tears spill fast now, hot tracks through the dust on his face. I drag the gun out of his mouth, slow and deliberate, wiping the spit and blood across his hoodie.
“You think you’re going to leave here?” I ask, my voice soft, almost intimate. “You think you’re going to walk away?”
He sobs, crawling backward on his haunches, pressing himself against the cold stairwell wall as if he could disappear into it.
I aim at his knee. Fire.
The shot cracks the silence like a whip. His scream slices through the air, raw and agonising. I watch him writhe, his hands clenching around his shattered knee, his body folding over the pain.
I lower the gun. I don’t need it anymore.
I drag him by the collar, slamming him face-first into the ground. His sobs choke out of him, wet and broken. I press my boot into the back of his head, feeling the tremor of his skull against my sole.
“You know what happens to little thieves who touch what’s mine?”
His answer is a muffled, panicked sound. I grind my boot harder.
“You don’t get to leave fingerprints.” I lean into the pressure until he sobs harder. “You don’t get to breathe my air.” I press until I feel the edge of the bone shift. “You don’t get to walk where she walks.” His body convulses under me. “You get erased.”
I pull my blade from my belt. The steel reflects the dim light, a silver promise of silence. I make sure he sees it. I make sure he knows.
The cut is clean. Deep. Perfect.
He screams when the tip of the blade drags over his palm, opening the skin to the bone. I slice the skin again. And again. And again.
No more fingerprints. No more touch. No more trace.
“You think you were playing his game,” I whisper, crouching low beside him, dragging the blade across his sleeve to clean the worst of the gore. “But you were just a pawn. Just bait.”
I slam his hand against the ground. The wet slap of it makes him sob louder.
“You were disposable.”
He gasps. Spits blood. Begs. But I’ve already erased him.
And when I’m satisfied, when his voice is gone, when the floor is slick with his panic, I stand. I clean the blade on his hoodie. I holster my gun.
I don’t look back. Because he wasn’t the one I needed. He was just a message. A warning. And I’m going to make the man who sent him choke on that mistake.
I don’t remember walking back to the apartment. I don’t remember how many locks I passed or how many floors I climbed. I only remember her.
On her knees. Exactly where I left her. Exactly where she’s supposed to be.
My boots are slick with blood. My knuckles are raw. My breath is torn, but when I see her, everything cracks in my ribs and I can finally fucking breathe again.
She’s counting. I can hear her—the whisper of numbers slipping from her lips, shaky and soft. Her body is trembling, her thighs forced wide, the clamp still biting her swollen cunt. She’s begging. Begging like I told her to. Begging like she believes I’ll come back.
And fuck. Fuck, I did.
My chest splits under the weight of it. I drop to my knees in front of her, dragging her into my lap, pressing my forehead to hers like I might cave in if I don’t hold her right now.
I can’t tell her yet. I can’t tell her what I know. Not yet.
If I do, the cage won’t be tight enough. The walls won’t be thick enough. The locks won’t be strong enough. And I can’t lose her.
Not to him. Not to the ghost I thought I burned. Not to the man I left under the fucking ash.
I press my lips to hers, desperate, crushing, wild. I make her feel the adrenaline still vibrating in my skin. I make her taste the violence. She sobs into my mouth, her body rocking in my lap, chasing the friction of the clamp.
I grind my palm between her legs, pressing the metal against her swollen clit, dragging another broken cry from her throat. I’m not gentle. I’m not careful. I need to mark her so deep he can’t carve me out.
“You’ll always beg for me,” I growl against her lips. “You’ll always wait. You’ll always stay.”
She sobs. She nods. She says the words like prayers she doesn’t want to stop saying.
“You’ll cum for me now, little spider.”
Her body shudders, her cunt clamping around nothing, the metal digging into the desperate ache I left in her. She comes apart for me.
For me. Not for him.
I drag her tighter, burying my face in her neck, breathing her in like it’s the only thing keeping me tethered to this world. But I can still feel it—the itch in my skull, the buzzing in my teeth.
He’s still out there. Watching. Waiting.
I won’t let him have her. I’ll cage her so deep she won’t know where I end and she begins. I’ll lock the doors. I’ll lock the air. I’ll lock the pulse under her skin until it only beats for me.
She’s mine and I’m not losing her. Not to a ghost. Not to a priest. Not to the man I thought I burned.
This time, I’ll finish it. And I’ll make him watch.