CHAPTER TWENTY
DAMIEN
The street is too quiet when I return.
No wind.
No headlights.
No light spilling from the windows.
Just silence.
The kind that says something has already happened.
I cut the engine before I even reach the curb and step out slow, fingers wrapped around the knife strapped to my arm. My body is buzzing from the last three hours—tracking, threatening, searching for a ghost that keeps slipping out of reach.
None of that matters now.
The second I reach the apartment door—
It’s open.
Not broken. Not kicked in.
Unlocked.
That’s worse.
Raven knows better.
She never leaves it open.
“Raven?”
My voice barely echoes.
I step inside, and the air hits me like a fist.
Cold. Still. Wrong.
She’s not here.
The room is intact. The table still smeared with memories of the last time I touched her. The bedroom door half open. Her sweatshirt on the floor.
But she’s not in it.
I move fast now. Knife out.
Windows. Fire escape.
Hallway.
Nothing.
Then I notice it.
The wall.
Left of the dresser.
The vent.
Ripped open.
Screws stripped, metal bent back. Inside—a dark cavity.
I drop to my knees and throw my phone light into the crawlspace.
Her footprints.
Fresh.
Leading in.
None leading out.
“No—”
I climb in.
The walls press around me like lungs, squeezing tighter with every breath. My light flickers. The air smells of wax and rot.
And then I see it.
The room at the end.
Wax-paper walls.
The doll.
The pit.
My stomach turns.
The drawings.
The tooth.
The chair.
But no Raven.
She was here.
She saw this.
She’s gone.
My hand closes so tight my palm splits. Blood tracks down my wrist.
“Where is she?” I growl into the dark. “Where the fuck is she?”
And then—
I see it.
Pinned to the doll’s dress.
A note.
Folded.
Just for me.
I tear it open, barely breathing.
She was always ours.
You just borrowed her.
Time to give her back.
—N
My vision whites out. My body stills.
Then I scream.
Loud enough to shake the crawlspace walls.
Loud enough to wake the dead.
This isn’t a hunt anymore.
This is war.
And I will burn this city to ash to get her back.
The scream fades, but the rage doesn’t. It pulses behind my eyes like a drumbeat. I force my breath even, scan again—slower, methodical.
There has to be something.
A slip. A clue. Anything that tells me where he took her.
I kneel beside the pit.
The smell hits harder now—decay, wax, blood. The corpse is cradling something. I pry its arms apart, rage guiding me more than logic.
Another box.
Wooden. Locked.
I rip the lid off.
Inside?
Files.
Not of her.
Of me.
My breath stops.
I dig through the papers, heart pounding.
Employment history.
Surveillance shots of me—home, work—before I ever saw Raven.
A list of aliases I used in Eastern Europe.
Photos of women I followed before Raven.
He knew me.
He was watching me long before I touched her.
At the bottom—a letter.
Not typed.
Handwritten. Shaky, precise, like someone carved it with the tip of a blade.
You weren’t the first monster to want her.
You were just the loudest.
I watched you, Damien.
I let you touch her first.
I wanted to see if she could survive someone like you.
Now I want to see what she becomes with me.
There’s a Polaroid taped to the inside of the lid.
My hand shakes as I peel it free.
Raven.
Unconscious.
On a mattress I don’t recognise.
But the moths—
they’re there.
Pinned to the wall above her like stars.
In the corner, barely visible—
a wrist.
Pale. Thin. Tattooed.
A number.
I’ve seen it before.
In the records I erased.
In the folder I destroyed six years ago.
Because I knew what it meant.
Because I killed the man who wore it.
Or thought I did.
I stand slowly, and for the first time in my life I feel something cold slide under my ribs.
Not fear.
Recognition.
The second stalker isn’t just a ghost from her past.
He’s a ghost from mine.