Chapter 21
JENNA
But the feeling won’t leave.
It’s been three months since I walked out of that warehouse in stolen clothes. Three months of building this new life—Kathy Morrison, underground fighter with a taste for vigilante justice. I should feel secure by now.
Instead, I feel like prey again.
My boots echo against the cracked sidewalk as I navigate through the evening crowd.
Construction workers heading home, office drones catching buses, kids cutting through the district on their way to whatever trouble they can find.
Normal people living normal lives, oblivious to the predators that move through their world.
I use a storefront window to check behind me. Nothing unusual— the typical mix of pedestrians, no one maintaining consistent distance or showing particular interest in me. But my nervous system doesn’t believe what my eyes are telling it.
Someone’s watching. I know it the way you know a storm’s coming before the first drops hit.
The grocery bags cut into my forearms as I pick up the pace. Milk, bread, protein bars—the basics that keep me functional between fights and kills. Simple groceries for a simple life, if you ignore the knife in my boot and the blood under my fingernails.
My apartment building squats between a pawn shop and a liquor store, all crumbling brick and broken dreams. The same type of place I’ve been hiding in for years—forgettable, temporary, populated by people who mind their own business.
Three locks on the front door, two more on the stairwell entry. I run through them quickly. Still nothing visible.
The stairs creak under my boots as I climb to the third floor. These old buildings hold sound in strange ways—footsteps that echo for seconds, voices that carry through thin walls, the particular groan of settling wood that becomes as familiar as your own heartbeat after a while.
I pause outside my door, grocery bags balanced against my hip. The hallway stretches empty in both directions, but that doesn’t mean anything. If someone wanted me badly enough, they’d wait in the shadows until I was vulnerable.
The deadbolt turns with a satisfying click. I push into my apartment, immediately scanning for disturbances—furniture moved, belongings shifted, the dozen small tells that would indicate someone had been here while I was gone.
Everything looks normal. Sparse furniture arranged as I left it. Laptop closed on the small table, power light dark. The window still cracked an inch for ventilation, the thin strip of tape I left across the sash still unbroken, curtain pulled tight against prying eyes.
But normal doesn’t calm the current running under my skin.
I dump the groceries on the counter and move through my routine. Check the closet and find clothes hanging in the same order. Check under the bed and find the go-bag undisturbed, knife cache where I left it.
Nothing. No one.
So why can’t I shake the feeling?
The milk goes in the refrigerator next to leftover takeout and energy drinks. Protein bars in the cabinet beside instant coffee and canned soup. The basic sustenance of someone who views food as fuel rather than pleasure, who’s forgotten what it feels like to cook for another person.
I strip off my jacket and hang it on the door hook, then pause. There it is again—that prickle of awareness, like standing too close to a high-voltage line.
I splash cold water on my face, washing away the unease. The rational part of my brain knows I’m safe here.
But the animal part of my brain, the part that kept me alive all these years, whispers a different truth.
He’s coming.
The thought arrives unbidden, and I squash it before it can take root.
I don’t know where it came from or why tonight feels different from all the nights before it.
Maybe it’s the way the light hits the window, or the pattern of sounds from the street, or just the accumulated weight of looking over my shoulder.
Or maybe it’s because I’ve been dreaming about him every night, waking up with his name on my lips and wetness between my thighs like my body’s calling out to something it shouldn’t want.
Stop.
I move to the window, staying on one side, and peer through the gap in the curtains. The street below bustles with evening activity—people heading home, grabbing dinner, disappearing into the multitude of bars and clubs that make this district profitable. Nothing unusual. Nothing threatening.
But my hands shake as I let the curtain fall back into place.
All these nights of telling myself I escaped, that I’m free, that I’ve turned my captivity into strength and my trauma into purpose. Each night I’d lie to myself about why I chose this neighborhood, this life, this proximity to the underground networks run by the man who kept me in a cage.
Because somewhere in the diseased part of my psychology, I’m not running from Nikolai Vex.
I’m waiting for him to find me. Sinking onto the edge of my bed, head in my hands, I finally acknowledge what I’ve been too scared to examine since I escaped.
I could have left Chicago—gotten on a bus to anywhere else, started over in a place where human traffickers and bone-white masks exist only in nightmares. Instead, I stayed. Built a life in the shadows of his territory, close enough to feel his presence like heat from a distant fire.
Close enough to be found, if he were looking.
And of course he’s looking. Men like Nikolai don’t lose property and forget.
Don’t let acquisitions walk away from their beds and disappear into the night with their clothes.
He’s probably been searching since the moment he woke up to empty sheets, following every lead, checking every possible hiding place.
Getting closer every day.
The thought should terrify me. Should send me scrambling for my go-bag, for the bus station, for anywhere that isn’t here. Instead, it sends heat curling through my belly like smoke.
The sick truth I’ve been avoiding is that part of me wants to be found.
Wants to feel those powerful hands on my skin again, wants to hear him call me his in that rough voice that made my knees weak.
Wants to surrender to something stronger than my own will, to stop being responsible for my own survival and let someone else make the decisions.
Someone who looked at me like I was the answer to every prayer he’d never thought to say.
My phone buzzes against the nightstand. Text message from Rico.
Good fight the other night. Got another offer if you’re interested. Big money.
I stare at the screen without really reading it.
Fighting has become my outlet, the place where I can channel all this restless energy into something productive.
But even violence isn’t enough anymore. Even putting my fists through someone else’s face doesn’t quiet the ache that’s taken up residence in my core.
Dropping the phone, I move to the window again, compelled by forces I don’t want to analyze. The unease hasn’t faded—if anything, it’s gotten stronger, settling into my bones like winter cold.
As I stand there in my dark apartment, surrounded by locks and weapons and the illusion of safety, one thought crystallizes with terrifying clarity.
The waiting is almost over.
My hand moves to the knife at my hip, fingers wrapping around the familiar grip.
Outside, Chicago continues its evening rhythm, oblivious to the woman standing at her window, caught between hope and terror, wondering if tonight is the night he finally catches up to her.
Wondering if she’ll run when it does.
Or if she’ll do what every broken part of her has been secretly craving.
If she’ll welcome him home.
I let the curtain fall and turn away from the window, but the feeling follows me.
Soon.
The floorboards creak as I move toward the bedroom, pulling my shirt over my head and throwing it onto the bed. And then unfasten my pants and chuck them on top.
A hand closes over my mouth before I can draw breath to scream.
Large, gloved, familiar in ways that make my body respond instinctively. The scent hits me next—a clean and sharp aroma that I’ve been dreaming about since I escaped.
I freeze, every muscle rigid as steel. Not from terror, though terror is there. From the way my nervous system remembers this, like a tuning fork struck at precisely the right frequency.
“Hello, beautiful.”
The voice comes from directly behind my ear, low and rough and filtered into something inhuman. The mask. He’s wearing the mask.
My knees try to buckle, but his free arm snakes around my waist, holding me upright against the solid wall of his chest. I can feel every line of muscle through his clothes, the controlled strength that could snap my neck or pull me closer, depending on his mood.
“Miss me?”
The question vibrates through his chest into my spine, and my body betrays me. Heat floods between my legs, nipples tightening against my bra. Three months of dreaming about this moment, and my traitorous flesh remembers how it felt to be owned by him.
I try to bite his hand, but he anticipates the movement, adjusting his grip to keep my jaw immobilized.
“Now, now. Is that any way to greet someone you’ve been thinking about every night?”
His cock presses hard against my ass, thick and demanding. The bastard knows exactly what he does to me, knows that my body will always betray my mind when it comes to him.
“You’ve been busy,” he continues, lips brushing my ear through the mask. “Killing collectors. Making quite a name for yourself in certain circles.”
My blood turns to ice. He knows. Of course he knows—probably tracked every death back to me.
“Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out? That I wouldn’t find you in my own fucking backyard?”
His grip shifts, thumb pressing against my pulse point. Measuring my terror and reading my body like a book he’s studied for years.
“Five collectors dead. All of them were knifed to death.” His voice drops to a growl that I feel in my bones.