Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Emery
The low hum of the fluorescent lights buzzes like it’s trying to crawl inside my skull. The hiss of the griddle and the clatter of plates echo through the diner, filling the space as always.
Dinner rush.
If you can even call it that. More like a trickle of tired souls looking for something hot and salty to remind them they’re still breathing. It’s mostly truckers, lonely old men, and couples too tired to pretend they’re still in love. Same faces. Same orders. Same shitty jokes.
But safe. The kind of safe that numbs your edges. The kind I’ve begged for.
Because boredom means no blood. No guns. No ghosts.
I scribble down a two-patty melt, extra onions, a side of fries, and a slice of that fake-ass cherry pie sitting in the front case like it hasn’t been there for three days straight.
The order pad crinkles in my hand as I tear the slip free, passing it to Pete behind the counter without looking up.
My smile is automatic, tight, practiced, nothing more than muscle memory.
Then the bell above the door rings. Every part of me goes still. The kind that wraps around your spine akin to a noose. The kind that knows before your brain catches up that something’s off.
My fingers curl against the counter. My breath stalls in my throat. I don’t turn.
Not yet.
Because I already feel it.
That shift in the air. Because I know the past doesn’t knock. It doesn’t creep or whisper or ask permission. It kicks the door down and walks in as if it never left.
When I finally glance over, I don’t look directly at him. Just a flick of my eyes. A quick sweep. Casual. Cautious.
But it’s enough.
He stands near the door as if he owns the room, or like he’s deciding whether to burn it down. Posture relaxed but not slouched. Controlled. Calculated.
Mid-forties, maybe fifty. Salt cutting through his dark hair at the temples.
Not soft, not tired… seasoned, as if life has tried to wear him down, but he hasn’t let it win.
His suit is dark and impeccable, not flashy but expensive, giving off the impression that he doesn’t quite belong in this rundown diner, with its cracked vinyl booths and flickering lights.
He appears to be someone who doesn’t have to ask for things twice. And that alone sets every nerve in my body on edge.
But it’s not the suit.
Not the scar.
He carries a weight within him, similar to violence stitched beneath his skin.
It’s the way he looks at me. Calm, direct, and too steady. It’s as though I’m not a stranger. It’s as if I’m not safe. He knows me. Not the me I’ve built here with lies and diner grease and a false name. The other me. The one I swore was dead and buried.
My hand tightens around the handle of the coffee pot as if I’m holding on for dear life. The plastic digs into my skin—unforgiving, cheap, and far too familiar. Just like everything else in this goddamn place. My knuckles go white, tendons straining as though they want to snap.
My heart doesn’t just beat… it slams, a brutal thud-thud-thud against my ribs, like it’s trying to punch its way out of my chest.
Every pulse is a scream I can’t let out. Not here. Not now.
“You alright?” Pete asks, glancing over his shoulder, voice casual, he doesn’t feel the storm building in the room.
“Yeah.”
It slips out like smoke. A lie wrapped in silk. Polished, practiced, poison.
I keep moving, pretending I don’t see him. Pretending my skin isn’t crawling or my past isn’t whispering in my ear that it’s finally caught up.
Because it’s been years.
I changed my name. My life. My everything. Cut and colored my hair. Killed the girl I used to be and built someone new in her place.
But some nights, I still wake up sweating, my heart racing, convinced there’s a shadow at the end of my bed. I still hear footsteps that aren’t there, doors creaking open that never moved. I still brace myself every time I turn a corner, muscles tensed like a loaded gun, waiting for the worst.
Waiting to see him. Matteo, or his cold, fucked-up excuse for a father. Or worse… someone they sent for me. Someone resembling this. And tonight, it feels as if maybe that day finally showed the fuck up.
I avoid him like he’s a loaded gun with the safety off.
No eye contact. No pass-by glances.
I stick to the opposite side of the diner as though the floor might burn if I step too close.
But he doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. Just sits.
Silent.
Still.
Watching.
Like I’m not a waitress, but more as if I’m a target.
Suzie, bless her oblivious heart, breezes over and pours him a cup of coffee as if he’s just another sad, lonely asshole killing time between bad decisions.
She doesn’t feel the shift in the air. Doesn’t see the way it coils tight around him. Around me.
But I do.
Every second he stays, my nerves fray thinner, and my skin crawls harder. I’m two seconds from tearing off my apron and getting the hell out of here, heart in my throat, legs already halfway to the door… but then he stands and I watch him leave.
By the time my shift ends, I’m running on fumes and frayed nerves. Every fake smile, every order barked at me like I’m nothing, has scraped me raw.
I rip off my apron as if it’s suffocating me, mutter a half-hearted goodbye no one hears, and shove open the back door.
The cold hits me with the force of a slap. It sinks into my bones. The streets are always dead this time of the night, and tonight is no different. I tuck my chin deeper into my coat, arms crossed tight over my chest, my makeshift armor, and force my legs to move.
The same sidewalk beneath my boots, the cracks etched into my memory with the permanence of scars I never asked for. The same alley seems to be watching me, waiting.
My heart kicks harder, a sudden jolt against my ribs like it’s trying to warn me before my brain can catch up.
I tell myself it’s nothing. Just the paranoia again. The ghosts I keep tucked under my skin making noise in the dark.
Then I hear it.
Footsteps.
Heavy.
Slow.
Deliberate. Gravel crunching beneath boots.
Each step echoing down the alley like a countdown I didn’t know had started.
I don’t think. I react. My body spins before my brain catches up, heart slamming against my ribs as if it’s trying to claw its way out. My breath sticks in my throat, sharp and useless.
There’s no time to scream.
No time to run.
A shadow spills from the dark, fast and close.
Something clamps over my mouth before the air can leave my lungs.
A rag, soaked in something sharp and chemical that burns the inside of my nose.
My body jerks, fights, thrashes like instinct is trying to outrun inevitability, but it’s already over.
My limbs go heavy, and the world starts to tilt.
The stars above me blur. The alley spins.
My knees buckle. I hear my own breath, rough and useless against fabric.
Then nothing. Just the sound of the world slipping away.
The world returns in fragments.
Every inch of me is heavy, and numb. My head throbs, a slow, pulsing beat that feels like it’s trying to crack open my skull from the inside. My eyelids flutter, but it’s no use. Darkness presses in thick, smothering anything that might’ve passed for light.
My lungs seize. My chest tightens.
Panic wraps around my ribs, and I can’t tell if it’s from this place.
My arms are yanked behind me, wrists twisted in rope that bites deep, raw skin screaming with every twitch. There are metal chains wrapped around my waist that hold me tightly against the chair. Real ones. The kind meant to hold monsters or make you into one.
I shift and feel the cold edge of metal dig into my spine.
A chair. Heavy. Solid. Cruel. The kind meant to hold someone who isn’t supposed to leave.
I try to move. Fight. Strain. But my body won’t play along.
It aches in places I can’t name. A dull, deep kind of pain, layered beneath the sharper ones. My limbs are lead, every joint locked up in protest, every movement answered by agony.
Whatever the hell they gave me is still in my system. My head spins every time I blink. The room tilts even though I can’t see it.
But even in the dark, even through the fog in my brain, I feel him. That cold weight in the air. That familiar static crawling over my skin.
Matteo.
The name slams through me like a punch to the gut.
Because I know without even seeing, without hearing, without proof of him standing in front of me, I know this has his fingerprints all over it.
I feel him.
That same suffocating presence that coils around my ribs as if it were wire, squeezes the breath from my lungs as punishment. A reminder.
Every breath.
Every step.
I’m right back in it. The world I ran from.
The name I shed like skin. The life I clawed my way out of, bloodied and broken, just to taste freedom for the first time in years.
Now I’m back in the grip of the man I swore I’d never face again.
Back in the goddamn fire, choking on smoke I thought I’d finally outrun.
A bulb snaps on with a click, and the light punches through my eyelids like a fucking spotlight. It’s harsh. Yellow and unforgiving. It’s the kind of light that doesn’t reveal, it exposes.
My eyes squint against it, twitching, refusing to cooperate. Everything in me wants to stay under, to sink back into the dark I was drowning in. But the brightness keeps clawing at me, dragging me up by the throat.
Muscles slow. Vision blurred. Every blink is a losing battle.
I force my eyes open slowly, lashes sticking together like they’ve been glued shut by the dark. Light burns at the edges, and the world tilts sideways as my lashes lift, slow and shaking. The edges of reality smudged with shadows and pain.
Then I see him.