My stomach drops at the nickname, the familiar feeling of anxiety beginning to creep up on me.
Me:How did you get this number?
Unknown:It's always “How did you get this number? What do you want from me?” So fucking predictable. You can do better than that, Little Bird.
My hands begin to shake at the response. Fuck this fucking person.
Me:Leave me the fuck alone.
I stare at my phone like it’s a bomb waiting to go off. Having left it on silent while I showered, I hadn’t heard a thing. No messages. No calls. Nothing. That didn’t stop the feeling the texts left behind from following me beneath the hot water. Or the lingering sense of unease hanging over my head like a storm cloud waiting to break. Taking a breath, I push back my shoulders and put on the game face Dad helped me perfect before every big game, even though it feels fragile enough to shatter beneath a harsh word. Then, I pick up my phone. My heart beats heavily inside my chest when I see there are five missed messages, one of those messages is a photo.
Unknown:Not going to happen, Little Bird. Now that dear old Dad is six feet under, you are our new target.
Unknown:Children inherit strange things. Eyes. Smiles. And sometimes debts left behind by their fathers.
Unknown:Blood remembers what the dead try to bury. And blood always collects its due.
Unknown:When you inherited his name, did you inherit his lies too? Lock your cage, Little Bird. It makes breaking in more fun.
I gasp, my hand flying to my mouth as I open the photo. All the air leaves my lungs when I realize what it is. It’s me. Naked. Water dripping from my hair. Steam clinging to the mirror. My discarded clothes, which I had been wearing today, lying on the floor. Everything. No. No. My eyes dart back to the image, and my blood runs cold. The angle. It’s wrong. Not the mirror, or thereflection. The doorway. My head snaps toward the bathroom entrance, the phone slipping in my trembling fingers as I stare at the offending frame. Every inch of my skin prickles. Every instinct inside me screams. Slowly, I turn. The bedroom window sits open behind me, the curtains swaying lazily in the evening breeze. It wasn’t open. I know it wasn’t open. Because I closed it. Whoever the fuck has been sending me messages was inside my apartment.
My scent turns into something unfamiliar to me. Roses flooding the room hard enough to make me gag. Panic crashes over me so violently that my knees almost buckle. With shaking hands, and what little remains of my rational thought, I launch myself at the window, slamming the frame shut hard enough to rattle the glass before flicking the lock. The lock that’s on the inside. The lock that I made sure was in place before climbing into the shower.
The front door.
I race around the apartment and lock every possible entrance I can think of. As though deadbolts can keep monsters away. By the time I threw myself into the nest, I’d only finished building yesterday after the removalists left, my entire body was shaking so violently my teeth chattered. Slamming the door behind me, I burrow beneath the mountain of soft blankets and pillows, desperate to drown myself in familiar scents. Vanilla. Rose. Home. Safe.
But all I can see is that picture.
Someone is standing there.
Watching me.
My lungs burn. My heart pounds beneath my ribs, and as the implications of whatever nightmare I’ve stepped into begin to sink their claws into me, one horrifying thought repeats over and over until it becomes the only thing I hear.
What the fuck have I done?
Chapter Three
Dominic
“Fuck!”
The TV explodes against the wall, plastic shattering and glass raining across the lounge room floor. I stand back and watch as the frame cracks straight through the plaster before crashing to the ground almost in slow motion, and all I can do is sigh. It’s been five hours since our entire world was turned upside down, and this is just another thing I have to add to the ever-growing list of shit I’m going to have to replace.
Sasha stalks through the room like the unhinged fucker he is, looking for somewhere to put all the rage that’s been eating away at him since what happened earlier. His shoulders are tight beneath his shirt, his scent thick with that bitter edge that only seems to appear when his grief begins to morph into something ugly, and his eyes are wild enough that I’m half expecting him to put his fist through another wall before the night is over.
None of us could have prepared for the fresh hell that awaited us after practice.
We all knew Coach Gilmore’s replacement had been in the works. The board had only been able to keep the team afloat forso long before someone had to step into his role. It is an answer we needed if we wanted to keep the team running smoothly. Was the outcome of that unexpected? Yes. We had assumed they’d at least sell it to somebody. I had figured they’d bring in some rich asshole who knew more about numbers than they did hockey.
Only that’s not what happened.
Coach Gilmore left his legacy to his daughter, and that makes perfect sense to me. Unlike Sasha, I had no real issues with the man, so I can’t say I was angry about the decision. He did his job, and in turn, we did ours.
He seemed to treat his staff fairly, ran an excellent training program and ensured the facilities always remained up to date with the best equipment that money could buy. From the outside looking in, he seemed like the kind of man people respected. The kind of man people admired.
But it's the shit hidden beneath the surface that people don’t see.
