Two versions surfaced at once.
One: kind. Gentle. His hand on my cheek, his thumb tracing my lower lip, his voice soft as velvet."My perfect girl."
Two: cold. Clinical. His hand on my throat, his fingers pressing just hard enough to remind me who I was, his voice flat as a scalpel."You're ready."
Both felt real. Both felt like lies. I couldn't hold onto either of them—they kept slipping away, dissolving, reforming into something else. Kind. Cold. A face I loved. A face I feared. A face I'd spent weeks hunting and couldn't quite remember when I closed my eyes.
The sink was cool under my palms. I gripped the edges and leaned forward, breathing in the smell of bleach and cheap soap and something rotting in the drain. The tile was cold under my bare feet. The fluorescent light buzzed. The woman in the mirror watched me with hollow eyes, and I watched her back, and neither of us knew what to say.
Phantom metal.
I touched my throat again. The collar wasn't there. It had never been there—not really, not in this room, not in this life. But my body remembered. My body had been trained to remember. And standing in front of this sink, in this bathroom, in this motel I didn't remember checking into, I could feel it pressing down like a promise I couldn't escape.
"You're ready."
For what?
The phone buzzed from the nightstand.
I crossed the room in three strides—too fast, too desperate, and I caught myself halfway, forced my breathing to slow, forcedmy hands to unclench. Gabriel had taught me that.Never show desperation. Desperation is a wound, and predators smell blood.
But Gabriel wasn't here. Gabriel was nowhere, and I was in a motel room I didn't remember, with a gun I didn't remember firing and a knife I didn't remember cleaning and hands that weren't mine touching a phone I didn't recognize.
The screen glowed.
One message. No name—just a number I didn't recognize, a number I'd never seen before, a number that must have been in my contacts because why else would it be here?
Warehouse district. Adams Street. 11 PM.
I stared at the words. Read them three times. Four.
I didn't remember adding this contact. I didn't remember agreeing to meet anyone. I didn't remember sending or receiving any messages that led to this moment. But the phone was in my hand and the words were on the screen and somewhere deep in my chest, something was already waking up. Something that recognized a hunt when it smelled one.
Gabriel.
Maybe this was a lead. Maybe someone knew something. Maybe tonight—maybe this time—I'd find him.
Or maybe this was another false trail. Another dead end. Another body to add to the count I couldn't remember.
I set the phone down and looked at my hands again.
They were clean. Someone had washed them. Someone had scrubbed the blood from my knuckles and the creases of my palms and the spaces between my fingers.
When?
Where?
Whose blood?
I couldn't remember. The last clear memory I had was Gabriel's face—two versions, kind and cold—and then nothing. Agap. A wound in the fabric of my mind that someone had sewn shut with cheap thread.
"You're ready."
Maybe he'd been warning me.
Maybe he'd known I was about to fall apart.
Maybe he'd left because he couldn't watch.
