My chest constricted as I pivoted and walked toward the exit, positioning myself near the door and pulling out my phone, pretending to check a message and allowing myself to get close enough that I could have reached out and touched her hair. Close enough that I caught the faint hitch in her breath, the unsteadiness of her steps.
She didn’t look at me as she passed. She simply pushed past me, allowing the night to swallow her.
I stood frozen for a long moment, staring at the empty space where she’d been. The ghost of her scent lingered in the air. I inhaled again, letting it settle in my lungs.
Then I pulled out my phone and called Peter, my head of security.
“I’m sending you a receipt. I want everything,” I said. My voice was flat, emotionless—the voice I used for business, for deals, for crushing people. “Her name. Her number. Where she’s staying. Where she works. Who she knows. I want it all, and I want it now.”
“Boss, that’s?—”
“I don’t care. Find her.”
There is a pause before his voice comes over the line, resigned. “Got it.”
I hung up.
Outside, the streetlights flickered, casting long shadows across the pavement. She was gone, vanished into the city’s streets, but I could still feel her. A pull. A tether. A thread connecting my chest to hers.
I would find her.
I would unravel her.
And then I would put her back together, piece by broken piece—whether she wanted me to or not.
Because she belonged to me now.
She just didn’t know it yet.
Chapter Three
Zara
I couldn’t stay in that bar another second.
The stares were eating me alive. The bartender, the one who’d sent me that free drink, kept glancing at me like he was waiting for something. Like I was a patient whose fever might spike. And the other patrons? They looked through me, past me, at me. I was the girl alone at the bar with the suitcase. The girl whose mascara had long since dried into muddy streaks. The girl who looked as if she’d been dragged through hell backward.
At this point, it wasn’t just exhaustion pulling at me. I felt hollowed out, brittle in places I never knew could break, too numb to be angry but too unsettled to be calm.
So I threw the signed credit card receipt on the counter, grabbed the handle of my suitcase, and walked towards the door.
The door swung shut behind me, and the night air hit my face like a slap: cold, sharp. It forced a breath into my lungs, and I stood there for a moment, letting the wind tease through my hair, letting the streetlights blur into orange smears.
Then I started walking.
I didn’t know where I was going. I had another hour until Marcus’ flight landed. Two hours until I could crash on his couch and pretend my life wasn’t a smoldering wreck. Two hours of nothing. No money for a hotel—I’d checked my bank account while waiting for that second drink. Negative seven dollars.
Negative.
How was that even possible?
I brushed my hair back, sighing. The sidewalk stretched ahead of me, while my suitcase rattled behind me, its wheels catching on every pebble. I passed a bus stop with a flickering sign. A closed coffee shop. A man in a hoodie who didn’t look at me. Every step felt heavier than the last, as if my bones were filled with concrete.
And then, the tears returned.
This time, I didn’t try to stop them. What was the point? There was no one to see. No one to care. I let them roll down my cheeks while a sob clawed its way up my throat, and I bit my lip to choke it down.
You’re a mess, Zara. A complete and utter mess.
