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I watch her hips move, her muscles tightening with each stride. She doesn’t know how beautiful she is when she runs.
Like prey.
She was designed to be hunted.
I’m not stalking her. I’m studying her. A predator doesn’t rush the kill. He learns the heartbeat of the herd. He memorizes every twitch, every pause, every moment of weakness.
You might call me obsessive. Insane. But I’m neither. I’m devoted. I’m the truth that no one wants to face. I am the Devil. And she is my Lilith—fallen, defiant, deliciously broken.
She left Eden when she left me. But she doesn’t belong in the light. She belongs at my feet, in the dark, where angels fear to tread. Where I can remake her.
She stops to tie her shoe and the dog barks at a squirrel.
She laughs.
God, that laugh.
Light and careless. It makes my black heart beat louder. She doesn’t get to laugh—not without me. Soon, I’ll remind her. Soon, I’ll step from the trees. Not yet. But soon.
She’s not ready. She still thinks she has control. Still believes in happy endings and good men. Still believes he can protect her.
But no one can protect you from the Devil.
She’ll feel it.
That creeping dread.
That whisper in her blood.
She’ll know I’m close.
And when I finally take her back?
She won’t run.
She’ll kneel.
Chapter Five
Olivia
Istand up from my crouched position, placing my hands on top of my head. My lungs press against my ribs as I take deep breaths through my nose. I close my eyes, letting my heartbeat slow down. My stomach growls when I inhale the aroma of the nearby food carts.
Sadie sits tightly by my side, vigilantly watching anyone who comes near me. A woman with a stroller passes by. There’s a toddler holding a cheese puff tucked inside. Sadie’s attention shifts toward the food, and I correct her by snapping my fingers.
She’s still technically a puppy and has a lot of training to go through yet. For the most part though, she is bypassing other dogs in her class.
The wind shifts and I get that overwhelming sense of being watched. I drop my arms and look around the park. There are so many people here. It would be so easy to hide among them.
But it’s also safer for me. The more witnesses there are the better. No one would dare make a move in the middle of the day in front of a large crowd unless they had a death wish.
Although, in today’s world, everyone would probably just cement their feet in place and pull out their phones instead of helping anyone.
I reach for my phone on my armband and pause my music. Laughing. Music. Dogs barking. All normal sounds in Central Park. But it’s the spaces in between the noise that have the hairs on the back of my neck rising.
I still feel it.
I feel him.
