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The drive back passed quietly. I held the tote against my stomach and watched the city smear across the windows.

Kalon walked me to my door.

The ward hummed beneath the frame. I unlocked it but kept my hand on the knob.

“Let me check inside,” he said.

I wanted to say yes. I wanted him to switch on every light and prove the masked man had left nothing else behind.

I held out my hand for my bag instead.

“Liv.”

“I need to do this.”

Kalon’s fingers tightened around the strap before he surrendered it.

“Call me if anything happens.”

“I will.”

He stepped back. I entered alone and locked the door.

I should have checked for more cameras, swept corners, inspected vents, climbed on chairs with butter knives again. I thought about refreshing the glitter on all the windowsills. But exhaustion hit me, made my fear softer around the edges.

I had a flower shop shift in a few hours, and Mrs. Kori believed in gentle smiles, early mornings, and buckets of water heavy enough to count as strength training.

I dropped my tote by the couch and kicked off my shoes and pants. I glanced down at them on the floor. They could wait till morning. My hoodie swallowed my hands and thighs. My body ached in strange places from holding itself together too long. I walked down the hallway with the slow, dead-eyed determination of a woman who had survived emotional terrorism and still needed to make rent.

My bedroom door was half open.

My bed sat in the center, blankets twisted from the life I had before tonight, pillows shoved near the headboard, book stack leaning beside the nightstand.

For one second everything looked normal.

Then I saw it, and I froze mid–half-delirious step. There in the center of my bed sat a box wrapped in matte-black paper, tied with a glossy black satin bow.

Perfect.

Precise.

Out of place against my rumpled blanket.

Beneath it sat another package, wider and thinner, wrapped in the same black paper. The edges aligned with surgical care. The bow caught the thin hallway light and gleamed like wet ink.

I took one step into the room, my breath ragged and hands shaking. Something small and black rested beneath the bow on the top box.

The sound of one hard heartbeat filled my ears.

A camera.

Placed there like an offering.

My pulse went fucking wild.

Every warning bell inside me started screaming at once, frantic and useless, because underneath the sound, beneath the fear and fury and exhaustion, something else lifted its head. Something ugly and wrong. Excitement.

He had been here. While I sat in Kalon’s kitchen pretending I could still choose normal. He had been here. In my room, on my bed. Leaving me a present like a dare wrapped in funeral paper.