Chapter 15

AVERY – 

It’s been four days. Ninety-six hours of this hollow, restless feeling that has settled deep in my bones.

Not that I’m counting.

The office hums around me, a symphony of fluorescent lights and muted chaos. Keyboard keys clack with a steady, mindless rhythm. Phones buzz against desks, a sound that now makes my own phone feel heavier in my pocket. Muffled voices drift from behind thin partitions, discussing things that feel trivial, meaningless. I try to anchor myself in the work — spreadsheets filled with numbers that should add up, budget reports that demand focus, deadlines highlighted in urgent red.

But my focus is a frayed thread. The numbers on the screen blur into indistinct shapes, the words in the reports swim and dissolve. My mind, treacherous and unwilling, keeps slipping sideways, detaching from this sterile present and catapulting me back into the sensory overload of that room. The dim light. The cool, smooth surface of the table beneath my back. The exact pressure of her hands on my thighs, possessive and sure. The moment I let go, truly let go, and surrendered every ounce of control I’d spent a lifetime clutching. She took it all.

And then she left.

I haven’t heard from her since. Not a single word. Not a casual text to soften the silence, not a glance caught across a crowded room. Nothing. The void she left behind is absolute, and it echoes.

I haven’t reached out, either. Pride, maybe. Or perhaps it’s the chilling clarity of her final words. I don’t know how to stay. She didn’t say it was me. She stated it as a fundamental fact of her existence, a flaw in her own architecture. What do you say to that? ‘Please learn’?

But still.

Still, my hand drifts to my phone a dozen times an hour, my thumb hovering over the screen as if it might spontaneously conjure her name. Still, I find my gaze locked on the corner of my monitor, waiting for a notification that never materializes. Still, the ghost of her touch is a permanent imprint on my skin.

It’s pathetic. This constant, low-grade anticipation for a woman who made it abundantly clear she operates on an exit strategy.

It’s infuriating. She told me exactly who she is. So why am I sitting here, in the stark light of day, picking apart my own behavior, wondering what I could have done differently? What magical combination of words or actions would have made a woman who doesn’t know how to stay… want to learn?

The logical part of me, the part that existed before her, screams the answer. I should move on. I should pretend I never got the number I never actually had. I should scorch the earth of my memory, burn the vivid recall of her hands, her mouth, her commanding silence from my mind. I should try to stitch myself back into the old version of Avery — the one who was perfectly, if quietly, content with a purring cat, a loyal best friend, and the occasional, safe fantasy that didn’t leave invisible, lingering bruises on the inside.

But I’m not that girl anymore.

She dismantled her. Piece by piece, touch by touch, until that simpler, more manageable self feels like a stranger I can never quite get back to.

And that… that realization is the worst part of all. The loss isn’t just of her. It’s of the person I was before I knew what it felt like to be utterly, ruinously seen.

***

VICTORIA –

Friday.

The word usually snaps into place with the clean, sharp finality of a lock engaging. It means precision. Timing. Unwavering focus. It means reading the contents of the manila envelope twice, committing every detail to memory — routes, schedules, vulnerabilities. It means anticipating mistakes before they can even form in a target’s mind. It is a ritual of control, and I am its master.

But today, the ritual is failing me.

The folder lies open on my desk. A black-and-white surveillance photo stares up at me. A man. Mid-forties. Receding hairline. A face etched with the bland cruelty of a mid-level corporate predator. His name is printed neatly beside his sins — embezzlement, fraud, lives ruined for profit. The file is thick. It should be a anchor. It usually is. This is the work that defines me, that justifies my existence.

But instead of the target’s routes, I see the map of freckles across her shoulders. Instead of his schedule, I hear the hitch in her breath when I touched her. The cold, clinical facts on the page are drowned out by the memory of her moan, a raw, surrendering sound when I told her to keep her hands where I could see them. The sound she made when I finally, mercifully, gave her the release she was begging for.

And then… the look in her eyes after. Not fear. Not regret. A deep, quiet wonder. An open, terrifying hope. Like she saw something in me worth staying for.

I shut my eyes, tight enough to see starbursts against my lids.

Focus, Victoria.

But my mind, my meticulously disciplined mind, rebels. It has become a traitor.

I haven’t heard from her. Not a single message. Not a whisper in the digital void.

Not that I expected one. Not that I deserved one.

Because I left. I walked out while the air was still thick with the scent of her, while her skin was still warm from my hands. Because I always leave. It is the one promise I have never broken. I told her the truth, the ugliest part of it: I don’t know how to stay.

And still… something in me, some weak, feral thing I thought I had caged long ago, hates the silence. It paces in the dark of my psyche, restless and furious. Worse, it wants to break it. It wants to pick up the phone and hear her voice, just to know she’s real, that the vulnerability I saw in her wasn’t just a reflection of my own.

That wanting makes me recoil. It feels like a structural flaw, a crack in my foundation. It is weak. Needy. Soft. A part of myself I thought I had scorched out with discipline and fire.

No.

Stop.

This is the cost. This is what happens when I lower the drawbridge, even for a moment. When I don’t maintain absolute control of the perimeter. This… distraction. This sentimental chaos. It’s a liability. It gets people killed.

With a sharp, violent motion, I shove the folder closed. The sound is a gunshot in the quiet room.

The photo. The file. The objective. That is all that matters tonight. It has to be.

Justice. Order. Discipline. These are the pillars I have built my life upon. They are clean. They are absolute.

Not her.

As I slide the envelope into the inner pocket of my trench coat and secure the leather holster against my ribs, the cold weight of the pistol is a familiar comfort. Yet, it does nothing to dispel the other sensation clinging to me, one far more disquieting.

***

AVERY –

By the time I drag myself out of the office, the sun is a memory, and the city has switched on — a garish, glittering beast of neon and noise. It’s the kind of electric hum that usually courses through me, making me feel part of something pulsing and alive.

Tonight, it just feels like static. The louder the city gets, the more pronounced the hollow silence in my own chest becomes.

My apartment is quiet when I close the door behind me. I toss my bag into its usual corner and find myself pacing a full, pointless lap around the living room before I even take my coat off. I feed Juno, who weaves between my ankles with a judgmental meow. I stare into the fridge’s bright, barren interior, close it, and immediately open it again, as if the contents might have magically changed. Right. Forgot to go shopping. Again. The mundane reality of my life feels like an insult.

I can’t stand it here. The quiet is a physical weight, and the emptiness in every corner is somehow suffocating.

So I do what I always do when I need to outrun my own head. I text Eli.

“Downtown tonight? She-Bar?”

His reply is instantaneous: a thumbs-up, followed by a party hat and a sparkly heart. Of course. No questions, no judgment. Just unwavering readiness. The relief is so sharp it’s almost painful.

I don’t waste a second. I strip out of my work clothes and step into a shower so hot it borders on punitive. I let the near-scalding water beat against my skin until it stings, until the physical sensation is the only thing I can focus on, washing away the mental residue of a day spent waiting for a phone that never rang.

After, wrapped in a towel, I face the mirror. I drag a bold, black line across each eyelid with more force than necessary. I pull on my best black jeans, the ones that fit like a second skin, and my heavy boots—armor for the night. The halter top is silk, slippery and dark, a garment I reserve for nights when I need to feel powerful, or at least project the illusion of it. My glasses stay on. A fixed point in the variable equation of my identity.

The person in the reflection looks sharp. Put together. Ready for a fight or a fuck. She doesn’t look like someone who’s been emotionally gutted. She doesn’t look like someone who’s counting the hours since she was last touched.

Good.

Tonight isn’t about Victoria. It’s about erasing her. It’s about the numbing thrum of bass, the sweet burn of cheap whiskey, and the anonymous, fleeting weight of a stranger’s hands on my hips. It’s about performing the act of moving on, even if every cell in my body knows it’s a lie.

I swipe on a dark slash of lipstick, grab my keys, and head out the door.

Let the night do what it wants. I’m just along for the ride.

***

VICTORIA –

The sky is a sheet of black glass above the city. I sit in the car. Engine off. Radio silent. One hand resting on my thigh, the other on the wheel. Waiting. Watching.

His routine is a simple script I memorized hours ago. Every step, every cigarette break, every arrogant glance. Men like him are predictable. They build fortresses of money and influence and believe it makes them untouchable.

He’s the reason I took this job on a week I should have refused. A hotel owner. A man who used his empire of crisp linen and polished marble to hide a deeper filth. He liked them young, quiet, and disposable. He bought girls from Eastern Europe like they were inventory, stripping them of their names and futures. And when one died on his watch — a girl with a split lip and broken ribs the file said she gave herself — he called it a drug overdose and paid off the right people to look the other way.

Tonight, I don’t just kill him. I erase him.

A flicker of movement. The back door of the jazz club swings open. There he is, a cigar glowing in his hand, his coat draped casually over his arm. He pauses to check his phone, a smug, untroubled man heading home to his sterile, expensive life.

I exit the car. No sound. No light. I am a shadow detaching from a greater dark.

I trail him, my steps a silent echo of his. The weight of my gun is a familiar comfort against my ribs. Normally, this is a clinical procedure. Efficient. Dispassionate.

But not tonight.

A cold, unfamiliar anger simmers in my veins. It’s not just about his crimes anymore. It’s a raw, personal disgust. I want him to feel the fear he inflicted. I want him to understand the value of the breath he’s about to lose.

I close the distance, letting my presence bleed into his awareness. He senses it, his step faltering. He turns.

“Who the–?” His voice is a dry rasp.

I don’t speak. I simply raise the silenced barrel, letting him see his fate in the cold, circular eye of it.

He bolts.

Good.

I follow, not with haste, but with a predator’s certainty. He crashes through a chain-link fence, his expensive shoes slipping on wet concrete. He’s panting, cursing, a frantic animal. He skids into a dead end, a brick wall looming under a broken streetlamp.

He scrambles backward, hands raised. “Please — name your price! I can pay you! Triple!”

I stop a few feet away. The air smells of his cheap cigar and his cheaper fear. I tilt my head, a cold, mechanical gesture. “You don’t have enough to pay for what you’ve done.”

His mouth opens to form another plea.

Pop.

The sound is softer than a cough. A single, precise shot. It enters his forehead, and the life vanishes from his eyes before his body understands it’s over. He collapses, a heap of fine fabric and useless flesh.

I stand there. Watching.

It’s not about confirming the kill. I never miss.

It’s about the silence that follows. The way the world seems to reset itself after an imbalance has been corrected.

I wait for the feeling. The clean, cold satisfaction of justice served. The quiet hum of a job well done.

But it doesn’t come.

The silence feels hollow. The victory leaves me utterly empty.