The silence the last voicemail left behind was worse than the voice. It was thick. Chloe stood paralyzed in the center of the salt circle, her own breathing a harsh sound in the quiet room.

Then the paralysis broke.

A frantic energy shot through her, a desperate need to undo it all. Her thumb stabbed at the phone’s screen, deleting the voicemails one by one. She didn’t listen to them again. She couldn’t. Hearing his voice would make it too real. When the log was empty, she blocked the number. A childish gesture, but it was something.

Next, the floor. She scrambled to the kitchen, grabbed a damp cloth from the sink, and dropped to her hands and knees. She scrubbed at the salt circle, the grit scraping under her fingernails. She attacked the wine stain, rubbing until the floorboards were clean and dark with water. She was trying to scour the night from her apartment, to physically erase the proof.

It was a dream, she thought, the words a frantic mantra against the memory of his voice. A drunken hallucination. A cruel prank.


In the shower, she scrubbed her skin raw, trying to wash away the feeling of being watched. She dressed in her armor of normalcy. Faded jeans, a worn sweater. She looked in the bathroom mirror and saw the same tired face, the same shadows under her eyes. Everything looked the same.

But it wasn’t. Her denial was a thin excuse. Underneath the forced calm, something hummed. A low vibration of terror. And something else. Something that felt sickeningly like anticipation.

The shrill ring of her phone made her body jolt.

She stared at it, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs. An unknown number. Him. She knew it was him. Her thumb trembled over the screen before she answered, her throat too tight to speak.

But the voice wasn’t his. It was reedy and familiar.

“Chloe Thomas?”

“Mr. Davies?” she breathed out, recognizing the loan officer from the bank. The man who had looked at her paperwork with open pity.

“Yes,” he said. He sounded flustered. Strained. “Listen, there’s been a, uh, a clerical review of your family’s file.” He cleared his throat. “An underestimation of asset potential.”

Chloe said nothing. The corporate words sounded like a lie.

“The loan hasn’t just been approved,” he continued, his voice tight. “We’ve… expanded the offer. The funds will be transferred by five p.m. today.”

The line clicked dead. Chloe stood with the phone against her ear, listening to the dial tone. The impossible words echoed in the quiet room. Her family was safe. Just like that.

Her phone chimed. An email.

The subject line was her name. Chloe Thomas. The sender was Anya Volkov. The Anya Volkov. A designer so brilliant and untouchable Chloe felt like an impostor just for knowing her name. Her fingers shook as she opened it.

The email was short. Anya had seen her tiny, ancient online portfolio. She wrote of “raw vision” and “untapped potential.” She was offering Chloe a paid internship. Effective immediately.

A dream she had killed and buried years ago.

Her phone buzzed in her hand. A text from a new, unknown number. Just four words that landed like a brand.

We are a team.

Chloe sat on the edge of her bed. The fear was still there, a cold stone in her gut. But a new feeling pushed against it. A dizzying warmth that spread from her chest, making it hard to breathe. Relief. Excitement. A forbidden, exhilarating taste of power.

She thought of her life yesterday. The weight of it a suffocating thing. Then she thought of the stunned relief in her father’s voice when she’d called him. The email that had been a key to a room she hadn’t realized how long she’d been locked in.

He had offered her a future she thought was dead.

The fear of him was immense, a monster waiting in the dark. But the fear of going back to the way things were, to that slow, quiet desperation, was suddenly worse. That was a death of a different kind.


She stood. Her movements were no longer frantic. They were slow. Deliberate. She walked to the mirrored closet door and looked at herself. The girl in the faded sweater and worn jeans looked weak. She looked like the person things happened to. A bitter taste filled her mouth. She didn’t want to be that girl anymore.

She opened the closet door. Her hand pushed past the sensible clothes. The soft cottons and worn wools of her old life. Her fingers found a different texture. Cool. Slick.

She pulled it out. The black dress. The one she’d bought on a wild impulse and never had the courage to wear.

She laid it carefully on the bed, a dark promise against the white comforter. It was an acceptance. She checked the clock on her phone. Hours to wait.

Hours to become the kind of woman who would wear it.