Chapter 1 The Book on My Bed

READER ADVISORY

This novel contains stalking, surveillance, coercive-control themes, grief, gaslighting, violence, kidnapping, morally grey choices, and open-door adult romance. Consent between the central couple is explicit. The hero does not commit sexual violence.

POV: WREN

The book on my bed was worth more than my apartment.

I knew that before I saw the gilt-stamped date on the spine, before I touched the green Morocco leather, before my breath fogged the protective glassine wrapped around it. A first edition of The Secret Garden. London, 1911. One of the cleaner copies I had ever seen outside a climate-controlled case.

It rested in the centre of my pillow as though someone had tucked it in.

My bedroom door stood open behind me. My apartment door was still locked at the end of the hall.

I did not touch the book.

Rain scratched at the balcony glass. Somewhere above me, pipes complained inside the walls of Greyhaven's oldest residential tower. I listened for a footstep, a breath, the soft betrayal of weight settling into carpet. My own pulse was loud enough to hide another person.

"You are home," I whispered, because saying facts aloud had become one of the humiliating ways I kept hold of reality. "It is nine thirteen. The dead bolt was locked. The chain was on."

The chain.

I looked back along the narrow hallway. It hung exactly where I had slid it when I left that morning. The brass was dull except for the crescent where my thumb polished it twice a day. Nothing had been broken. Nothing had been forced.

Seven years of impossible things had taught me the shape of doubt. It began as coldness beneath my ribs, then climbed until every sensible explanation sounded like something a liar would say gently to a frightened woman.

Perhaps I had ordered the book.

Perhaps the auction listing had been a dream.

Perhaps I had forgotten leaving a window open, though I lived on the nineteenth floor and checked every latch three times.

I set my satchel down without taking my eyes from the bed. At the Greyhaven Archive, I handled objects that had survived fires, floods, wars and the careless hands of rich collectors. I knew how to preserve evidence. I also knew how quickly evidence could be altered by someone who understood its value.

My phone was already in my hand. I photographed the front door, the unbroken chain, the windows and the book from every angle. Then I started a video and narrated what I saw.

"Green leather binding. Gilt edges. Glassine intact. No visible dust disturbance on the bedside table."

My voice belonged to the conservator I trusted more than the woman whose palms had begun to sweat.

A cream card rested beneath the book. I used tweezers from the repair kit in my satchel to lift it without smearing fingerprints. Five words were written in black ink.

He will not follow you again.

The room seemed to tilt.

The man from the train.

Three nights earlier, he had stood too close behind me on the northbound platform. He smiled when I moved carriages. He followed me through two transfers and into the rain, never hurrying, never needing to. I had lost him inside a crowded pharmacy and spent an hour pretending to compare shampoo while I watched the mirrored security dome above the register.

I had told no one.

Not Talia, who would have arrived carrying pepper spray, snacks and enough anger for both of us. Not the police, who had stopped writing detailed notes after my third report. Not Dr. Vale during the last appointment I never intended to repeat.

Someone had seen him.

Someone had followed the follower.

I turned the card over. Blank. The paper was expensive, cotton-based, cut by hand. It carried a faint scent of cedar and smoke that stirred a memory I could not catch.

My television turned on in the living room.

I flinched so hard the card fluttered from the tweezers. The remote lay on the coffee table, too far away to have been touched accidentally. The evening news filled the screen with a reporter standing beneath a black umbrella near Greyhaven Station.

"-asking the public for information concerning the disappearance of thirty-nine-year-old Eric Sloane. Sloane was last seen Monday night boarding the northbound-"

His photograph replaced the reporter.

The man from the train smiled at me from the screen.

My phone buzzed.

Unknown number.

I warned him.

I stared until the words blurred. Then training overcame fear. I called emergency services, gave my address and offered the careful summary I had practised for years: unauthorised entry, threatening message, possible connection to a missing person. The dispatcher asked whether I was in immediate danger.

"I don't know."

The truth sounded ridiculous.

"Can you leave the apartment safely?"

I looked at the front door. The chain remained fastened. If someone had entered without disturbing it, the hallway might be the worst place to go.

"I don't know that either."

"Officers are on their way. Stay on the line with me."

I backed toward the living room, keeping the bedroom in view. Every object had become a question. The framed photograph of Mum and me at the Archive opening. The blue vase Talia gave me. The coat folded over the armchair. Had it been folded that way this morning? Had the photograph always leaned slightly left?

"Wren?" the dispatcher said. "Tell me what you can hear."

"Rain. Pipes. The television."

Something wet struck the floor behind me.

Tap.

I turned.

Another drop struck the hardwood beside the balcony door.

Tap.

A dark line crept from beneath the glass. It reached the edge of the cream rug and spread into the wool, red as sealing wax.

Blood.

The dispatcher kept speaking, but the words had become a distant mechanical hum.

I forced myself closer. The curtains were open. Greyhaven glittered nineteen floors below, rain turning the city into a field of broken reflections. At first, I saw only my own pale face in the glass.

Then a man's hand pressed against the other side.

My lungs locked.

The fingers were scraped and bloody. A dark sleeve clung to a powerful wrist. The rest of him hung beyond the balcony rail, concealed by the angle of the wall. He should not have been able to reach the door. No ledge connected my balcony to the next apartment. No fire stairs climbed this side of the tower.

The hand slid down, leaving five red trails.

I snatched the heavy brass candlestick from the sideboard and moved forward because fear had never managed to cure me of needing answers.

"Police are two minutes away," the dispatcher said.

The man outside lifted his head.

Dark hair plastered to his forehead. Blood ran from a cut above one eyebrow, but his face held no panic. He looked through the glass with the cold, focused stillness of someone who had calculated every possible ending and disliked only one.

I knew that face.

Everyone in Greyhaven did.

Cassian Voss, billionaire founder of Voss Risk Group, had appeared in newspapers beside presidents, crime scenes and rumours no journalist had proved. He was thirty-four, impossibly private and reputed to make dangerous men disappear.

His gaze dropped to the candlestick in my hand, then returned to mine.

Instead of asking for help, he raised one bloodied finger to his lips.

Behind me, inside my locked apartment, a floorboard creaked.