Page 143 of Hunting Pretty

THE SHADOW

Nobody was supposed to know I was living in the mansion next door to Ava. So when the doorbell rang and an insistent banging sounded at the front door, I went on full alert.

I held my biggest knife in my hand, one that I named Dundee, the weight of it reassuring, as I peered through the peephole.

I didn’t know who I expected. Well-armed shadowy henchmen. A single masked assassin.

But then again, they’d hardly knock.

Perhaps, a bill collector for Mr. Peterson. Or an ex-wife pissed that he’d stopped paying alimony.

I didn’t expect Ava.

Banging the knocker over and over, a determined look on her face.

I sheathed the knife and swung open the door.

The minute we locked eyes, her features cracked apart. “I remember.”

My stomach twisted, sickness tying up my guts.

Fuck. My nightmare had come true.

I didn’t want her to remember. Tried so hard to stop her from remembering, knowing it would only cause her pain.

It had been a blessing when I realized she’d forgotten all about it.

I remembered the first time I saw her again, standing there on her first day on campus. I had been so damn excited, my heart pounding with something like hope.

I’d found her—after all those years, I’d traced her all the way to the other side of the country, to Dublin.

There she was. Ava.

But she didn’t remember me. Didn’t rememberus.

She’d forgotten abouteverything.

She’d forgotten all about my father and his abuse.

Something had clicked. Maybe this was a blessing.

She didn’t have to remember. The past, the hurt, the scars—it was all buried. She could be happy, free from the darkness that had consumed us.

Even if it meant she’d never remember me, never know what we’d been through, it was better this way. Better for her.

And that’s when I made my choice. I’d stay in the shadows, hidden from her life, a ghost. Her shadow.

I’d watch over her, protect her, even if she never knew who I was. It was enough to know she was safe, even if I had to live in the dark.

But I knew that those missing pieces were like heavy chains waiting to drag her back into the darkness.

One day, they’d coil around her and never let go.

And when she started investigating Liath’s disappearance—a girl with secrets too dark and too similar to herown—I knew it was only a matter of time before her digging uncovered her own buried pain. Truths that were best left forgotten.

Looked like that day had finally come.

I cast a quick glance out into the street, scanning for any sign that someone might’ve followed her, before pulling her inside the mansion.

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