Page 9 of Stalked & Bred by the BRATVA
They’re slow. Unhurried. Coming closer.
I grip the blanket tighter, my mind splitting in two. Is it Thom? Did he bribe someone in the house to keep an eye on me? Or is it someone else entirely? Someone who doesn’t need paying to watch me? Or is it the shadowy man from the hallway?
The steps stop just outside my door.
Silence.
It stretches on until the air feels too thick to breathe. My heartbeat pounds in my ears, my lungs aching from holding so much tension. I strain to hear anything, a shift of fabric, the creak of the floorboards under shifting weight, but there’s nothing. Just the heavy quiet of someone standing still.
And then, finally, the sound of retreat. Whoever it is walks away, their footsteps fading until I can’t hear them anymore.
I keep staring at the door long after the sound is gone. Waiting. Listening. Wondering if they’ll come back.
Eventually, I roll onto my side, facing away from the door. It feels safer that way, even though it isn’t. My eyes land on the nightstand drawer, the one hiding both the gown and the photograph. My fingers itch to open it again, to study the image until I find something in it that explains everything.
But I don’t move.
If I open it, I’ll start thinking about who took it. Where they were standing. How long they’d been watching me before they lifted the camera. I’ll start asking myself if they’ve taken more. If they have a whole collection somewhere.
And I’m not ready for those answers.
I shut my eyes and tell myself I’ll sleep. That tomorrow I’ll hand the photograph to someone in charge and let them deal with it. But even as I make that promise, I know I won’t.
I’ll keep it.
Because fear and curiosity feel almost the same when they’re tangled together.
When I finally drift into sleep, the dream comes quickly. I’m in the hallway again, holding those towels to my chest. He’s there, standing at the far end, his face still hidden by shadow. Only this time, he doesn’t turn away. He walks toward me, slow and certain, until there’s nowhere left for me to go.
Mikhail
I stop outside her door and let the silence swallow us both.
I know she’s awake. She always tenses when she hears me coming, not in the way people tense before a fight, but in the way prey goes still when it knows the predator is close. Her breathing changes, just enough that if I pressed my ear to the wood, I could hear it.
I don’t. Not tonight.
I just stand there. Close enough that if she pressed her palm to the other side of the door, it would almost be touching mine. Close enough that she can feel me without seeing me.
I want her to listen. To wonder. To replay every second in her mind, trying to decide if it was real or something she imagined. I want her to lie there, knowing I could have opened the door. That I could have stepped inside.
But I didn’t.
Because control isn’t in the taking. It’s in the knowing you could, and choosing to wait.
The scent of her room seeps into the hallway, lavender and vanilla, faint but unmistakable. The perfume she brought with her, sad and sweet, still clings to the air. I moved it once, just enough for her to notice. She did. She always notices.
She has no idea how closely I’ve studied her habits. How many hours I’ve spent watching her through the cameras, throughopen doorways, from corners of the hall. I know the exact sound of her footsteps. I know which floorboards outside her room creak when she walks over them. I know she brushes her hair twenty-seven times before she ties it back in those low braids.
I know she hides the things I give her, the gown, the flower, the photograph, but she keeps them. That’s all that matters.
She thinks about me when she touches them.
I stay there until I feel the tension inside has reached its breaking point. Not hers. Mine. Every second I spend outside this door, I’m tempted to turn the handle and see her in that bed, curled under the blanket, looking at me with those wide, uncertain eyes.
I imagine the way she’d draw the covers tighter around herself. The way her voice would catch if she tried to speak. The way I’d sit on the edge of her bed and tell her she doesn’t need to be afraid of me, only of what I’ll do to anyone who touches her.
But not tonight. Tonight, I give her the gift of my retreat.
