Page 199 of Fractured Loyalties
I spend the morning organizing intake forms, sorting files, rescheduling appointments. The rhythms come back fast—muscle memory. Names, dates, insurance codes. I lose myself in it, and for a while, it almost feels like before.
Until I catch my reflection in the clinic's front glass—face pale, eyes hollowed out from a sleepless night, hair too tight. I don’t look like someone who’s healed.
I look like someone trying very, very hard not to unravel.
At lunch, I step out back. Just for a breath.
The clinic’s side courtyard is quiet—just gravel, the rusted remains of a bench, and a square of sunlight that feels too sharp against my skin. I don’t sit. I just lean against the brick wall and tilt my head up, eyes closed, letting the sun warm my face.
And then I feel it.
That subtle prickle at the base of my skull. A feeling too specific to be just an imagination.
Someone is watching me.
I don’t whip around. I’ve learned not to move fast when it feels like this. Instead, I slowly open my eyes and glance to the edge of the alley where it opens into the street.
Nothing.
No shadows. No figures.
But the feeling doesn’t leave.
There’s a car across the street—dark, idling. No one in the driver’s seat, not visibly. Just music thumping low behind the tinted glass.
I tell myself it’s nothing.
But I also know Lydia’s subtle when she wants to be. Watching from across rooftops, trailing from half a block behind, never getting too close unless someone tells her to.
And Elias—he wouldn’t have told her to stop.
Still.
Still, there’s something else.
At night, when I get home, there’s a folded piece of paper tucked under my apartment door.
No envelope.
No handwriting.
Just a printed sentence, clean and centered on the page.
You really thought it was over?
My stomach goes cold.
No signature.
Just a faint, greasy fingerprint smudged into the corner. The ink slightly warped from the pressure of whoever folded it.
I lock every bolt on the door. Close the blinds. Turn off every light.
But the dark feels no safer than the street outside.
I sit in the silence and twist the ring on my finger until the skin beneath it burns.
Chapter 34 – Elias - The Watchers
