Chapter Text
Two years later
Grace Ashcroft had promised herself she would try.
The restaurant was nice—soft lighting, linen tablecloths, the kind of place where conversations stayed polite and no one raised their voice above a murmur.
Noah sat across from her, smiling in that hopeful way he had since their second date. He was an architect, thirty-eight, divorced but not bitter about it. He asked about her day at the office, listened when she answered, and never once pushed when her replies grew short.
He was safe.
He was normal.
He was everything the therapist and her own exhausted mind kept telling her she should want now.
She smiled when he reached across the table and brushed his thumb over her knuckles. The touch was warm and careful, the kind of touch that should have felt comforting. Instead it felt distant, like someone pressing a finger against a pane of glass.
She nodded at the right moments, laughed softly when he told a story about a disastrous client meeting, and tried to ignore the voice in the back of her head that kept comparing every small gesture to something she had spent two years trying to forget.
When the check came, Noah insisted on paying. “Let me,” he said with that easy smile. “Next time it’s your turn.”
Next time. The words settled uneasily in her chest.
When he suggested they go back to his place after dinner, Grace heard herself say yes before she could overthink it.
His apartment was neat and masculine—dark wood, a big leather couch, the faint smell of coffee and aftershave.
Her dog, Mochi, was safe at home; she’d left him with a frozen Kong and the promise she wouldn’t be gone all night.
Noah kissed her the moment the door clicked shut, slow and respectful, hands sliding carefully over her waist like she might break.
They didn’t make it to the bedroom for long.
He was patient. He undressed her like she was something precious, mouth warm against her neck, fingers tracing instead of gripping. When he settled between her thighs and pushed inside, Grace closed her eyes and tried to stay present.
But her mind slipped anyway.
That afternoon with Victor.
It had burned itself into her like a brand. He had been so rough with her—completely dominating, pinning her with that terrifying strength, taking what he wanted without asking, without hesitation. His hands had been bruising on her hips and thighs, fingers digging in hard enough to leave dark purple marks she had stared at for days afterward, touching them in the mirror when no one was looking, pressing on them just to feel the ache again.
She had hated how much it hurt… and she had hated even more how some twisted, broken part of her had craved it anyway. The confusion still made her stomach turn. Why did she still think about it? Why did the memory of his roughness still make her pulse race in a way Noah’s careful touch never could?
His cock had felt so thick, so deep, stretching her in a way that had been almost too much and yet somehow exactly what her body had responded to. Every thrust overwhelming her senses until she couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, could only feel. Her body had clenched around him, traitorous and desperate, even while her mind screamed that this was wrong, that she shouldn’t want this, that he had no right to touch her like this.
Everything about it had overwhelmed her—the pain, the pleasure, the helplessness, the way his voice had wrapped around her, the way he had looked at her like she was the only thing in the world that mattered. It had been too much. It had been everything. And even now, two years later, some sick, confused part of her still wanted it. Still missed it. Still hated herself for missing it.
She bit her lip to keep the sound inside. Noah mistook it for pleasure and thrust a little deeper, murmuring soft praise against her collarbone. His hands were so gentle, so careful, the complete opposite of Victor’s bruising grip.
This was what she should want. This was what a healthy person was supposed to crave. So why did it feel like something was missing? Why did her body keep betraying her by remembering how it felt to be completely taken, completely owned, completely ruined by someone who had no right to touch her at all?
Grace came anyway—quiet, almost mechanical—but the orgasm tasted like ash. Tainted. Like that time with Victor had rewritten something inside her and every other man would forever feel like a pale imitation.
When it was over Noah rolled off her, chest rising and falling, a satisfied smile on his face. He pulled her against him and kissed her temple.
“That was incredible, Grace. You’re incredible.”
She hummed something that sounded like agreement and stared at the ceiling. Her skin still tingled in all the wrong places. She felt sticky and used in a way that had nothing to do with Noah and everything to do with the day she could never scrub from her memory.
They lay there for a while. Noah traced lazy circles on her arm and talked about seeing her again—maybe next weekend, maybe that hike he’d mentioned. He wanted to cook for her. He wanted to meet her dog. He was already making plans, his voice warm and full of hope.
Grace listened with half an ear, nodding at the right moments. When he asked if she wanted to stay the night, she sat up and reached for her clothes.
“I-I should get home,” she said, the words catching slightly. “Mochi gets anxious if I’m gone too long, and I have an early briefing tomorrow. Big case file I still need to prep. Rain check?”
Noah looked disappointed but understanding. He walked her to the door, kissed her once more and told her he’d text her in the morning. “I really like you, Grace. A lot.”
“I-I like you too,” she answered, the stutter slipping out before she could stop it.
The drive home was quiet. City lights blurred past the windows. Grace kept both hands on the wheel, knuckles pale, and tried to focus on the road instead of the lingering ache between her legs or the way her skin still remembered a different set of hands.
By the time she pulled into her parking spot, her jaw hurt from clenching it.
When she finally stepped into her own apartment, Mochi came scrambling across the hardwood, tail wagging. Grace dropped her bag, crouched down, and let the little poodle climb into her arms, pressing her face into his curly fur.
“Hey, baby,” she whispered. “Missed you.”
She carried him to the couch, kicked off her heels, and poured herself a glass of wine. Mochi curled up in her lap like he belonged there, warm and solid and uncomplicated. For a long while she just stroked his ears, letting the silence of her apartment settle around her. She tried to convince herself the evening had been nice. Normal.
An hour later her phone rang.
Unknown number.
Grace stared at the screen. Her thumb hovered. She almost didn’t answer. But the same instinct that had once made her walk back into an empty parking garage made her swipe to accept the call.
She brought the phone to her ear.
For a moment there was only silence. Then a low, measured voice she would have known in any lifetime slid through the line.
“Grace… after all this time.”
Her heart slammed against her ribs so violently she gasped. The phone nearly slipped from her suddenly clammy hand. Mochi lifted his head, ears twitching at the sudden tension in her body. A cold sweat broke out along her spine and under her arms; her chest tightened like a vise, squeezing the air out of her lungs.
But at the same time—God help her—the sound of his voice sent a sudden involuntary jolt straight between her legs. She felt herself clench around nothing, a traitorous spasm of arousal that made her thighs press together in shame. Her body remembered that voice. Remembered what it had done to her. Remembered how it had sounded when he was buried inside her, whispering things that had broken her and remade her all at once.
The terror and the unwanted heat crashed together so violently she almost dropped the phone.
And then the other truth—the one she had carried like a knife in her chest for two years—came roaring back. He killed my mother.
The Wrenwood Hotel massacre. The woman who had raised her, protected her, loved her. Victor had been responsible. He had ordered it. He had taken her from Grace forever. The rage and grief that had never fully healed surged up alongside the terror and the shameful arousal, twisting everything inside her into something ugly and unbearable.
“You permitted him to touch you tonight, Grace,” he said quietly, almost tenderly. “I observed the manner in which his hands moved over you… Did he offer you any sense of safety, my Grace? Or did he merely remind you of everything you have been missing?”
Her breathing turned shallow and ragged. Black spots flickered at the edges of her vision. Nausea rolled through her stomach so sharply she had to swallow hard to keep from being sick. Two years. Two years of therapy, of new routines, of convincing herself the explosion had taken him. She had watched the facility burn. She had seen the reports. She had believed he was dead.
And now here he was, voice unchanged, as if no time had passed at all—the man who had destroyed her mother, the man who had destroyed her, the man whose voice still made her body betray her.
“I trust he was gentle with you,” Victor continued, soft and reverent. “You have always deserved gentleness. Yet we both know gentleness was never what made you unravel so beautifully in my hands.”
Grace’s free hand pressed hard against her sternum, fingers digging into the fabric of her hoodie as if she could physically hold her heart in place. Her legs felt weak; she slid off the couch to the floor, back against the cushions, Mochi whining and pushing against her side. The room tilted. Her pulse roared in her ears so loudly she could barely hear anything else. Between her legs, the traitorous throb was still there—shameful, confusing, undeniable.
And underneath it all burned the hatred she had tried so hard to bury.
Victor exhaled, almost a sigh of contentment.
“I have longed to speak to you again, Grace,” he murmured. “Rest now. I will be with you again very soon.”
The line went dead.
Grace didn’t move. The phone stayed clutched in her shaking hand long after the call ended, her knuckles white. Her chest heaved with short, useless breaths. Cold sweat trickled down her temples. The nausea surged again, stronger this time, and she had to lean forward, forehead pressed to her knees, fighting the urge to vomit. Mochi climbed into her lap, licking frantically at her wrist, but she could barely feel him through the roaring in her head.
He was alive.
He had been watching the entire time.
He had murdered her mother.
And nothing—not the therapy, not the new job, not the kind man she had just left in another apartment—had changed anything at all.
“Oh God,” she whispered, voice cracking and small. “He’s still here.”