Elena’s POV

I should have run straight home.

Straight to my tiny, suffocating apartment where the locks make noise if you breathe too much, where at least the walls keep secrets.

Instead, I stayed longer than I should.

Every step away from the club felt heavier, like the pavement was trying to gum me there, drag me back. My legs wanted distance, but my mind kept twisting, circling, screaming at me that something was about to go wrong.

And God help me, I knew exactly who it would happen to.

Marco. If I remember his name correctly, because everything happened so fast that it is almost unreal.

He hadn’t been cruel like the others. When I agreed to that private session, he hadn’t leered, hadn’t tried to paw at me the way most men would. He’d smiled. Smiled, like he thought it was a gift that I’d even walked into the room. Like he was just grateful for the company.

That made it worse. So much worse.

Because when the glass touched his lips, when he drank the wine I’d handed him with fingers that wouldn’t stop shaking, I already knew.

Something wasn’t right.

The men who cornered me had promised it was simple. A dance, a drink, a distraction. “Slip away after,” they’d said. “Easy money, no one gets hurt.”

But nothing in my life has ever been simple. Nothing in their eyes suggested mercy. And the way Marco had gone so still, so quickly, slumped in that velvet chair like sleep had pulled him under too hard… my stomach had twisted into knots.

I hadn’t stayed long enough to see. I couldn’t. My nerves had cracked, my mask had slipped, and then I was running. Running like the ground beneath me was on fire.

But as I ducked into the side alley, the music still pounding faintly behind me, I heard it—screams. Not playful ones. Not the drunk, delighted kind the club usually swallowed whole. Real screams. Panicked. Shattered.

I froze. My heart banged against my ribs, each beat a hammer strike.

This was it. The moment my fear solidified into certainty.

Something had happened to Marco.

I pressed my back against the wall, sweat dampening my spine even though the night was cool. My breath wouldn’t even out; it came in short, stabbing bursts. The mask was gone—I’d lost it in the rush, left it behind like an incriminating fingerprint. My face was bare, and so was the guilt clawing at my chest.

“God,” I whispered, my voice cracking. “What did I do?”

Clara’s face flashed in my mind. Her laugh, her endless chatter, her way of saying, You’ll figure it out, Elena, you always do.

I wanted to believe her. I wanted to believe this wasn’t on me. That I was just a pawn shoved across the board, helpless against bigger hands.

But pawns don’t hand over poisoned drinks. Pawns don’t walk away while men slump unconscious in chairs.

I wanted to go back. My legs even twitched, like they might carry me through the doors again. But then I remembered the phone in those men’s hands, the photos of Clara, their quiet threat.

If I stayed, Clara was dead.

If I confessed, Clara was dead.

If I told anyone, Clara was dead.

And maybe… maybe Marco was already dead, too.

I gagged, bending over with my hands braced against my knees. Bile rose in my throat, bitter and sharp, but nothing came out. Only shaking. Only that hollow, gnawing sensation that I’d crossed a line I could never uncross.

I stumbled forward, forcing my legs to move. One step, then another, each one heavier than the last. The night air felt wrong against my skin, too cold, too sharp, like it was cutting me open with every breath.

Every sound made me jump the distant screech of tires, the bark of a dog, the faint echo of sirens wailing somewhere in the city. Sirens. My chest clenched. Were they for him? Was Marco’s name already turning into a headline, a police report, a ghost whispered in the alleys?

I pressed my hand against my stomach, trying to keep it together, trying not to split apart right there on the sidewalk. My fingers dug in until it hurt, grounding me, reminding me that I was still alive, still breathing, still running.

But Marco wasn’t.

I couldn’t prove it, not yet. But I felt it. The way people sometimes feel a storm coming before the sky even turns. I felt it in the marrow of my bones something had ended tonight, and I had been the one to set it in motion.

And the worst part?

I hadn’t even meant to.

The apartment felt smaller than ever when I finally stumbled inside. The air was stale, heavy, like it had been holding its breath waiting for me. I dropped my bag on the floor and collapsed onto the edge of the bed, my hands trembling so hard I had to press them between my knees.

I tried to pray, but the words caught in my throat. What does someone like me even pray for? Forgiveness? Safety? A miracle that rewrites time?

I pressed my palms to my face, heat burning behind my eyes.

Tomorrow, people would talk. The club would buzz with whispers, the city would carry rumors like wildfire. Damian would know. Damian always knew. And when he pieced it together, when he saw the mask, when he remembered my face turning away.

My stomach twisted.

He’d come for me.

I didn’t doubt it for a second.

So I made a decision right there, in the suffocating dark of my apartment. Not a smart one, not a safe one, but the only one I had left.

I would survive.

I didn’t know how not with guilt chewing me alive, not with men in the shadows pulling my strings, not with Damian’s gaze searing into me like fire. But I would.

Because Clara’s life depended on it.

Because mine wasn’t over yet.

Because if Marco’s death was on my hands, then so was the weight of carrying it.

And maybe one day, I’d make someone pay.