The buildings shifted as I walked.The tourist areas faded behind me.The colors dulled.The air cooled.Laundry lines hung low enough that I had to duck under them.Stray cats napped on broken crates.A door slammed somewhere in the distance.
This was the part of the city most people didn’t wander through, but I knew it well.You learned the cheapest routes first when your life depended on it.
My steps fell into their usual rhythm—light, quick, always ready to pivot.I scanned corners and doorways without thinking.It was instinct now, etched into memory.I’d lived this way too long to unlearn it.
And just as I was debating whether I could stretch my groceries into three meals instead of two, something shifted around me.
My neck prickled.My arms tensed on their own.It felt like eyes on my back—steady, deliberate.Someone was watching me.
I didn’t stop walking.I didn’t turn around.I wasn’t giving whoever it was any reaction to feed off.I tightened my grip on my bag and kept moving, keeping my pace natural.
But the longer I walked, the more the feeling pressed in.
The street noise thinned out behind me.No footsteps followed.No voices bled in from the main road.The only sound left was the scrape of my shoes on the uneven cobblestones.
It was wrong.All of it.The air was too still, a controlled emptiness that sent a cold rush crawling up my arms.My stomach knotted the same way it had the night the world collapsed around me when I was seven years old.My instincts flared instantly.I wasn’t just nervous.I sensed real danger.
I didn’t break stride, but I pushed my pace just enough to see if anything matched it.The alley stretched out ahead of me—narrow, boxed in by crumbling walls that swallowed sound.I scanned each doorway and corner without ever tilting my head.
Halfway through, a shadow peeled itself from the wall, and a man stepped into my path.
Tall.Broad.Hood pulled low.A scarf covering everything below his eyes.His posture was all wrong.His stance told me everything before he even spoke.
I froze for one second.One stupid, precious second.
His hand shot out and clamped around my arm, fingers digging into muscle hard enough to bruise.He yanked me sideways, dragging me off the main path and into a concrete recess cut into the alley wall.
“Shh,” he hissed, breath sour and warm against my cheek.“Come quietly.”
No.Absolutely not.
I smacked my heel down onto his foot, grinding bone under my shoe.He grunted, his grip loosening just enough for me to break free.
I twisted away, but he was fast.His other hand snatched my wrist, jerking me back toward him.I turned with the pull, bringing my elbow up and driving it straight into the bridge of his nose.The crack was loud.Wet and satisfying.
He reeled back with a snarl, blood staining the scarf.
“You little?—”
He slapped me across the face.Hard.My head snapped sideways.My vision flared white at the edges, but pain only woke something in me.Something old and learned.
I hit him back.My fist drove into his throat, right where the cartilage dipped.He choked, gagging, stumbling back into the wall.I shoved forward, using my momentum to knock us both off balance.We crashed to the ground.My knees scraped concrete, and his skull hit stone with a dull thud.
I was on top of him before he could even think about recovering.My breath was rough, but my hands were steady.Every move I made was intentional.Controlled.Necessary.
Old lessons fired through my mind, quick and precise, the way they’d been drilled into me over and over again:
Don’t wait for mercy.
Stay focused, Neve.
Protect yourself.
Kill or be killed.
Adrenaline crashed through my veins, hot and overwhelming, causing my mind to focus.I refused to die in a filthy alley at the hands of another man who thought he was entitled to my fear.I would not die helpless.
The convent hadn’t turned me soft.While the rest of the world thought I’d been praying and sewing and learning how to be a quiet little survivor, I’d been learning something else entirely: how to stay alive.I’d learned how to strike hard and fast.How to end a fight before it started.How to be the last one standing.But I’d never had to use those skills outside the quiet safety of the convent gardens.Even knowing how cruel the world could be, I hadn’t thought the day would actually come when I’d be forced to put them into practice and face another human being for my life.