“You’re being followed.”
My entire body went still.Could she not have told me that yesterday?Too late, I realised that I’d been the one who wouldn’t let her read my cards.
“What?”I breathed.
She leaned forward, her voice low.“Someone keeps crossing your path.Someone who’s watching you.”
Fear crawled up my throat.Memories of the alley flashed.The man.His hands.The blood.There had to be more of him.
“Is it… bad?”I asked.
She studied the last card again.Then she shook her head, confused.
“I… I don’t know.He’s not your enemy.”
A chill raced through me.
I saw grey eyes.Cold.Familiar in a way I couldn’t explain.
I swallowed hard, my pulse thudding.
I didn’t know whether to feel relieved… or terrified.
“Who is he?”I whispered.
Zelda flipped another card and shook her head.
“I don’t know.But he’s close.”
16
Atlas
Rage burned through me like an inferno as I dealt with the men who had cost me two million euros in stolen stock.
There was shouting.There was blood.There were screams that ended abruptly.Violence took the heat, the adrenaline, the edge the way it always did, until the room was nothing but breath and broken bodies.
Afterward came the stillness.
That hollow, quiet place where other men kept their guilt.I’d never had that.All I ever had was the aftermath.Silence.Control.Nothingness.
Except tonight, something else kept bleeding into it.
Her.
Neve Trimboli.
Even as I stood over men who had just learned what it meant to cross me, all I could see was her face in that alley.The way her eyes hadn’t wavered.The way her hands hadn’t shaken.
She wasn’t just a victim who got lucky.
She was a monster.
Or worse—a monster in training.
One who might someday turn that same steady hand on me.
And the thought didn’t make me afraid.It made something dark and electric coil low in my gut.