Page 19 of Dark Billionaire Predator

The money goes through Thursday. By Friday, the center's director will know the donor's name. Benedict Ambrose. Philanthropist. Interested in mental health. Would love to meet the team. Would love to learn about the volunteer program.

Lucy will hear my name from someone she trusts—a colleague, the director, a fellow volunteer. She'll hear it in the context of generosity and support, and she'll know—instantly, with that clinical precision I'm learning to both admire and fear—exactly what I've done. That the dark street was the first approach, and when the distance closed and opened again, I found another way in. That I've inserted myself into the one space she thought was safe.

She won't be able to warn anyone. What would she say?A man is donating fifty thousand dollars to our crisis center, and I think he's doing it to get close to me.She'd sound paranoid. Ungrateful. Unhinged. The donation is real. The money is real. The fact that it's also a hunting strategy is something only she and I will know.

And she can't refuse to be in the room when a major donor visits. Can't excuse herself from the thank-you dinner, the volunteer meeting where the director introduces the generous benefactor who's ensuring the center can keep its doors open. She'll have to stand there, shake my hand, smile, play the grateful volunteer. All while knowing exactly what I am.

I'm not entering her life. I'm surrounding it.

I send the email. Close the laptop. The church is very quiet. Christ watches from the apse with his chipped, unreadable expression.

Two moves in one day. The apartment—physical, primal, the animal need to be inside her space. To touch her towel and sit on her bed and hold her necklace and breathe the air that she breathes. The donation—strategic, patient, the long game of a man who understands that the most effective cage is one the prey walks into willingly.

One is the vocabulary of the body. The other is the vocabulary of power. Both are saying the same word.

Mine.

I climb the stairs to the choir loft. Lie in the dark. The sheets smell like stone and cold water. If I close my eyes, I can still smell her apartment—that trace of something warm and clean and human that clung to my coat on the drive home.

Left side of the bed. Sertraline, 50mg. A lavender dress in a dry-cleaning bag. A spare key in the kitchen drawer that I didn't take, but could have. A blue toothbrush. A damp towel on a hook. The slight give of her mattress under my weight.

I hold these things in the dark the way a man holds stolen jewels. Turning them. Watching them catch light that isn't there. Each one a piece of her I've taken without asking. Each one making me want to take more.

Tomorrow, I'll be on her block at six. The day after that, and the day after that. And on Tuesday, when the crisis center director calls a meeting to announce the donation that will keep their doors open for another year, Lucy Anderson will hear my name and understand that there is no part of her life I can't reach. No lock I can't open. No space I can't fill with the fact of my attention.

The thought fills the church like smoke. I breathe it in.

I don't tell Christ not to judge me. There's nothing left to say. The man who would have hesitated died a long time ago, if he ever existed, and what's left is just this—hunger, patience, and the methodical dismantling of every wall between me and the woman I'm going to have.

Whatever it takes. However long it takes.

However, much of myself I have to burn to get there.

Chapter 7 - Lucy

The crisis center smells like burnt coffee and industrial cleaner, and the particular human residue of a place where people come to fall apart. I've always found it comforting—the honesty of it. No pretense here. No diffusers or ambient music or carefully curated artwork designed to signal therapeutic warmth. Just fluorescent lights, plastic chairs, a coffee machine that's been dying for three years, and a waiting room where people sit with their damage and wait for someone to notice.

I need this tonight. Need the rawness of it, the way it strips away everything that isn't essential. For a week now, I've been operating inside a new reality—the one where I scan parked cars and check doorways and wake at three in the morning with my heart hammering for reasons my conscious mind won't fully articulate. The crisis center is the one place where that reality recedes. Where I stop being Lucy-who-is-being-watched and become Lucy-who-holds-people-together.

I arrive at five-forty-five. My shift starts at six, but I always come early—check the intake forms, review the overnight log, see if there's anything I need to be ready for. Harriet Levine, the center's director, is in her office with the door open, which usually means she wants to talk before the shift starts.

Harriet is sixty-three, five-foot-two, built like a fireplace, and has been running this center for nineteen years on federal grants, private donations, and what I can only describe as weaponized stubbornness. She wears the same gray cardigan every Tuesday. She calls everyone "honey" regardless of age, gender, or crisis severity. She is the best person I know, and I include myself in that comparison.

"Lucy, honey. Come in. I want to catch everyone before the shift."

The other volunteers are already gathering—Paul, a retired social worker who does Tuesdays and Thursdays; Diana, a graduate student in counseling psychology who's completing her practicum hours; and Joseph, a peer counselor who's been sober for nine years and has a gentleness with addicts that I've never seen matched by anyone with a clinical degree.

We crowd into Harriet's small office. She's standing behind her desk with an expression I don't see often—hope. Genuine, unguarded hope, the kind she usually keeps locked away because running a crisis center on a shoestring teaches you that hope is a luxury you pay for with disappointment.

"Good news," she says. "We received a donation this week. A significant one."

She pauses for effect. Harriet has a flair for the dramatic that she usually channels into grant proposals.

"Fifty thousand dollars."

The room reacts. Paul whistles low. Diana's eyes go wide. Joseph says "Holy shit" and then apologizes. Harriet waves away the apology—she's heard worse in this building, and besides, the sentiment is accurate. Fifty thousand dollars is more than our entire quarterly budget. It's enough to expand hours, hire a part-time coordinator, replace the coffee machine that's been giving everyone acid reflux since 2022.

"It comes from a private foundation," Harriet continues. "The donor's name is Benedict Ambrose. The foundation is focused on mental health services and community support. They've expressed interest in a long-term partnership."