Page 20 of Prey

“You want to know what made you different?” His tone drops. “You check behind you every thirty seconds. Test your locks obsessively. And you’ve trained yourself to be invisible but can’t hide what you really are.”

“What am I?”

His free hand comes up. For a moment, I think he’ll touch me, but his fingers stop an inch from my throat. I can feel the heat from his hand. Above the mask, his eyes have gone almost black.

Then he jerks back and takes two steps, then three, his chest heaving. His hands clench into fists at his sides in tactical gloves.

For a second, we simply stare at each other. It’s as if he’s trying to rebuild whatever control just shattered, and I’m pressed against the wall, heart hammering but mind already working.

He turns, striding to the door in three quick steps. His hand slams against what must be a hidden panel—the locks disengage with that same mechanical whirr. He yanks the door open hard enough that it bounces off the wall.

Then he’s gone. The door swings shut. The locks engage.

My legs give out. I slide down until I’m sitting on the cold concrete, knees drawn up.

Terror sits in my chest like a living thing, making each breath shallow and painful. But underneath it, my mind is already planning.

He wanted to touch me. Wanted it so badly his hand shook, but he stopped himself.

That’s a weakness.

I’ve seen this before. Not exactly this—my stepfather’s violence and later sexual abuse were meaner and less conflicted. But I know what it looks like when someone wants something they think they shouldn’t want. Know how that war plays out in their body, in their voice.

My stepfather lost that war every time. Convinced himself that hurting me or taking what he wanted was teaching me a lesson, that his hands on my throat were discipline instead of what they really were.

This man is fighting himself. And that fight is making him sloppy. Telling me things he shouldn’t tell me. Showing me cracks in his facade.

He thinks my hypervigilance makes me special. Thinks he sees his own damage mirrored in me.

He’s not wrong, but he doesn’t understand what that means.

I survived my stepfather by learning his triggers. A certain tone of his voice always warned me I had thirty seconds to lock myself in the bathroom.

I survived that by becoming a student of violence and abuse. By learning to read the signs in a man’s posture before he struck.

This man thinks he’s professional. But I saw how he broke when I called him on it, physically removing himself from the room because his desire was stronger than his control.

He’ll be back for more. Men like him always come back because the wanting doesn’t go away. It festers. Grows.

She made me feel this way, she forced my hand, she knew what she was doing.

I pull my knees tighter to my chest. The shaking is easing now, adrenaline burning off into cold focus.

He’s running an operation, that much is clear. The professional equipment, the underground facility, how he called me an acquisition—this isn’t his first time. He’s got a system. A routine.

But I have a feeling I’m fucking with his routine.

I think about this room again. The concrete walls, the bolted drain cover, the reinforced door. It’s a cage built by someone who’s thought through every possible escape route. Someone who’s done this enough times to know exactly what desperate people try.

But he’s not counting on me using his hunger against him. He thinks it’s his weakness—a weakness to fight, to control, to lock down behind that perfect mask.

He’s wrong. It’s my strength.

My stepfather taught me that. How to recognize the exact moment when want overrides caution. How to be whatever they need to see until that moment arrives. How to survive by becoming the fantasy they’re already building in their head.

8

NIKOLAI