Violet's POV
The elevator ride up to the tenth floor was a completely different experience from yesterday's.
Yesterday I'd had the clean, simple grief of a woman who'd lost her job but still had most of her dignity.
Today I was alone, wearing a stranger's sweatshirt, walking like someone had put me together with the wrong manual. My dignity was on the fourteenth floor of a hotel that had never heard of me.
The doors opened. I walked to 10A. Let myself in.
The apartment was exactly as I'd left it. Duvet still on the sofa, wine glass still on the floor, Sly back on the windowsill - Maddy must have rescued him.
I dropped my bag.
Sat on the sofa.
Stared at the wall.
Then, very quietly, to absolutely no one: "Bloody hell."
**
The pills were in the bathroom cabinet. I took two, drank my water, and stood looking at my reflection for longer than was probably healthy.
My reflection had opinions. I could tell.
"I know," I said.
The evidence of last night was... very obvious. The ache in my body was comprehensive. The mortifying soreness between my legs was comprehensive. Three men. Possibly. Probably. Definitely, if my body was to be believed, and my body was being very loud about it.
And then my brain - my absolute traitor of a brain - decided to take things further.
What if they weren't normal people?
I mean. The cameras. The no-record. The clothes in the wardrobe in exactly my size like someone had planned for the morning after. Normal men didn't do that. Normal men left you stranded with last night's outfit and no way home.
What if they were criminals? Organized, well-resourced, the kind who could scrub security footage and… or worse. What if they were something else entirely. What if last night had been some kind of supernatural…
"Violet." I gripped the sink. "We are not doing this."
I took my pills. That was the sensible, rational, earth-bound thing to do. I was a sensible, rational, earth-bound woman.
Who may have slept with three supernatural criminals.
I turned the shower on very hot.
Afterward I felt about forty percent human, which was an improvement. I came out, picked the sweatshirt up off the floor and stood there holding it.
It was expensive. With no logo, no label, just that softness that regular fabric didn't have. I turned it over in my hands for a moment, then folded it slowly.
I placed it in my top drawer, under my good pajamas.
Evidence, I thought. Of something. I didn't know what yet. But if I ever needed to prove that any of this had happened, that I hadn't simply lost my mind along with my job and my cousin's goodwill in a single forty-eight hour period…
The sweatshirt would be there.
I closed the drawer and gave myself a firm internal talking prep.
This ends today. All of it. The chaos, the spiral, the consecutive disasters. I had a degree. I had six years of experience. I had references and skills and a CV that had, before Fabian happened, been genuinely good. I was twenty-seven years old and I was going to sit at my desk and I was going to get a job, and I was going to sort my life out, and none of the rest of it - not 10B, not three possibly-supernatural strangers, not Maddy's face when she drove away - none of it was going to stop me.
I made iced tea. Proper iced tea, with real ice and a slice of lemon. A small ceremony of having my life together.
Laptop open. Three job sites. Fresh CV document.
Let's go.
For forty minutes I was unstoppable. The CV was sharp, clean, everything in the right order. I found two good leads, companies I actually wanted to work for, and I wrote a cover letter that was, without exaggeration, the best thing I'd ever produced. I read it back twice and thought Fabian, you absolute fool.
Then the WiFi died.
No warning. No flicker. One second the page was loading and then just - the little spinning wheel, and then nothing, and the disconnected icon sitting there in the corner of my screen looking smug.
I clicked reconnect. But nothing.
I put off the router. Count to ten. Put it back on. The lights blinked like they were laughing.
Still nothing.
Restarted the laptop. Nothing. Unplugged everything from the wall, waited a full minute, plugged it back in, watched the lights do their little sequence…
Nothing.
I called the internet provider.
Your estimated wait time is forty-five minutes.
I hung up.
I put my hands flat on the desk and breathed through my nose for a few seconds.
Fine. Phone data. It would cost me but fine. I turned the hotspot on, watched the laptop find it, and waited while my cover letter loaded back up with the slow, tortured patience of something that knew it was being charged per kilobyte.
I stood up to go get more iced tea.
I'm going to maintain my calm. My cool. I won't be frustrated about this.
I walked to the kitchen to get it like a person with routines - and on the way back, my bare foot hit the leg of the desk at full force.
The pain was extraordinary. White and hot, the kind that travels up your entire leg and wipes your brain clean of all other content. I gasped, lurched, grabbed at nothing, and went down - me, the iced tea, the glass, all of it - hitting the floor in one big fall.
The glass shattered. Ice cubes scattered in every direction. Iced tea soaked into my clean clothes, my freshly showered skin, the floor I had mopped just that morning.
I lay in it.
Flat on my back, one foot in the air still throbbing, surrounded by ice and broken glass, staring at the ceiling.
Then I kicked both feet up and screamed out in frustration.
What did I do to deserve all these? Why is the whole world suddenly against me.
After like ten minutes of wallowing in self pity and pain, I stood up and starting cleaning. Quietly, the way you did things when you'd burned through all your emotions and were running on something below feeling. Swept the glass. Mopped the tea. Washed my hands.
Limped back to the desk.
Went to close the laptop because I was absolutely done, today was cancelled, I was getting back into the duvet and staying there until circumstances improved.
The WiFi screen was open.
My network was still dead. But below it, the list of nearby signals had appeared, the way they did when your laptop was hunting. Most of them were weak. One bar, two bars, the names of strangers' routers.
And then one, near the top of the list.
Four bars. Full signal.
I leaned forward and clicked on it before I'd fully decided to.
Password required.
I cracked my knuckles.
password - no. 123456 - no. I tried every variation of the network name. Tried the building address. Tried WiFi and internet and connect because maybe whoever set this up had the imagination of a spreadsheet…
No. No. No.
I tried about twelve more. Each one more desperate than the last. At some point I typed pleasejustwork as one word and genuinely meant it as a prayer.
No.
I dropped my head back.
My phone pinged.
Unknown number. Not a contact. Just a string of digits that didn't belong to any country code I recognized, didn't resolve into anything, didn't make sense.
I opened it.
One line.
Findme@me333
I put the phone down.
Stared at the wall.
Picked it up. Read it again. Same message. Still made no sense.
Put it down face-down.
Stood up.
Sat back down.
Nobody had my number like that. Nobody knew I was sitting here, at this specific desk, at this specific moment, failing at this specific thing. My WiFi was dead. My cousin wasn't speaking to me. The only people who'd had any contact with me in the last twenty-four hours were…
I stopped that thought before it finished itself.
I looked at the phone. Looked at the laptop. Looked around the apartment like the answer might be somewhere on the walls.
Nothing looked back at me except Sly, who had no answers, only succulence.
"Fine," I said.
Typed it in.
Connected. Instantly. Perfect signal.
I sat very still for a long moment.
Then I closed the laptop, got up, walked to my bedroom, and got under the duvet with my flip flops still on.
Some things you just didn't examine too closely.