POV Mara
The door opened and there she was—Sera, alive and whole, her face flooding with shock before she crashed into me, arms wrapping tight like she could hold me together through sheer will.
"Jesus Christ, Mara, where have you been?" Her words tumbled out in a desperate rush against my shoulder. "Your phone was out of service, your parents' too—I couldn't reach anyone. I even drove by yesterday despite you telling me never to just show up, and nobody answered. I've been going insane, I thought something terrible—"
I crossed her threshold still locked in that embrace, reaching back to shut the door with a click that felt like sealing us into a confessional.
The words scraped out of my throat before I could soften them, before I could find a gentler way to destroy her world too.
"My parents are dead."
Her grip fell away like I'd burned her, eyes blown wide with the specific horror of understanding something you desperately want to mishear.
The silence stretched between us, heavy with the weight of permanence, of things that couldn't be taken back or fixed or survived intact.
"I need wine," I said, because if I said anything else I'd shatter right here in her entryway, and I couldn't afford to break yet. Not completely.
She moved like a sleepwalker to her kitchen, pulling down two glasses with hands that shook slightly, pouring red wine like it was medicine for wounds that would never heal.
The first glass went down fast, burning a path to my stomach that felt like the only real thing in days.
"Sera, you know I work for dangerous people." I kept my voice steady, clinical, like I was reading someone else's tragedy from a safe distance. "I still can't tell you everything—I won't drag you deeper into this nightmare—but what I do, the life I chose to save them, it ended with them gone and the same people hunting me now."
She processed faster than most would, her artist's eye always seeing patterns others missed. "But you're here. In my apartment. Mara, if they're hunting you, then being here is—"
"A risk, I know." The second glass went down easier than the first, liquid courage for confessions I shouldn't make. "I know it's selfish and dangerous and probably fatal, but I was so fucking scared for you, Sera. Had to see with my own eyes that you were still breathing, still you, still untouched by all this blood."
"Are you doing this alone?" Her voice carried that specific gentleness she used when approaching wounded things.
"No." The admission tasted like betrayal and relief tangled together. "I'm not alone. There's someone—he's helping me hunt who did this, and we will find them, and I will take my revenge for my parents. But he can't stay, can't be what I need right now, and I'm so unbearably lonely I can't breathe. I needed to see someone from before, from the life where I was just Mara who went to galleries and had parents who loved her."
Sera pulled me against her again, harder this time, like she could squeeze the broken pieces back together.
"I'm proud of you for coming here. For trusting me with this. God, Mara, after everything you fought through to save them, to keep them alive, and now—I'm so fucking sorry."
That's when I broke.
The tears came like a dam bursting, years of held-back grief flooding out in ugly, choking sobs that shook my whole body. Sera's hands found my hair, stroking with the patience of someone who understood that some storms you just had to weather.
"You're so strong," she whispered against my temple. "You'll survive this because you're the strongest person I know. You'll make it through, and you're not alone, not really. I'm here. I'll always be here."
When the storm finally passed, leaving me hollow and raw, I pulled back and wiped my face with hands that belonged to a killer but felt like a child's.
"Tell me about the gallery," I said, desperate for air that didn't taste like copper and loss. "Tell me something beautiful."
Her face brightened, grabbing onto the lifeline I'd thrown us both. "Oh God, the Drayven exhibition is getting amazing press. The Times called it 'transcendent,' which you know means nothing, but the sales are actually backing it up. And that installation piece you said you'd never understand? Someone bought it for six figures."
"I actually saw it," I admitted, letting myself sink into the normalcy of her enthusiasm. "The exhibition, I mean. Last weekend. You were right about the way he uses color—it does something to the space that feels like breathing."
She laughed, the sound bright enough to hurt. "Bullshit, you did not see it. You hate contemporary installations."
"I did, though. That's where I met—"
The words caught in my throat, guilt spiking through me sharp and immediate. Handsome on the outside, criminal inside. Maybe worse than me. Maybe the reason my parents were dead.
"I met someone there. A man."
Her eyes lit up with the specific delight of someone who'd been trying to set me up for months. "Mara Archer met a man at a gallery? Tell me everything immediately. Is he cute? Please tell me he's—"
The knock at the door cut through her words like a blade through silk.
Three sharp raps, deliberate and measured. The kind of knock that knew exactly what it wanted.
"Are you expecting anyone?" I asked, already moving, the switch flipping from broken girl to weapon in a heartbeat.
"No." The word came out thin, threaded with the fear that had finally caught up to the moment.
I ghosted into her kitchen, fingers finding the longest knife in her block, the weight of it pathetically inadequate but better than nothing.
I moved back to the entry, pressing myself against the wall where I couldn't be seen from the peephole, signaling Sera to stay back.
"Who's there?" I called through the door, voice steady despite the adrenaline flooding my system.
"Who is it?" Sera echoed, trying to sound normal and failing, her voice pitched too high with barely controlled panic.
The silence on the other side stretched like a held breath, like the world pausing before it exploded, like that moment between your parents being alive and being nothing at all.
Nothing. No answer. Just that terrible, patient quiet that felt like being watched through the keyhole, like someone weighing their options, like death deciding whether to knock again or simply come in uninvited.