The Morning After

Marlo

The morning sun over Port Phillip Bay was absolutely blinding. It bounced off the heavy snow piling up on the campus lawns, burning my tired eyes. Everything looked so incredibly normal. Students in heavy winter coats were rushing to their early morning lectures, laughing, holding hot cups of coffee, and complaining about the freezing wind.

They had no idea.

My clothes still smelled like the dark, damp basement of jarrah's estate. They smelled like the metallic tang of blood and the sharp sulfur of the single gunshot that echoed in the pitch black before Cal shoved me out the back door.

"Go to your dorm," Jarrah had ordered in the dark, his hands gripping my shoulders with bruising force. "Lock the door. Go to class. Act like you know nothing until I come for you."

I stumbled up the concrete steps of the Monash university housing complex. I technically had a small single dorm on campus (it was a mandatory condition for my full ride scholarship), but I rarely used it. I always took the bus back to the cramped, freezing apartment to take care of Aunt Siobhan. To cook her meals. To make sure she took her pills.

Siobhan.

The taste of actual ash in my mouth. My stomach violently turned, and I had to grab the frozen metal railing of the stairwell to stop myself from throwing up. The woman who brushed my hair had paid a man in a mask to murder my parents. The woman who kissed my forehead every night had hired five men to break into an estate to cut my throat before my twenty first birthday.

I dragged myself down the narrow, sterile hallway of the third floor, and pushed the key (jarrah's key) into my pocket. I unlocked my dorm room with my standard student card and locked the deadbolt the second I was inside.

The room was tiny, and cold. I slid down the back of the wooden door until I hit the floor, pulling my knees to my chest.

I was entirely numb. The tears wouldn't come anymore. My brain was a skipping record, playing the same two terrifying tracks over and over. Siobhan's betrayal. And Jarrah's obsession.

I reached up and pressed my cold hand against the heavy silver locket resting on my collarbone.

"I wanted a weapon who knew who held the shield."

Jarrah's deep, gravelly voice echoed in the quiet room. I closed my eyes, and I could still feel the ghostly burn of his rough thumb tracing the scar on my wrist. I could still feel the crushing, solid heat of his chest pressing me against the mahogany desk. I was supposed to be terrified of him. I was supposed to run from the monster who had stalked me for ten years.

But as I sat alone on the cold floor, the most terrifying realization of all washed over me: I didn't want to run away from him. When Siobhan cut the power, Jarrah hadn't hesitated to step in front of me in the dark.

I forced myself to stand up. I couldn't hide in this room all day. If Siobhan had people watching the campus, missing my morning classes would be a massive red flag. I had to follow Jarrah's orders. Act normal.

An hour later, I was sitting in the back row of the massive lecture hall for my Forensic Psychology class.

The heater in the room was working perfectly, but I couldn't stop shivering. I kept my oversized hoodie zipped all the way up, my eyes darting to the heavy wooden doors at the front of the room every time they opened. I studied the faces of the students walking in. Was that guy a student, or a hitman? The girl checking her phone texting her friends, or giving Siobhan my location?

The illusion of safety was gone.

"Alright, settle down," Professor Aris said, dropping a thick textbook onto his podium. The dull thud made me violently flinch. "Today, we are moving into the psychology of predatory fixation. Stalking."

I froze in my seat. I stopped breathing entirely.

"Now, the media likes to paint stalkers as disorganized, erratic individuals," the professor continued, clicking a button to change the slide on the projector. "But the most dangerous type of fixation is highly organized. Clinical. These individuals don't just watch their targets; they collect them. They catalog their habits, their clothing, their routines, until they feel a complete sense of ownership."

My hands started to shake. I gripped my pen so hard the cheap plastic cracked under my thumb.

She drank two cups of black coffee, chewing on her thumbnail, she thinks she's safe.

I felt sick. Jarrah wasn't just a tough guy. He fit the exact text book definition of a clinical predator. He had kept ten years of notes hidden beneath his floorboards. And yet, I had taken his key. I had let him put his hands on me. My heart gave a heavy, traitorous flutter just thinking about the dark, possessive way he had looked at my mouth.

I was just as sick as he was.

The ninety minute lecture felt like a prison sentence. The moment Professor Aris dismissed us, I practically ran out of the hall. I ignored the busy chatter of the students around me, keeping my head down, rushing through the freezing snow back to the safety of my dorm building.

I just needed to lie down. I needed five minutes of quiet before Jarrah called me.

I reached the third floor. The hallway was completely empty. The harsh fluorescent lights buzzed softly overhead.

I walked toward my door at the end of the hall, digging into my pocket for my student ID card. But as I got closer, my footsteps slowed to a dead stop.

There was something resting on the worn carpet, pushed halfway under the gap of my door.

It was an envelope.

It wasn't a normal white envelope from the university mailroom. It was thick, heavy, and pitch black.

My heart slammed against my ribs. I looked over my shoulder, staring down the empty hallway. Nothing. Nobody was there.

I crept forward, my breathing turning shallow and fast. I knelt down on the carpet and pulled the envelope out from under the door. It was heavy. There was no name written on the front. No postage stamp.

My first thought was Jarrah. He used thick paper. Maybe it was a burner phone, or instructions on where to meet him.

My shaking fingers tore open the flap. I pulled out a single, large sheet of heavy parchment. I unfolded it carefully.

It was a printed architectural map of the Monash University campus.

But it had been altered. Certain hallways, specific stairwells, and small alleys between the buildings were shaded heavily in dark grey marker. In the top corner, a key legend was written out: Camera Blind Spots.

Relief washed over me for a split second. Jarrah was showing me the safe routes. He was showing me where I couldn't be tracked.

Then, I flipped the map over.

There was a message written on the back in stark, white ink. My blood turned to absolute ice in my veins, and the heavy brass key in my pocket suddenly felt like a massive anchor dragging me down to the bottom of the ocean.

The handwriting didn't belong to Jarrah. It wasn't his sharp, violent scrawl.

It was Siobhan's delicate, looping cursive.

Jarrah thinks he owns the shadows, Marlo, the note read. But he forgot that I'm the one who taught you how to hide. The grey zones on this map aren't where you're safe from me. They're exactly where my men are waiting for you. See you soon, sweetheart.

Before I could even process the horror of the note, the doorknob to my locked dorm room slowly began to turn from the inside.