GEZEICHNET VON SEINEM TEUFELS BLICK

Clara's POV

For three days I have been able to observe the man observing me, and tonight he decided to no longer hide.

I saw him exactly as I always had: a shadow directly behind the streetlamp, motionless at the end of the campus path. His hood pulled low over his face. His hands in his pockets.

I continued walking.

My heart said: Run. My pride replied: Don't you dare.

"Hey."

I stopped.

I slowly turned around. The path was empty. Just wet asphalt, orange light, and the patter of rain on the leaves. Nothing. Nobody.

Then he stepped out between the science building and the fence, and my whole body froze.

He was tall. Broad-shouldered. He wore a dark coat that I was sure had cost more than my entire semester. His face made you stop in your tracks immediately, not because it was gentle, but because it wasn't. A strong chin, dark, tousled hair, and eyes so bright they seemed almost silver in the lamplight. Those eyes looked at me as if I were the only person in the world.

Then he walked towards me.

He said: "Don't scream!"

"Stop running towards me like that," I snapped at him.

He stopped. Something flashed in his eyes. Surprise, perhaps. Or something older than surprise.

"Isabella," he whispered.

I blinked. "What?"

“You look just like…” He stopped himself. His jaw tightened. He looked down at me with that heavy look, as if he had buried something long ago. Then he blinked several times, and whatever it had been closed up again. “I’m sorry, you’re not her.”

“No, I’m not,” I said. “My name is Clara and I have no idea who you are, but you should damn well keep your distance.”

"I am Adrian Leone."

The name sent a shiver down my spine. I felt its eerie echo within me even before it fully registered. Leone. A name the people in the city uttered only in whispers and with fear.

"You can't be serious," I said.

"But."

"Take a step back."

“Please listen to me,” he said. “You need to listen to me.” His voice was calm. The worst part was that he sounded so calm, as if this were an ordinary Tuesday evening at a perfectly normal time. As if he regularly intercepted female students on deserted campus walkways between dinner and dessert. “Someone is following you. Not me, not my people, someone else. Three days ago, a device was planted in your bag, and since Monday, your every move has been monitored.”

I laughed. It sounded wrong, too sharp, too loud for the deserted path. "You've been watching me all week. What are you then?"

“The difference,” he said, “is that I am here to warn you. They are the ones who will not.”

I crossed my arms. The rain intensified and turned cold on the back of my neck, but I didn't move. I certainly wasn't going to let him see that I was shivering.

"Why would anyone even want to follow me? I'm a penniless student. I have forty-three dollars in my account, I eat instant noodles four nights a week. There's nothing about my life worth monitoring."

"It's not about your life," he said. "It's about your appearance."

I stared at him.

“Isabella.”

"Yes."

"Who is she?"

Something flitted across his face. A flinch, perhaps pain.

"Someone who is no longer there."

"No longer there, in the sense of dead?"

He did not answer.

I breathed out deeply.

The tracker was still in my bag. I hadn't looked. Part of me didn't want to, because I knew that once I found it, I wouldn't be able to convince myself it was all a lie anymore.

My fingers moved faster than my thoughts. I opened my backpack and reached into the front pocket. I felt it immediately. Hard, small, and round. A completely foreign object that had no business being there.

I pulled it out and held it up to the light of the lantern.

A tiny black disc. Barely bigger than a button.

I had never seen anything like it in my entire life.

"He's been there since Monday," Adrian remarked.

"How do you know that?"

"I had someone watching you the night I first saw you." My eyes never left his. "I mistook you for someone else, and by the time I realized it wasn't you, you were already inside their system."

“Their system,” I said quietly. “What does that mean? Who are these people? What do they want?”

"They're looking for leverage. They thought if they could track you, they could get to me. They made the same mistake I did and saw you on the street last week."

"They think I'm Isabella."

"They believe you're related to her, to her or to me." He paused. "That means you're a target, whether you like it or not."

I stood there in the rain, trying to understand it all.

My biggest worry at the end of last week was whether I could pay for both groceries and my cell phone bill this month. And now a mafia boss was standing on my campus explaining that they were after me because of my face.

"I didn't want this to happen," I said.

"I know."

"That's not my problem."

“I know that’s true,” he said. “But that’s just the way it is.”

I wanted to throw the tracker in his face. I wanted to scream at him to get lost, tell him that this was all crazy, that I would go inside, call the police, and forget about this conversation.

Only the disc was real.

Cold, small, and frighteningly real in my hand.

And Adrian Leone was not someone the police could handle. That was a fact in that city.

"What do you need from me?" I asked.

"Nothing tonight," he said. "Tonight I just want you to be careful."

He pulled a card from his coat. He held it out to me. I made no move to take it.

The next moment he stepped forward and laid them on the fence post between us, flat on the damp metal.

"In case something happens. Anything. Call this number."

"And what if I don't want that?"

He held my gaze for a fraction of a second longer than necessary.

"Then I hope you're faster than them."

He turned around and went back to the opening between the buildings.

No rush. No looking back.

Nothing in the world could make Adrian Leone move faster than he wanted to. The rain seemed not to affect him, and the darkness didn't bother him.

I stopped until I could no longer hear his footsteps.

Then I picked up the card.

I told myself that I was only doing it so that I could throw them away later.

I went into my building, pressed the elevator button, and stood alone in the lobby, trying to slow my heart rate from a frenzied pace to a normal one.

Everything was fine.

Absolutely everything.

Nothing had happened to me. I was simply being followed by people connected to the most dangerous family in the city, because of a terrifying, impossible, frustratingly attractive man.

The elevator opened.

I stepped inside.

Immediately, all the lights in the lobby went out.

Complete darkness.

It was still raining outside, but apart from my breathing, there was absolute silence.

Then I suddenly heard a noise from somewhere above me, from the direction of my floor, which I felt right down to my bones.

My apartment door.

Someone entered.