Chapter One

Allison's life changed with just a brush stroke.

She sat in her chair surrounded by a familiar chaos of unfinished canvases and splattered paint tubes in her small studio apartment. Her new project, Sunset View, half-finished, lay on the easel. She dipped her brush into a touch of pink and orange letting the colors bleed into each other. She smiled at her nearly finished creation. Painting was her only way of escaping reality. It was like freeing herself from the hard reality of life.

But even it couldn't shield her from what happened next.

A loud noise from outside distracted her. She ignored it and continued painting but the noise persisted. Curiosity filled her and she found herself walking to her open window.

Below her apartment lay a dark alley, a kind of place people normally avoided in the nighttime. She saw a trashcan roll from the side. She traced her eyes in that direction, and she saw two men heavily tattooed, their hands holding the arms of a man kneeling before them with blood dripping from his head. His face seemed so pained showing he was beaten up.

Alison felt she couldn't breathe. She didn't need anyone to tell her that something bad was about to happen.

And then she saw him. 

The fourth man stepped out of the shadows with his movement calm and deliberate. He didn't speak, he didn't need to cause his eyes and sharp features seemed to absorb the darkness around him. He was dressed in all black.

As he got closer, the man kneeling started struggling to escape, but it was pointless. It looked like the fourth man was there to finish the job.

Alison felt her heart racing. Every piece of her was telling her to get out of this goddamn window but her body wasn't listening to her command. She was glued to her spot and couldn't move. She should have turned off the lights and pretended she didn't see a thing, but at the moment, she didn't do anything.

The man kneeling as if seeing his end started to struggle more. “Please-please, I'll get the money! I just need more time!” his voice laced with desperation.

The man in black looked for a minute as if considering his plea, or that is what she thought. Then without warning, he drew his gun and fired.

The sound of the shot rang in the alley, sharp and final. The man collapsed on the floor, his body falling on the floor like a sack of potatoes. The two tattooed men stepped back, their faces expressionless.

Alison clasped her face in her mouth to stifle her mouth. In shock, the brush she didn't know she was still holding fell to the floor. The sound, though faint, followed the silence that came after the gunshot.

The man in black turned sharply towards the direction of the sound, his piercing gaze snapping upward her window. Their eyes met.

At that moment, Alison felt all the air leave her lungs, and she felt she couldn't breathe,e as if his stare alone could crush her. She watched his expression hardened and he nodded to the men at his side.

“Find her”

Alison stumbled back, far away from the window, her heart pounding furiously. She needed to think unless she was gone. She needed to think fast. She pulled out her phone to call the cops.

Then a realization hit her: the man had seen her; he knew her face and where she lived. If she stays here waiting for the police, they might find her dead body instead.

Her apartment felt suffocating to her. She needed to get out of here now. She grabbed her backpack and shoved her phone, wallet, and a few essentials into the bag. She threw in her hoodie. She didn't pack her drawings and her canvases.

Panic surged through her as she began to hear the sound of heavy footsteps in the stairwell. 

They're coming.

She ran to the fire escape and she climbed down the ladder. She dropped onto the alley below and took off running. She didn't know where she was going but she knew she couldn't stop running. She needed somewhere to hide. She could hear the sounds of cars in the streets. She could get there quickly and try to blend in with them before she could find a safe place to hide.

Behind her, she heard one of the men say,” She went that way”

Her legs began to hurt as she pushed herself harder with her lungs screaming for air. She ran to an abandoned storefront, pressed herself against the wall, and prayed silently, hoping the shadows would hide her.

Every second felt like hours to her. She could feel her heart racing. Time passed, and she heard their footsteps fade into the distance. She felt like she couldn't move.

She released a breath she didn't know she was holding, her body trembling with adrenaline. “How the hell was she going to get out of this mess”. “If only she ignored the noise and continued what she was doing, she wouldn't be in this situation,” she blamed herself. She knew for certain her life wasn't going to be the same any longer. She couldn't go back to her apartment, it wasn't safe any longer. She couldn't go back to her old life.

Just as she was about to leave her hiding spot, a figure emerged from the darkness.

It was him.

The man in black stood a few feet away staring down at her, his gun tucked into a shoulder holster. He looked amused, not surprised to see her.

He moved closer to her, she wanted to back away but there wasn't anywhere she could go. “You're fast-” There was a small pause. “But not fast enough”

Her hands searched for something, anything she could use to defend herself.

“Please let me go; I swear I didn't see anything; I won't say anything, I promise, please,” She begged, her voice barely audible.

He didn't say anything to her, just stared at her, his expression unreadable, and after a moment, he let out a bitter laugh to her astonishment. She didn't understand anything at all.

“You won't die tonight,” he said to himself, his voice barely audible, but Alison heard him. “ Not yet”

Before she could even process what he said, he gripped her wrists pulling her towards the darkness.

And that was how Alison vanished into the night, her fate tangled with a man she didn't

understand, who spared her life for reasons she couldn't understand.