All Chapters of The Killer's Kitten: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

48 Chapters

31 Feels like Home

She must have dozed off, because the next thing she knew, the windows had cleared and the first hint of dawn was creeping over the hills. He started the engine and drove them home.When they walked through the door of the penthouse, the sun was just beginning to rise over the city, painting the living room in shades of gold and pink. She stood at the window, looking down at the streets she'd walked a thousand times, and felt something settle in her chest—not peace, exactly, but something close.He came up behind her, his hands resting on her shoulders. "What are you thinking.""I'm thinking I should get some sleep before the sun comes up completely and I have to face the fact that I just agreed to consider moving into an eight-million-dollar apartment.""You already agreed to consider it. That's not the same as agreeing.""I know." She turned to face him. "But I'm not running. That's the part that matters."He looked at her for a long moment. Then he pulled her close, one hand cradling

32 The Remote

The remote control became their first real disagreement.Not a fight. Nothing like the safe apartment or the women at bars. Just a quiet, stubborn standoff between two people who had very different ways of watching movies.She liked to skip ahead. Not because she didn't respect the story—she did. But she was impatient. She needed to know if the ending was worth the buildup. She'd watched too many films that promised everything and delivered nothing. She didn't want to invest an hour and a half in something that would let her down.He insisted on watching from the beginning. Every scene. Every pause. Every moment of silence that the director had intended.The first time it happened, she reached for the remote, scrolled forward, pressed play. He looked at her. She looked at him.“What,” she said.“You skipped.”“It was a slow part.”“It was the first fifteen minutes.”&

33 Cold and Warm

She caught it on a Tuesday. Nothing dramatic—just a tickle in her throat that turned into a cough, a low-grade fever that made her feel like she was wrapped in cotton. The kind of cold that wasn't dangerous, just miserable. The kind that made you want to curl up in bed and not move until spring.Vincent found her in the bedroom when he came back from the kitchen. She was under the duvet, her hair plastered to her forehead, a box of tissues on the nightstand.He stopped in the doorway. “You're sick.”“Astute observation.”He didn't laugh. He just stood there, looking at her like she was a problem he needed to solve. She recognized that look. It was the same one he wore when he was checking sightlines, assessing threats, calculating exits.“I'm fine,” she said.“You're not.”“It's just a cold.”He didn't answer. He turned and walked out.She heard him in the

34 The Mark

She wrote at night. Not every night. Just when the apartment was quiet and the words came. She wrote in a battered notebook with coffee stains on the cover and a broken spine. She never showed it to anyone.He never asked. Never glanced at it on the coffee table. Never touched it.It had become their rhythm. She wrote. He read. They existed in the same room without needing to explain.Then one afternoon, she forgot it on the sofa.She'd been editing in the kitchen, the notebook still warm from where she'd been writing that morning. She didn't realize it was missing until dinner—when she looked over and saw it resting on the arm of the sofa, exactly where she'd left it.He was already at the table. His expression neutral. He pulled out her chair.She sat down. She didn't ask.But the air between them had changed.“What did you do today?” she asked.He looked up from his plate. “Nothing.”She held his gaze. “Nothing.”“Yes.”She let it drop.Later that night, after he'd gone to the kitc

35 Last Day

Her last day at the consulting firm was overcast. Not the kind of rain that soaked you through—just the kind that made everything look washed out and tired. She'd worn her usual blazer, the one that had felt like armor for six years. It fit differently now. Looser. Like she'd shrunk inside it.She pulled the last few items from her desk drawer. A spare charger. A lip balm she'd forgotten she owned. A small stack of sticky notes with phone numbers she no longer needed. She tossed most of it in the recycling bin. Not with ceremony. Just with efficiency.Then her fingers found something at the back of the drawer, wedged between a broken stapler and a half-empty tube of hand cream.A business card. Old. Worn at the edges. The logo on it had faded to something almost unreadable.She recognized it immediately.London. Eight years ago. She'd been twenty-two, fresh out of grad school, walking through a neighborhood she didn't know, clutching he

36 The First Video

She'd been staring at the screen for forty-seven minutes.Not the video itself—she'd watched that at least a dozen times already, picking apart every frame, every word, every pause. It was fine. It was more than fine. It was honest. That was what scared her.Her thumb hovered over the publish button.She thought about her old colleagues. The ones who still had her number. The ones who'd sent her "good luck" messages when she'd left, not knowing what to say, not really meaning it. They'd see this. They'd watch her stumble through her first attempt at something real, something unpolished, something that wasn't a spreadsheet or a PowerPoint deck. They'd judge. They'd whisper. They'd feel vindicated that she'd left and failed.She thought about her mother. About how she'd never really understood what Gaby did for a living. About how she'd always asked, *"But is it a real job?"*She thought about herself. About the person who'd walked into that office building every morning for six years, t

37 New Contract

She printed it out the moment it arrived. The first brand partnership. Real numbers. Real terms. A company that actually wanted to pay her for the thing she'd been building in the dark.She laid the pages on the kitchen island, smoothing out the corners with her palm. Then she waited.He came home at seven. He paused in the doorway when he saw her sitting on the stool, the pages spread across the counter like a map. He dropped his keys and walked over, scanning the page without touching it.His eyes moved down the page, then up. One eyebrow lifted."That's less than I used to make per job," he said. Flat. Not dismissive. Just factual.She stared at him. "It's also legal, asshole."He laughed. A low, unguarded sound that caught her off guard. She hadn't heard it in a while. She realized, suddenly, how much she'd been missing it—the way it settled in her chest like something warm and unearned.He sat down across from

38 Not if you carry me to

Gaby was not, as a rule, someone who are used to be taken care of.She'd been sent to boarding school at twelve, learned to make her own decisions at fifteen, and had spent the years since building a whole identity around not needing anyone. Through the slow death of a six-year relationship. Through quitting her job. She'd learned to rely on herself, because relying on other people meant giving them the power to disappoint you.But Vincent made it difficult.Not because he was overbearing. Because he took care of her the way he did everything else: quietly, methodically, without asking for credit or expecting gratitude. She'd find her phone charged when she'd forgotten to plug it in. Her favorite tea would appear in the cabinet without her having bought it. The blanket she'd been using on the sofa would be folded and draped over the armrest every morning, even though she never folded it herself.She noticed all of it. She didn't always say something. But

39 Dry Her Hair

Her hair wrapped in a towel, which lasted approximately ninety seconds before she pulled it off and tossed it over the back of a chair. Her hair fell damp and heavy against her shoulders.She hated drying it. She always had. It took forever and made her arms tired and the noise of the dryer bored into her skull. Tonight she was too exhausted to even pretend she was going to do it.She curled into the corner of the sofa, pulled her laptop onto her thighs, and squinted at the screen. The footage from the afternoon was waiting. She could edit just a little before bed. Just the opening sequence. Just until her eyes gave out.She heard him come in. Felt him stop behind the sofa."Your hair is wet.""Yep." She didn't look up."You're going to get sick.""I never get sick.""Gaby." His voice had that edge again—the one that meant he was genuinely concerned and genuinely annoyed about being genuinely concerned. "Dry your hair and

40 You Track Me

The sweetness lasted about three months.The problem with safety was that it had a way of turning into something else when you weren't looking. It started small. The way most cages do.Gaby had a creator meetup downtown—drinks with a group of women whose channels she'd been following for months.She'd mentioned it at breakfast, casual, between bites of toast. Vincent didn't look up from his coffee. "I'll drive you.""You don't have to. I can take an Uber.""I'll drive you."She shrugged. "Okay."That was the first concession. Small enough to feel like nothing.She was already at the bar, nursing a glass of wine. One of the women—a lifestyle vlogger she'd been following for months—glanced at her left hand and grinned. "That's beautiful. What does your fiancé do?""He's not my fiancé." The correction came out faster than Gaby expected. Automatic. Not defensive. Just

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