Chapter 43. The Warning

The city hadn’t woken yet, but the light was already wrong.

Too thin. Too metallic. Like morning had arrived without permission.

Lia walked fast, hood pulled low, the cold biting her lungs with every breath. The streets were slick from rain, and her sneakers made that sharp squeak on the pavement that made her feel too loud.

Ethan’s note was still in her pocket, folded and unfolding itself in her hand like it wanted to breathe.

Don’t follow me. I have to end this.

She’d read it until the words stopped meaning anything, until her brain started filling in the rest—I’m sorry, it’s my fault, tell him I tried.

She wouldn’t let that be the last message she had from him.

The sky overhead was the color of wet steel. A train rumbled somewhere above the tracks, rattling the glass in the nearby storefronts. She counted her breaths with each step—four in, four out—the pattern Rafa had drilled into her. Control through rhythm.

She was