Page 17 of Infamous

I told myself it was frustration. That it was about closure. But the lie didn’t hold.

The truth was simpler and worse: she’d gotten under my skin.

I watched the city from my window. The streets were slick with rain, lights bleeding across the glass.

I’d spent months learning how to erase people. How to step into their lives and take them apart piece by piece. But she made it impossible. Every time I tracked her, something interfered. A last-minute detour, a delay, a stranger stepping in her path. That kind of luck doesn’t happen on its own.

It almost felt like someone - or something - was protecting her.

Fate.

The word sat in my head like a sliver. I didn’t believe in it. Not until she kept walking away from what should’ve been inevitable.

I poured a drink and didn’t touch it. The clock kept ticking, and I kept staring at nothing.

The others had been easy. Their deaths had been executions - clean, righteous, necessary. But this one… this one was different. Every time I got close, the anger dulled. I couldn’t see Billie’s ghost in her face anymore. Just a woman trying too hard to stay invisible.

I hated that it mattered.

I hated that her silence felt familiar. That she carried herself like someone who’d lost something too.

Some nights, I caught myself wondering what she dreamed about. What she was running from. And that was the problem. I wasn’t supposed to wonder. I was supposed to end this.

But for the first time since Billie died, the line between justice and morality started to blur.

Tomorrow, I’d go back. I’d find her. Maybe I’d finish it. Or maybe fate would get in the way again. Maybe fate wasn’t protecting her. Maybe it was warning me.

11

NADIA

The stranger had been coming here for weeks. Same time. Same seat beside mine.

Maybe he thought I didn’t notice. But I did.

I noticed everything—the scrape of his stool, the faint shift in the air when he walked in, the way the heat from his body bled into mine when he sat too close. Even when we didn’t speak, I could feel him there. A steady pulse at my side. Familiar. Dangerous.

Sometimes we talked. Sometimes we didn’t. Just the kind of small talk that fills silence without asking for anything in return. Weather. Coffee. Books we didn’t really read. It was safe that way—controlled. Predictable.

But tonight wasn’t. Tonight,Iwasn’t.

Something in me had cracked before I even walked through the door. Today wasn’t just another day—it wastheday. The one that circled back every year to remind me of my past. What I’d done. What I’d watched happen and couldn’t undo.

The past had claws, and it always found me.

No matter how small I lived, no matter how many routines I built to keep the darkness quiet, it still came back. Today it cameroaring, dragging every memory with it. And I didn’t have the strength to fight it anymore.

The silence between us pressed down like a hand on my throat. I could feel him watching, measuring, waiting.

“You look like you could use another,” he said finally. His voice was calm. The cup slid across the counter before I could protest. He didn’t rush. Didn’t fumble. Just nudged it toward me already knowing I’d take it.

I tried to joke. “That obvious?”

He smiled faintly but didn’t answer. He just looked at me with quiet patience, like he saw too much. I didn’t even know his name. But somehow, he’d become the one constant in this place.

Tonight, though, I couldn’t pretend. The weight was too much. Four years hadn’t dulled it. Grief had settled into my bones. I wrapped my hands around the cup like it could anchor me, but it didn’t.

I pushed my chair back. “I have to go,” I said, too quickly, too loud.