Page 40 of Infamous

She’ll be home in twelve minutes.

I climb into the crawl space, the air thick and humming with the building’s pulse. Below me, the world holds its breath.

Then there’s the rattle of keys. The soft thud of her bag hitting the table. A sigh, long and frayed at the edges.

“God,” she whispers, and it sounds less like a prayer and more like surrender.

The couch exhales under her weight. I don’t need to look; I know the ritual. The slow unwind. The tilt of her head. The fragile silence before grief fills the room again.

Then her eyes lift toward the vent. For a second, I forget to breathe. We share the same silence, separated by inches of metal and a thousand lies. Then she blinks, and the moment shatters.

Water runs. Steam begins to rise. The air grows heavy, warm. I can picture her skin flushing under the spray, the way droplets would bead at her collarbone. The image burns through restraint, through logic. My fingers twitch. The urge to drop from the vent and go to her - to hold her, touch her, take her - is almost unbearable. But I stay. Because I know what happens if I don’t.

When I finally move, it’s with precision. The crawl space closes behind me, the apartment left untouched except for the ghost of my breath. The door clicks shut as I vanish into the corridor.

Outside, the city is bruised with dusk. I cross the street and stop, watching her window light flicker to life. She moves past the glass wrapped in a towel - unguarded, human. The sight is agony. Beauty and punishment, all in one.

She drinks water. Heads back to the bedroom. The lamp glows, then fades. Only then do I turn away.

Behind me, her apartment exhales. And I breathe out with it - like I’m leaving a part of myself inside.

24

NADIA

Sleep drags me under slow, until it feels like slipping beneath the surface of deep water where the light can’t reach. I’m dreaming. I must be. Because why else would Lucian be here?

Lucian Cross.

The man who loved me before the world discovered him.

His name slips through me in the dream like a prayer I once knew by heart but forgot how to recite.

The scent hits me first - oud and sandalwood, threaded with smoke, a scent all his. I close my eyes and breathe him in like oxygen, greedy, desperate. His hands cradle my face, rough and strong, thumbs sweeping along my cheekbones as though he’s relearning me, memorizing me piece by fucking piece, afraid I’ll vanish if he doesn’t.

“You never had a choice, little dove,” he murmurs, voice low, reverent, laced with danger. I know the proclamation should terrify me, but it doesn’t. Instead, it soothes me. “You have always been mine.”

He pulls me closer. Lips graze the hollow beneath my ear, the slow path down my throat. Heat curls through me, dizzying, familiar, a hunger I thought I buried with him. His mouth is devotion and hunger all at once, and I melt into it like I never left.

We’re back in our old apartment, windows cracked open to summer air. The sheets are tangled from hours of forgetting the rest of the world. His laughter is soft, fleeting, the rarest of sounds, and it spills into my ear. I remember how his smile softened his whole face, how the sharpness melted until he was just mine, achingly human, achingly alive.

I ache for it now. For the weight of him pressing me into the mattress, the way his body curved into mine like it had been shaped for me. My fingers thread into his dark curls, tugging hard, and he groans into my mouth, deep and raw, the sound vibrating against my chest.

“Lucian…”

The name tastes like love. It tastes like blood. And then it changes.

The light dies. The golden warmth drains away, leaving only shadow. His mouth is still on me, but the heat is gone—it’s cold now, sharp as ice. His hands, once worshipping, grip too tight, bruising where they once cherished. My body goes rigid, dread threading into desire.

And his eyes—God, his eyes. They’re not his anymore. No warmth. No humanity. Just flat, lifeless, black as the night.

In a heartbeat, the man I loved is gone. And what looms over me, devouring me in the dark, isn’t Lucian.

It’s Ghost, the man they branded a serial killer.

I see him the way the cameras showed him, the way the world remembers him. Walking into court in chains, jaw clenched, stare unbroken. His hands are shackled in front of him. He leans over me, breath hot against my ear, and whispers the same word he once made sacred.

“Mine.”