Page 22 of Make Them Bleed (Pretty Deadly Things #1)

Juno

The mandala on page forty-three is supposed to be about balance. Symmetry. A thousand tiny petals all taking turns being the center. My therapist would say that’s a metaphor. I say it’s a lie. Nothing in my life is symmetrical right now. Not grief. Not love. Certainly not trust.

It’s been three days since the fight.

Three days since Arrow—my Arrow, my Hoover, my everything-I-didn’t-know-I-wanted—said “I’m sorry” for the spyware he installed on my laptop, and I said “I hate you,” and the words ricocheted around the loft until both of us flinched.

Three days of texts I haven’t answered. Three days of me pacing my apartment like a cat that hasn’t decided whether to scratch or curl up and purr.

The pencil in my hand snaps. I drop the broken half into the mess on my coffee table—coloring book, scattered receipts, a half-eaten cranberry muffin that tastes like guilt—and scrub my face with my palms. On my phone: a row of unread messages.

Arrow 8:02 a.m. — Hey. You sleeping? Eat something.

Arrow 12:27 p.m. — Just checking. I’m here, no pressure.

Arrow 3:41 p.m. — Do you want space or company? I’ll do either.

Arrow 9:58 p.m. — Home? Safe?

Arrow (this morning, 7:12 a.m.) — Standing order still stands: you don’t do this alone.

Every time the phrase standing order pops up, my heart squeezes. It’s sweet. It’s also controlling. It can be both. The contradiction is what’s killing me.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Three gentle taps. Our rhythm. My breath stumbles.

I pad to the door and peek through the peephole.

Arrow stands there, hoodie, jeans, and the defeated posture of a man who knows he’s the villain in his own romcom.

He’s holding two coffees and a little paper bag—the bagels he knows I won’t buy for myself when I’m mad.

I press my forehead to the door. For two long beats, I do nothing. The smart part of me says don’t open it . The ache in my chest says throw the deadbolt and the rest of you at him .

I unlatch and crack it two inches. “Hey.”

His eyes brighten with hope. “Hey.”

The hallway smells like floor cleaner and someone else’s toast. The paper bag crinkles when he lifts it. “Cinnamon-raisin for you. Sesame for bribery.”

I swallow. “You shouldn’t have come.”

He nods, accepts the blow. “Probably not. But I needed to see you breathe.”

“I’m breathing.” It comes out flat, so I soften. “Thanks for the coffee.”

He holds mine out. My fingers graze his. We both flinch. He winces like I slapped him. “Juno, I?—”

“Don’t,” I whisper, and push the door another inch between us. “Not today.”

His jaw tightens. “Okay.” He sets the bag on the floor, careful, like leaving an offering at a shrine. “I’ll go.”

“Arrow—” The apology climbs my throat and dies there. I hate this. I hate that I miss him inside the same beat that I imagine throwing his laptop out the window. “Just…not today.”

He nods again. There’s a tiny wrinkle between his brows I’ve only ever seen when I cry or when a server’s packet drops. “I’m here when you want me,” he says, and the hall swallows the sound of his retreating steps.

I shut the door. Lock clicks like a gavel.

Immediately the apartment feels colder, bigger, wrong.

The bag sits there like dogs waiting for permission.

I pick it up, and then do what any modern woman does after telling her almost-boyfriend to go away: I open my phone and stare at the live view from my Ring camera.

Arrow’s back is a slumped, gray smudge moving down the stairs. He pauses on the landing and looks back up at my door as if he can see through wood and indecision. The feed glitches, then smooths. He disappears.

The little blue light on the Ring blinks at me. I narrow my eyes at it. “You watching now?” I ask the camera like it’s him. “You lurking on my doorstep the way you lurked in my inbox?”

Silence, except for the fan whir and a neighbor’s laugh down the hall. The camera’s eye remains unblinking. I know the logical thing: Arrow doesn’t have my Ring login. But logic left three days ago holding a suitcase and a note. He is a security consultant. He knows backdoors I don’t.

“I’m going to disable you,” I say to the camera.

My phone buzzes in my hand.

Arrow 8:31 a.m. — Don’t disable your Ring. Please. It’s another set of eyes. I’ll stop checking. Promise.

Heat scalds my cheeks. “Of course you checked,” I mutter, staring into the tiny black lens. “Of course you did.”

I prop the phone on the entry table and look straight at the camera. “I’m shutting you off,” I tell it, voice steadying as I speak. “Not forever. Just…for me. For now.”

The phone buzzes again, immediate, like a heartbeat.

Arrow 8:32 a.m. — Juno, don’t. It’s not safe. At least leave notifications on. I’m not watching. I swear.

Swear. Promise. Standing order. My throat tightens. “You put spyware on my laptop,” I tell the Ring, “and you want me to trust your swears?”

The blue light blinks like an eye twitching. I hold the button, tap through menus, and shut it down. The screen goes to black. The apartment exhales in a way I didn’t know it needed to. Quiet. Mine.

Almost at once another text:

Arrow 8:33 a.m. — Okay. I hear you. I’m…here anyway. Text if you need me. I’ll back off.

Back off. The phrase lands like a stone in a pond, sending rings of pain outward. I want to text I always need you , but pride has sharp edges. I put my phone face-down on the table and go to the kitchen to pour the coffee into one of Arby’s old mugs.

I can’t drink without seeing her. Her grin in that stupid Christmas photo.

The day she stole my favorite hoodie and said it looked better on camera.

The time she fell asleep on my couch with a horror movie paused at the scariest frame—monster mid-lunge, teeth like knives—and woke up laughing because my scream had scared the monster back.

Safe or not, camera on or off, Arrow near or far—none of it matters if I don’t do the one thing I promised at her grave.

Find the men who killed her.

HOLO-BURST are snakes, but maybe not our snakes. The team’s new intel made that clear: lots of money, lots of cover-ups, not necessarily murder. Which means I’m back at square one with the one lead that stayed in my head like a splinter.

Nico.

A guy with a nice smile and traveler’s tan and a name that could belong to anyone. Arby had mentioned him once , over eggs and hash browns at The Spoonery, in that airy tone she used when she didn’t want me to worry. It’s nothing, Junebug. He’s older. Fun. He travels. No photos. Keeps it simple.

No photos. Keeps it simple. Yeah, okay, assassin.

I take my coffee to the living room and drop to my knees in front of the ottoman that doubles as my archives.

I pull out the shoebox that says SPARE CABLES and spill its actual contents: ticket stubs, receipts, thrifted polaroids, a tangle of lanyards from launch parties, and a rubber-banded stack of Arby’s old notebooks I can’t bring myself to throw away. My hands shake as I flip them open.

One is a brand log: ideas, quotes, schedules written in her loopy script.

Another is a mess of doodles and product names: HOLO-BURST circled, then crossed out, then scrawled with PAY US, CLOWNS .

The third is the one I’m looking for: a compact black Moleskine she used for randoms—lines with hearts, lists of restaurants, a stray lyric that stuck in her head for a day.

Two pages from the back: Nico – Atlas Room / smoked honey / 10:30. No date. The handwriting is frenzied happy. Beneath it: no photos (his rule) and a ridiculous winky face.

Atlas Room. I blink. That’s the cocktail bar down by the river with the velvet booths and the bartenders in suspenders who think they’re in 1927. I’ve been there exactly twice. It’s the kind of place you whisper at.

My heart starts a fast drum loop. I grab my laptop and type Atlas Room Arby Kate into the search bar.

Nothing obvious. But in my camera roll, I find a boomerang from the night we celebrated her 500K milestone at Atlas—neon sign flicker, a coupe glass catching light, her forearm sliding into frame to boop the rim of my drink.

The photo is mostly wrists and glass, but there’s a reflection in the mirror behind the bar—the suggestion of a man’s shoulder just beyond her elbow, a cuff with thin blue stitching. My stomach flips.

I zoom until the pixels break. The cuff has a tiny emblem stitched near the button—an anchor.

Shipping. Sailing. Traveling. An anchor doesn’t make a sailor, but Arrow’s always talking about patterns.

Arby’s archived stories are locked on her account, but I have backups.

I dig in my cloud and find the Close Friends export Render helped me pull.

I scrub the thumbnails for green-ringed dots, and there—blink and you miss it—a story from months before she died: a two-second shot of a matchbook with ATLAS ROOM in gold foil and a scribble under it: you + smoked honey = trouble .

The background is dim; the audio is mostly bar noise.

Then, muffled, a male voice with the kind of soft Mediterranean consonants movies hire for flirty villains: Bright girl. Arby laughs. Story ends.

Bright girl. The phrase punches me in the sternum. In one of my own voice memos, recorded weeks ago, I had whispered that someone at the cemetery called me bright girl and I hated that it made my stomach flutter. That wasn’t the cemetery man. That was Arby’s man.

I scroll through the rest. One blurry image of a hand with a signet ring holding a coupe glass.

The ring has a crest on it—maybe a gryphon?

Maybe a lion? Wealthy frat? Secret society?

My pulse spikes. I screenshot and tilt the image, boosting contrast until the crest pops a little.

Not a gryphon. A stylized wave under a compass rose.

Marina. My mouth goes dry.