Page 57 of Scarlet Chains

I’m reaching for the door handle when my phone buzzes with a text. The name on the screen makes me freeze.

Jack.

From Scarlet Fox Boston.

What the fuck?

I stare at the message like it might change if I blink hard enough. Jack hasn’t contacted me in over a year, not since I disappeared to Budapest and left that life behind. He doesn’t even know I left the country, let alone that I’m back.

But why would he? He was just a bartender at a bar I should never have walked into.

The message is short, casual, like we talked yesterday instead of fourteen months ago:

Still interested in the girl in Room 5?

My pulse jumps, pounding against my throat. Room 5. I remember that room— red walls, black furniture, the scent of expensive perfume and priceless secrets.

But why is Jack asking about it now? And why does something in my gut twist with a premonition I don’t want to name?

I almost hold my breath as I type back:“Why?”

The response comes faster than my next heartbeat:

“If you are, you might want to come as quick as you can.”

I stare at the screen until the text starts to blur. Room 5. The girl in Room 5. There’s only one girl I care about in this entire city, only one woman who could make Jack think to contact me after all this time.

No.

The word screams through my mind even as my body moves without conscious thought.

No, not there.

Not like that.

But even as I deny it, pieces click together with sickening clarity. Ilona’s been ignoring my calls for days. She’s struggling— I could see it in the careful way she held herself, the exhaustion around her eyes. And Scarlet Fox isn’t just any place. It’s where we met. Where she found solace once before when her world was falling apart.

Beautiful. Broken. Looking for comfort.

From a man she doesn’t know is me.

This is the answer to your prayers, mudak.

I’m out the door and down the hall before my conscious mind catches up, footsteps muffled by plush carpet as I sprint for the elevator. The ride down feels like falling into hell, each floor bringing me closer to a reality I can’t accept but can’t ignore.

If she’s there— if my Ilona is in that place, in that room— it’s because she’s looking for something.Someone. Someone who isn’t me… yet is.

Maybe what I’m about to do is wrong on every possible fucking level, but I’m out of options. There’s only one door open to me now.

The door to Room 5.

And I’m going through it.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Ilona

I lie on the worn-out sofa in my mom’s tiny rented apartment, staring at the water stain on the ceiling that looks like a bruise against the yellowed plaster.