Page 18 of The Hanging Dolls (Zoe Storm #1)

SEVENTEEN

Zoe climbed the narrow stairs to the attic, her small feet making the old wood creak under her weight.

The dim light bulb barely cut through the dust and shadows as she pushed open the heavy door.

The air was thick with the smell of aged wood and forgotten things, and she wrinkled her nose, brushing a stray cobweb from her face.

“Come on, come on,” she muttered to herself, her eyes scanning the cluttered space.

Boxes were stacked haphazardly, old furniture covered in sheets, and stacks of yellowed newspapers sat in a corner.

Gina’s wails echoed faintly from downstairs, a high-pitched cry that made Zoe’s heart race.

Her baby sister had been inconsolable, demanding her favorite doll that seemed to have vanished into thin air.

Zoe sighed, determined. “It’s gotta be here somewhere…”

She pushed aside a box labeled “Christmas Decorations” and then another marked “Rachel’s Stuff,” but there was no sign of the doll.

Her eyes fell on a small, worn box in the corner, half-covered by an old blanket.

It didn’t look like it had been touched in years.

Curiosity piqued, she knelt down and pulled the box toward her, the blanket slipping off to reveal its faded surface.

The box creaked as she opened it, revealing a jumble of papers and…

passports? Zoe frowned, pulling out the small, navy blue booklets.

Three of them were in her mother Rachel’s name, but each had a different last name.

Her heart pounded as she flipped through the passports.

Different photos, different names, but all of them Rachel.

And then there were three more, all with Zoe’s picture, but none with her real name.

“What the…?” Zoe whispered, her fingers trembling as she held the passports.

Confusion churned in her gut. Why would they have so many passports? And why with different names?

Gina’s cries brought her back to the moment, snapping her out of her thoughts.

Shoving the passports back into the box, she closed it hastily and pushed it back into the corner, covering it with the blanket.

She grabbed the old, dusty doll that had been sitting nearby, almost hidden, and hurried back downstairs.

When she reached the living room, Rachel was trying to soothe Gina, who was red-faced and sobbing. Zoe hesitated for a moment, then stepped forward, holding out the doll.

“I found it,” she said, her voice softer than usual.

Gina’s eyes lit up, and she snatched the doll from Zoe’s hands, the tantrum immediately subsiding.

Rachel offered Zoe a relieved smile. “Thank you, honey.”

But Zoe didn’t smile back. “Mom,” she began, her voice low, “I found something… upstairs. In the attic.”

Rachel’s smile faltered. “What do you mean?”

“There was this box… with passports. A bunch of them. They had your picture and mine, but with different names. What’s that about?”

Rachel’s expression instantly changed, the warmth draining away to be replaced by a guarded, almost panicked look. She stood up straighter, her eyes narrowing. “Zoe, that’s nothing you need to worry about. Forget you saw it.”

“But—”

“Zoe.” Rachel’s voice was firm now, almost sharp. “I said forget it. It’s nothing. Go and do your homework!”

Zoe flinched at her mother’s sudden coldness. Tears bubbled in her eyes. What was she hiding? Rachel called after her but Zoe ran to her room and shut the door behind her. She threw herself on the bed and cried into her pillow, deciding that she was going to uncover Rachel’s secret.

A drop of sweat slid down Zoe’s nose and landed on her cracked, lower lip.

She blinked through the pulses of heat unfurling from the baseboards lining the room.

The man in front of her was huge—easily over six feet tall, glistening pale skin covered with curly hair, and muscles like ropes twisting down arms that were as big as her thighs.

He could easily squish her head between his legs. For a moment, she could hear the sound of her skull cracking and brain squelching.

“Bruiser! Bruiser! Bruiser!” the rowdy crowd chanted, thirsty for blood, her blood.

She kept her arms raised in tight fists, circling him in the makeshift ring, with chalk marking the boundaries and corners by sturdy chairs.

She dashed forward to take a swipe at him. He dodged her with a smirk on his face, not taking any of this seriously.

But he was favoring his left leg. There was a mild swelling on his right knee cap. The unruly shouting and egging on dipped into silence as she lunged forward, her leg hitting that swollen knee cap.

“Argh!” A scream ripped out of his throat and he lost his balance. The crowd fell silent. No one was expecting this. But Zoe didn’t waste any time, and with her bare hands, she landed brutal punches under his ribs.

One. Two. Three.

It took one fling of his arm to the side of her head to send her to the other side of the ring.

Pain ricocheted through her body as she rolled away, blinding her for a moment. She was on her back, her eyes adjusting to the sharp beam of white light overhead.

The crowd erupted in delight. She knew Benny was making money off of this.

Who would bet on her against Bruiser? As her brain tried to settle down in her skull, a memory surfaced and suddenly she found herself in another place, another time when she went undercover for two years to take down a sick man.

“I see it inside you,” he had said, twirling a strand of her hair around his forefinger as they lay in bed. The bulb overhead flickered, engulfing the lower half of his face in the shadows until only his eyes remained—glowing with a sickening reverence.

“Darkness?” Zoe ventured a guess, waiting for the drug to take effect.

“Cruelty.” His finger grazed the side of her face before his eyes closed and the rest of him slackened on the bed.

Zoe covered his nude body with a blanket, her heart thundering against her chest. It was another night she had managed to get away from his touch. But it wasn’t the close call that had left her nerves crackling.

It was what he had said. How did he know? Her vision melted into Bruiser standing over her, sneering that a woman had got one up on him. As he began kicking her down, her body curved into a ball, absorbing the blows into her back. But when she peered at him, she didn’t see Bruiser—she saw him .

She blinked. And her sight was bathed in hues of red. With a guttural grunt that sounded like an animal, she crawled out from between his legs, her arm smacking him right between the legs.

Someone yelled foul. It was against the rules. But there were no rules in the real world. The real world was unfair.

Bruiser dropped to his knees, holding his junk, his neck straining and turning red.

Zoe fitted his fat head in a deadlock and dragged him down to the ground with her.

The rage that had been simmering inside her all day now boiled over, and she gripped him tighter, despite the fact he could barely breathe.

It seared her how unfair everything was.

How that man from the motel was driving an expensive car, minting money and getting action, all the while betraying his wife.

How that man from the diner was walking free while potentially abusing that waitress.

And how that monster she had slept next to for two years as part of her undercover assignment never got to see the inside of a prison cell.

Cold nights when the fear that the sedatives she slipped him wouldn’t work held her in a tight wrench.

Thwack.

When she felt his leery gaze sliding over her skin like snake.

Thwack.

The defeated and blank faces of the other innocent women she was unable to protect from him.

Thwack.

She carried the weight of the collateral damage inside her. Two years of an assignment to nail the bastard—he was dead, but he still infiltrated her mind, his voice and scent embedded deep inside her.

Thwack.

“It’s done! It’s done!” She felt arms loop around her, pulling her away from Bruiser who had tapped out and was fading away. “What’s wrong with you, Z? You wanna kill him?” Benny’s face was twisted in panic.

Her breath came in ragged grasps. “Sorry.”

“You’re not supposed to strike between the legs.” Benny gritted his teeth. “Now all these folks want their money back!”

The crowd was angry, looking at her in disgust.

“I’ll get you your money back.” Her body suddenly felt too heavy.

A dull pain stretched on the side of her face where she had been struck.

She dragged her feet away from the fighting arena, relishing the pain, feeling it course through every fiber of her being.

There was a burning tightness that resided under every nerve, muscle, and organ.

At least this sore, aching pain was better than that .

She threw one last glance over her shoulder at Bruiser.

But she didn’t see Bruiser. She saw a thick, impenetrable, velvety mass of black that had killed Rachel.