Page 17 of To Love a Monster (Oaths & Obsessions #1)

I click on his browser history. Unremarkable, until it isn’t. Hidden sessions. Obscure searches. Private tabs wiped clean, but partially cached. Surveillance gear. Property records. GPS spoofing. Background checks.

Next, I look at cloud backup. He thought he was being smart.

But his sync protocols are sloppy. One folder, deep, nested behind layers of renamed junk directories, catches my eye.

Inside, I find a set of attachments. No titles.

No previews. Just files tucked into digital shadows like they’re meant to be forgotten.

I click and the images start to load slowly. At first, they’re almost indecipherable, dark, grainy, soaked in static. I enhance the contrast and sharpen the noise until shapes begin to form.

Then I see it, a man and a woman tied to chairs.

Their arms are behind their backs. Faces battered beyond recognition.

Their eyes are swollen shut, noses clearly broken.

Blood dried in thick, cracked rivulets down their necks.

Skin slashed open on the woman’s cheek. Duct tape pressed to the man’s mouth, half torn loose.

The woman’s head lolls to the side, neck limp, throat bruised in a single ugly ring. The man, his torso is bare, ribs sticking out beneath purpled flesh. Burns on his chest. A split above one eye that hasn’t clotted right. His jaw is broken, hanging slightly out of place.

They’ve been tortured. Systematically. And they’re clearly dead. My breath stalls in my lungs. Cold and solid. The man looks familiar. Not immediately, the damage makes it hard to tell. But there’s something about the color of his hair. the shape of his face, the slope of the shoulders.

Something that pulls at memory like a hook. I narrow my eyes, open another window on my personal laptop, and pull up my own report. I scan through it all. Local residents. Backgrounds. Images and then I find him. Jake.

The woman next to him is his wife. Registered co-owner of the hardware store they ran together. She was quieter. Kept to herself and barely showed up in local chatter. They weren’t flagged when I compiled the original report. There was no missing person alert or registered deaths.

But now... I open a separate window and dig into regional law enforcement reports, starting just after the date I submitted my pre-op file to Matteo.

And there it is. They were reported missing four weeks ago.

By neighbors. A few friends. No obvious signs of struggle in the house.

No activity on credit cards. Phones dead.

Vehicles still parked in their usual spots.

To friends and family, they simply vanished. No calls, no notes. They just disappeared without explanation. But the police closed the file. A little digging reveals that two days after the missing persons report was filed, an anonymous tip came through.

Said Jake and his wife were guilty of fraud, that they were under investigation.

That they fled before the charges could land.

The message implied that arrest was imminent and that the couple knew it.

There was no record of who came in with this tip.

But warrants were issued and the case was reclassified.

They were no longer “missing.” They were now seen as fugitives. The system believes they ran. But I’m staring at their corpses. Beaten, bound and dead long before those warrants were signed. Someone made sure the world would stop looking for them.

The backdrop is familiar. A narrow aisle with metal shelving. Pegboards half-full of tools and supplies. The wall behind them is lined with old signage, rusted and chipped, like it hasn’t been updated in years. It looks like the small hardware store in town, the one Jake ran before he vanished.

I recognize it from the reference images I pulled when I first built my report, one photo of Jake standing behind the counter, arms crossed, smiling like he didn’t have a single worry in the world. But I never went inside.

It’s been shuttered since I arrived, but I didn’t think anything of it, most shops rotate their hours during the quiet season.

A handful of locals, the occasional visitor passing through.

No need to stay open unless there’s money to be made.

I assumed it was just one of those places. Seasonal. Dormant otherwise.

But now ... seeing the store like this, in the background of a murder scene. Sealed off, silent, turned into a tomb, I realize it didn’t simply close for winter. I then find a message attached to an email, short and chilling.

“Access secured. The property is under observation. Awaiting next move.”

No names, no identifiers. I trace the email string and find the recipient’s address. It’s encrypted. Bounced through several dead nodes, scrambled headers. Anonymous and purposefully untraceable to the untrained eye.

I scroll further through the inbox, through older threads, tagged with the same encrypted sender. One stands out from a few weeks ago, same date Matteo received the anonymous threat.

“Meet at the drop. You know the spot. Assignment waiting. I want this handled clean.” Short and cold. No location, no signature. But the implication is there. Carl doesn’t need coordinates. He’s done this before.

I scan deeper through his folders, unearthed images, most scraped from social platforms, some stolen from digital galleries. Then I see it. Photos of Lila.

My blood runs cold. They’re not just pictures. They’re labeled, tracked by date and location. Some are old, portraits from her gallery shows, press photos, images she once smiled for without knowing who might be watching.

But others... Others are recent. Too recent. Lila jogging near the trail behind her cabin. Lila standing at her window, framed by sheer curtains. Angles she didn’t pose for. Moments no one should’ve seen unless they were there.

They mark where she goes. When. What she wears. How often she repeats patterns. He’s been studying her. Hunting her. And he kept her here, buried in the same directories as kill orders and torture files, like she’s the next name on a list.

I click into another folder labeled “VES.” Inside there are emails linked to the Vescari Syndicate. Matteo’s rivals. This confirms ties and direct communication. Carl isn’t acting alone. He’s a plant, a weapon. One they placed close enough to Lila to taste her breath.

Rage blooms under my skin, sharp and violent. And then my phone buzzes. Not the one in my hand. The other one. The one connected to his . The screen flashes silently, indicating an incoming call. Real-time data feed.

It’s an Unknown Caller ID. I don’t move, I just hold my breath and listen. The line clicks open, quiet as a knife unsheathing. Carl answers, his voice low and neutral. “Yeah?” There’s a pause, then a woman speaks. Calm, controlled. Like she’s giving orders in a place where blood is currency.

“Authorization confirmed. Begin extraction.”

My breath stops in my throat. The phrase is clean, polished. And her voice? Her voice is a ghost I’ve heard in darker places. Elegant, cold and unmistakable. And I know it way too fucking well.