Chapter 1
The first time Vanessa Thompson saw him, she didn't realize he'd been watching her for years.
The new job was supposed to be a quiet restart—a way to bury the past beneath the beige walls and laminated smiles of Hollow Creek High. She moved through the hallways with a practiced calm, clipboard in hand, heels whispering against the linoleum. Yet nothing could disguise the way her body tensed every time someone touched her shoulder unexpectedly. Or how her eyes flicked to corners and shadows, like she expected a memory to lunge out of the dark.
He watched her that morning from the passenger seat of a matte black SUV parked across the street. Negan Simmons didn't blink as she stepped into the school, her curls caught in the late September wind, her skirt fluttering above the tops of those long, cautious legs. He knew how she carried herself—like a woman who had been prey once and swore never to be again.
He lit a cigarette. He didn't smoke, not really. But the burn kept his hands from trembling.
Inside the school, Vanessa's morning was already unraveling.
"Ms. Thompson," chirped the vice principal. "Room 214—student conflict. Apparently, a fight over a stolen vape. You know how they are."
She smiled tightly, nodded, and walked on. It wasn't the student fight that bothered her. It was the hallway she had to take—the one near the east stairwell. For some reason, her chest always tightened near that stairwell. As if her body remembered something her mind refused to.
The memory came unbidden—wet pavement, a scream that wasn't hers, and blood seeping into white ballet flats.
She stopped, hand braced against the wall. Not now.
But then a voice came—cool, low, hypnotic.
"You're late," it said.
She turned, but no one was there.
•••
Later that night, Vanessa stared at her ceiling fan as it rotated above her bed. She couldn't shake the feeling that someone had followed her home. Her windows were locked, her security system chirped obediently, but her skin tingled like she was still being watched.
In another part of the city, Negan sat at his desk, surveillance monitors glowing before him like stained glass. One was zoomed on Vanessa's front door. Another on her bedroom window. He never watched her change—he wasn't a voyeur, he told himself. He was a protector. An avenging fate.
He zoomed in as she pulled the hair from her neck, exposing a vulnerable patch of skin. His fingers twitched.
He remembered the first time he'd seen that same neck years ago—at a charity gala thrown by his father. Vanessa had been engaged to Richard back then. Negan had arrived late, drunk, and furious. When he saw her standing alone under the chandelier, he had known two things at once:
She didn't belong to Richard.
And she would belong to him.
•••
The memory twisted.
"Negan, please," she gasped in the memory, body arched beneath him, hands pinned above her head.
Even in memory, she'd begged. Not for him to stop. For him to never stop.
Negan jolted back to the present, breath ragged. He stood, fists clenched.
Soon.
•••
Meanwhile, Vanessa sat at her vanity, her fingers trailing down her collarbone. She didn't know why she kept thinking about him—Richard's brother. The one who never smiled. The one her cousin Hailey said gave "unholy energy."
But he had kissed her once. Before she broke off the engagement. Before everything shattered.
A secret kiss behind velvet curtains. A hand sliding up her thigh. A voice saying, "You don't even know who I really am."
And then nothing. Years of silence. Until now—when she swore she saw those same eyes in the hallway mirror behind her.
She told herself it was stress. New job. Old ghosts.
But deep down, her body remembered him. The scent of danger. The feel of being wanted so hard it left bruises.
Her hand drifted lower.
She closed her eyes.
And miles away, Negan's mouth curved.
He knew.
•••
Back at the Simmons estate, Julian watched the surveillance footage with cold, narrowed eyes.
"She's triggering him again," he said to Evelyn.
His wife flinched. "Maybe she can fix him."
Julian's glare was ice.
"Or maybe she'll break him for good."