The rain hadn’t stopped for three days. The streets were slick and shining, reflecting the neon lights of a city too busy to care about the shadows lurking just out of sight.

She noticed him first at the bus stop. Tall. Impossibly still. Dressed in black from his coat to his boots, with sharp features and colder eyes. He wasn’t staring at her—but somehow, she felt seen.

Damien wasn’t the kind of man you bumped into by accident. He moved like he already knew where you’d be, what you’d say, how fast your heart would race if he got just a little closer.

No one really knew who he was. Some said he was a doctor once. Others whispered about a man who left entire families missing in sleepy towns that never made the news.

But what no one knew—not yet—was that Damien was watching her now.

And for the first time in a long time, he wasn’t thinking about his next kill.

He was thinking about her name.