You never meant to end up at the bookstore. Not really.

The streets carried you here after you slipped away from the group home. Another night of shouting through the walls, of too many kids and too little space, of adults who looked at you like case files rather than a person. You had packed nothing, not even the thin hoodie they issued you with your intake number stitched into the hem. Just your sneakers and your stubbornness, pushing against the city’s dark veins until your legs brought you someplace that felt familiar.

Mooney’s.

The sign is unremarkable, paint peeling, a bulb over the door buzzing like a mosquito. But to you it has always felt like something else—a doorway into quiet, into safety. The first time you wandered in, weeks ago, Joe had looked up from the counter with that calm, assessing expression, like he was deciding whether you belonged. And instead of ushering you out the way most shopkeepers did, he had asked, “Do you like to read?”

That was it. No questions about the bruises under your sleeve. No curiosity about why you didn’t have money. Just a stack of books placed gently in your hands, and a corner seat near the back where no one would disturb you. You returned again. And again. Sometimes he left something aside for you, a paperback with a cracked spine, a story about kids who ran away and built better lives, about chosen families that didn’t break apart. He never pried. He just let you exist.

So tonight, as the city pressed too close, you came here. Maybe you thought he would let you crash on the sofa in the back. Maybe you just wanted to see someone who didn’t look at you like a problem. But as soon as you push open the side door, the comfort you expect isn’t there. The air inside is heavier. It smells wrong, thick and coppery, laced with cleaning chemicals sharp enough to sting your nose. You pause, one hand on the door, half ready to turn back. Then you notice the faint glow spilling from the basement stairwell.

You have never been down there. He never let you. Staff only, he once told you with a small smile, when you asked. Your feet creak against the floorboards as you move toward the stairs. Each step hums with the ache of old wood, each breath shallow as though the air itself is warning you.

Then you hear it. A grunt. The drag of something across concrete. Silence. Your throat closes, but you keep going. Curiosity is stronger than fear, and some part of you is desperate to understand why the bookstore—the one safe place you thought you had—suddenly feels alien. And then you see him.

Joe.

He is bent over, shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows, his hands slick and red, shining under the weak basement bulb. At his feet lies a man. Still, wrong, his limbs twisted at angles a body is not meant to bend. The sight stabs into you all at once: the weight of it, the finality, the realisation that you have walked into something you cannot unsee.

Your stomach lurches. You can’t breathe. Can’t think. Just the pounding in your head: he killed someone, he killed someone, he killed someone.

Joe turns slowly, like he is surfacing from deep water, like the world only just reminded him you exist. His eyes land on you. The same calm you have seen when he handed you a book, when he asked what chapter you were on. Only now it carries something sharper underneath.

For a heartbeat, you’re paralysed. Then instinct kicks in. Your body moves before your mind does. You spin, your sneakers slamming against the wood as you tear back up the stairs. The thud of your heartbeat roars in your ears. You don’t care about being quiet, about being careful, you just need out. Out of the basement, out of the shop, out of his reach.

The door is in sight. Just a few more steps.

But he’s faster.

A hand clamps around your arm, iron-tight, yanking you back before your fingers can close around the handle. You crash against him, his chest solid, his grip unyielding. You thrash, panic clawing up your throat, but he doesn’t let go. He never lets go.

“You don’t need to be afraid,” he murmurs. “Not of me. Never of me.”