Being ex–best friends with Jeffery Woods had done nothing but ruin your life. It left you with trauma no thirteen year old should’ve ever had to carry, along with a steady stream of unhinged death threats from obsessive fangirls who thought you knew more than you did. The fallout never really stopped. It clung to you, followed you, grew with you into early adulthood like a shadow you couldn’t shake.

Sometimes you wondered if things would’ve been different if your younger self had been better at spotting danger. If you’d kept your distance. If you’d never befriended him at all. Maybe then you wouldn’t have ended up tangled in the mess that always seemed to trail behind his name.

Because now you were here.

Kidnapped. Held by three people who were just as terrifying as the stories that surrounded them. Jane, still burning with revenge after Jeff slaughtered her family. Natalie, fiercely loyal and only interested in supporting her girlfriend, former proxy ties and all. And Jack, cannibalistic, quiet, and determined to dismantle the Operator’s entire operation one bloody step at a time.

And somehow, all of that had led you to this exact moment.

Your wrists were bound tight to the back of a plastic chair, the material digging into your skin. The air smelled like dust, mildew, and old perfume samples. A flickering overhead light buzzed weakly above you. You glanced around again, almost disbelieving it every time you remembered.

You’d been kidnapped and tied up in a run down mall.

Inside a fucking Claire’s, of all places.