CORINNE
My hands were still shaking when I circled my desk and yanked my phone out of the drawer.
I almost dropped it.
Twice.
I unlocked it anyway, thumbs clumsy, pulse loud in my ears, and went straight online like instinct knew where to run before my brain caught up.
Search bar.
His name.
Mine.
The company.
Old cases.
Anything.
Nothing.
No headlines.
No sudden resurfacing of my name where it didn’t belong.
No Nathan Caldwell dragging ghosts back into the light.
I jumped from site to site, refreshed feeds, scrolled until my eyes burned.
Still nothing.
The quiet should’ve calmed me.
Instead it made everything worse.
I leaned back in my chair with my head hurting.
“He doesn’t know where I am,” I said out loud, testing the words like they might fall apart if I didn’t hold them carefully.
“He doesn’t.”
The lie tasted thin.
My fingers curled into my sleeves, then my arms, like I could physically keep myself from coming undone.
I caught myself biting at my nails and forced my hands away, pressing them flat against the desk.
It didn’t help.
My thoughts wouldn’t slow as every worst case scenario lined up neatly, waiting its turn.
I couldn’t stay here.
There’s no way I’d be able to sit in this office all day, pretending everything was fine.
I hastily shoved my things into my bag and was already halfway out the door before I realized I hadn’t even locked my computer.
I didn’t care.
I nearly collided with Amelia as I shot out of my office, my shoulder clipping hers hard enough to make her gasp.
“Woah there,” she said, steadying herself before her eyes flicked to my face.
“Her expression shifted almost immediately.
“Are you okay?
You look… really pale.”
I swallowed and tried to tuck my hands behind my back, but the tremor betrayed me anyway.
“Yeah.
I—no.” My voice stumbled.
“I’m not feeling too well.
I think I need to go to the hospital.”
Her brows pulled together as she studied me.
“I was actually coming to get the list of parents attending the dinner party tonight…but I guess that’ll have to wait.”
“I’ll email it to you,” I whispered, already edging sideways, wishing she’d just move away.
“Before the end of the day.”
”Alright.
Just go on ahead.
I’ll let the principal know what’s going on.”
Relief hit me so hard it made my knees weak.
“Thank you,” I breathed and didn’t wait another second before moving past her.
Outside, I flagged the first cab that slowed and climbed in.
“Bed-Stuy.
Quincy Street,” I said to the driver, the words barely making it past my throat as I slammed the door after me.
I closed my eyes and leaned back on the headrest when the car pulled off.
‘I know who you are.’
It looped in my head, over and over, each repetition landing harder than the last.
I pressed my palms together, then apart, like I could shake the words loose.
Who exactly were they talking about?
Corinne Sterling.
The quiet teacher, who keeps her head down and follows the schedule to the minute while hiding in plain sight among children and lesson plans and harmless routines.
Or Lux.
The woman under red lights, skin on display, hips moving to music that never quite leaves your bones.
Smiling just enough to let sloppy, rich drunk men run their mouths and spill vital information while collecting and filing every careless word away.
Or was it… the name I buried so deep I stopped thinking of it as mine.
It shouldn’t matter.
But it did.
Because every version of me carried its own kind of damage.
Its own trail.
Its own consequences.
By the time the cab rolled to a stop right outside the narrow brownstone I’d been hiding in for over a year, my body was tight with something sharp and furious.
Fear had burned itself out on the ride over.
What was left was anger, hot and restless and looking for somewhere to land.
I paid the driver with shaking fingers, climbed out and unlocked the front door too fast.
It stuck, like it always did, and the irritation nearly sent me over the edge.
I shoved it open and stepped inside.
The apartment greeted me the same way it always did.
Cold.
Bare.
Temporary.
Even after all this time, it still didn’t feel like mine.
White walls with nothing hanging on them.
No souvenirs.
No proof that a real person lived here and planned to stay.
Just a couch I barely used, a table that never held company, and a two rooms that felt more like a stopover than a home.
That was the point.
I’m not supposed to have any root, attachment or trace.
But that was the least of my problems as I shut the door behind me, dropped my bag on the kitchen island and turned toward the farthest room down the hallway.
The one door I almost never opened.
I pushed it open and fumbled for the switch.
The lights came on too bright and I winced as the glare burned into my eyes.
When my vision settled, my chest settled a little.
The room was filled.
Documents covered every surface.
Stacks on the desk.
Loose papers littering the floor.
Folders spilling open on shelves, corners bent from overuse.
Notes in my handwriting layered over printouts, highlighted lines bleeding into one another.
Dates.
Names.
Red flags circled again and again like I’d been trying to force them into confession.
I stepped further inside, my pulse climbing as the familiar dread crept back in.
I stood in the middle of it all, letting the weight of the room press down on me.
Then my eyes shifted to the board.
It stretched wide across the wall, crowded with photographs of different men and women, scribbles, timelines and thick marker lines cutting across it all.
Strings of logic I’d built slowly, late at night when sleep refused to come for two years.
Everything led inward, converging toward the center.
Two faces.
The first was one I knew too well.
Nathan Caldwell.
Even after everything he’d taken from me, even after all the distance and silence and running, my body still reacted before my mind could catch up as cold awareness settled in.
The smile frozen in that photo used to undo me.
Used to make me believe I was safe, chosen, protected.
Now it felt like a threat.
And beside his picture, linked by lines I’d once tried to dismiss as coincidence, sat the second face.
A face I was seeing far too often.
In places he didn’t belong and in moments he had no business occupying in my head.
Lucian Delacroix.