Falling For My Deadly Bodyguard

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Chapter 2 Mia

Mia

A tall, vague shape cut from the darkness, standing where the streetlight doesn’t quite reach. I can’t see his face. I can’t see his eyes. I can’t see anything except the black shape of him and the knife hanging at his side.

My entire body starts to shake.

I lift my hands slowly, palms out, like that might mean something. Like a man with a bloody knife might see empty hands and decide not to hurt me.

“Please,” I whisper.

The shape tilts its head.

When he speaks again, his voice is wrong.

Too low. Too rough. Like he is forcing it deeper on purpose, dragging it through his throat until it becomes something that does not sound human anymore.

“You know what it means for you to be here,” he says. “You know what it means for you to see what you just saw.”

My knees nearly give out.

“I didn’t.” My voice breaks. “I didn’t see anything. I just... I just want to get him help.”

The man on the ground moves.

Barely.

His fingers slip from my wrist, leaving blood smeared across my skin. He tries to lift his arm, tries to put himself between me and the nightmare standing at the end of the alley.

“No,” he breathes.

It is so quiet I almost don’t hear it.

Don’t touch her.

That is what he is trying to say. I know it, somehow. I know it from the way his body shifts, from the way his hand reaches toward me even though he can barely lift it.

Then his arm drops.

His head turns slightly against the pavement.

And he goes still.

So still.

“No,” I whisper.

The alley narrows around me.

For one second, I forget the man with the knife. I forget the dark. I forget everything except the stranger at my feet who had been alive a moment ago. Breathing a moment ago. Begging me to run a moment ago.

He isn’t moving now.

He isn’t breathing.

Tears fill my eyes so fast the world blurs.

I look from him to the shadow at the end of the alley, panic clawing up my throat. “Did you kill him?”

The shape does not move.

Then he says, “Yes.”

A sob catches in my chest.

“And now,” he says, that false, awful voice curling around every word, “I have to kill you too.”

My shaking gets so bad I can hear my teeth click together.

“No. Please.” I take one small step back, then stop because there is nowhere to go. The wall is beside me. The dead man is behind me. The killer is in front of me. “Please, I...”

Think.

I need to think.

My brain is screaming too loudly to make sense of anything, but some survival instinct drags words out of me anyway.

“I can't see your face,” I say quickly. “I don’t know who you are. I won’t tell anyone. I swear I won’t. Please.”

The man tilts his head again.

I can’t see his expression. I can’t see if he believes me. I can’t see anything but that black shape and the glint of the knife.

But somehow, I know he's smiling again.

“Close your eyes,” he says.

My breath stops.

“What?”

“Close. Your. Eyes.”

Every part of me wants to run.

My feet tense. My body turns a fraction toward the street behind him, toward the only opening, toward light and noise and people who have no idea what is happening twenty feet away.

But he's blocking the exit.

And he has the knife.

And I'm shaking so badly I don’t know if I could make my legs work even if I tried.

So I do what he says.

I close my eyes.

The darkness behind my lids is worse.

I hear my own breathing first, thin and broken and useless. Then the soft scrape of his shoes against the pavement.

One step.

Then another.

My hands stay in the air. My fingers tremble. Tears slide down my cheeks, hot and silent, and I try not to make a sound because I don’t know if crying will make him angry.

The footsteps stop in front of me.

Then they move.

Around me.

My stomach twists so hard I think I might be sick.

He comes up behind me.

I feel him before he touches me. The warmth of another body too close. The shift of air against my bare arms. The sour metallic smell of blood and something sharper underneath it.

Then his breath ghosts over the side of my neck.

Hot.

Slow.

Wrong.

“If you tell anyone,” he whispers, his fake voice lower now, almost gentle, “I will find you.”

A sound breaks out of me.

Not a word. Not a scream. Something smaller. Something helpless.

He leans closer.

“I will take my time with you, pretty girl.”

My heart stops.

Oh God.

Oh God.

“I will toy with you,” he says. “I will make you wish you had listened. And then I will kill you the same way I killed him.”

I nod because I cannot speak.

I nod because his breath is on my skin and there is a dead man at my feet and my phone is on the ground and no one knows where I am.

“Do you understand?”

I nod harder.

“Say it.”

My throat burns.

“I understand,” I whisper.

For a moment, there is nothing.

No movement.

No sound.

Only his breathing near my ear and my own terror swallowing me whole.

Then he steps away.

I hear the soft scrape of his shoes moving back over the pavement. One step, then another, then another, farther and farther from me.

I do not open my eyes.

I can’t.

I stand there with my hands raised and my eyes squeezed shut, trembling so hard my bones ache. I listen until the footsteps disappear. Then I listen longer. I wait for them to come back. For the knife to slide between my ribs. For that voice to return from the dark and tell me he changed his mind.

Nothing happens.

Still, I don’t move.

The city exists somewhere beyond the alley. Music. Cars. Laughter. Life.

But inside the darkness, there is only me.

Me, and the dead man at my feet.

Me, standing there with my eyes closed for what feels like hours, too afraid to find out whether I'm alone.

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