Page 23 of Sinister Promise

A door across the sea of cubicles led to another hallway, then to a staircase that would take me outside.

I just needed to reach it and escape this building.

Pavel knew too much about me, starting with my real name.

Thank god I never gave the management office my real address. It was silly but with all the cloak and dagger warnings about rules and the office building tenants, I’d hesitated to give them too much information.

The only reason why I’d given them my grandmother’s name was I figured they wouldn’t care about a sweet old lady living in a state-run nursing home. She was listed as my emergency contact, but with a note only to contact her if it were a true emergency…like I was dead.

It was bitterly ironic how that actually almost happened tonight.

But if something did happen to me, I’d wanted at leastsomeoneto know to call her.

The pathetic sadness that I would have to rely on my asshole boss for that because there was absolutely no one else in my life was a cold stone in my stomach.

That must have been how Pavel found out about my grandmother; he must have looked in my employee file.

I was a fool to think I'd ever been invisible to him.

Now I had to disappear completely. Vanish where his resources couldn't track me.

Fuck, I needed a shower, with water as hot as I could stand it. I'd scrub his fingerprints from my skin with steel wool and empty an entire bottle of store-brand mouthwash until I no longer tasted Pavel Ivanov's essence.

I needed to cleanse him from my body, scour him from my mouth, then retreat to my favorite state: denial.

In the morning, I'd pretend none of it happened.

I was simply dismissed from this job and needed to find another late-night cleaning position.

Therapists probably had some technical term with too many syllables for how I processed trauma. Advanced trauma experience compartmentalization syndrome, perhaps.

I called it doing what I needed to survive.

Sometimes that meant ignoring what couldn't be fixed.

I couldn't fix what happened, just as I couldn't fix that Pavel wanted me dead...or worse.

This job was finished, and I needed a new one.

I glanced around one final time before my gaze landed on the desk beside me.

Pavel had left his gun.

The same weapon he'd used to kill that man, the same cold metal he'd traced against my skin.

Carelessly abandoned.

A murder weapon.

I reached for it, then pulled my hand back.

Taking it would cross a line I'd never imagined crossing. I wasn't a thief. I'd never seen a gun before tonight. What would I even do with it?

But Pavel's face flashed in my mind—the cold calculation in his eyes as he squeezed the trigger, the casual way he'd executed a man, then forced himself down my throat moments later.

Would I use it? Could I?

The metal gleamed in the moonlight, both repulsive and compelling.

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