I awoke to find Viktor’s home empty of Viktor. I made breakfast for Cierra, but the two of us quickly grew antsy.

“Where’s Prince Charming?” groans Cierra, not for the first time. I’ve put on her favorite shows, got her paper to color on, but still, she can sense my nerves. I don’t know where he’s gone, but I can only imagine, and as the minutes turn into hours, it’s just getting worse.

And Cierra hates that her routine has been broken, and she’s not in a familiar place anymore. It drives her up the wall to not follow her schedule, and I guess I’m partially to blame for that. After all, working nights was the best way I could spend days with her, and I tried to make each one special.

“I don’t know, sweetheart. He’s probably just gone to get us some lunch.”

“He’s been gone forever,” she says, exaggerating as she slumps back against the couch. “And I miss kitty.”

“I know. We’ll be home to kitty soon.”

Honestly, the cat’s a survivor, and will definitely be fine ‘til we get back home. If it’ll ever be safe to go back home. I would’ve taken her with us, but she took off out an open window when those thugs broke in and I wasn’t able to find her before we had to leave.

“Is he my daddy?”

The question shakes me from my thoughts, and I look at her seriously. My kid is intuitive, if nothing else, and I lightly stroke her curly hair.

“Maybe, honey. Maybe one day. We need to figure some things out first.”

She nods at that and relaxes back for a second, lost in her own four-year-old thoughts. Unfortunately, that leaves me to my thoughts as well. I pull out my Kindle from my purse, but as I flick through the dozens of romance novels, I realize I’m definitely not in the right headspace for that.

Not when I don’t know where Viktor is, nor what my future holds.

I toss it aside and pick up my phone, the battery approaching the danger zone, and I put in a call to the house mom at the club.

“Hey Rosie. I’m not going to be able to make it in tonight.”

“Oh no, sweetie! Are you not feeling well? You haven’t missed a day in years... and that’s quite a feat in this business.”

I laugh. As if I had the option of taking time off work at the best of times. The only time I can even remember was when Cierra was a baby and she had a fever of 103, and I spent the night in hospital with her. Then I had to work even harder to get out of that debt.

Strippers don’t have great health insurance.

“Yea, I should be fine for tomorrow but I’ll let you know.”

“Okay,” she says thoughtfully. “Chicken soup. It’s good for the soul, you know,” she says and I can’t help but smile. She really is like a mother to us.

“Sure, Rosie. I’ll have that for lunch.”

“Good. Good. Rest up!”

As soon as the call is over, though, my mind is once more free to wander back to the growing dread in my stomach. I glance at the clock and it's already afternoon.

“What do you say we have some soup, huh?” I ask, knowing that any bachelor worth his salt had at least better have some canned soup in the cupboards. Honestly, I just crave the distraction.

But when I look in the cupboards, and then the fridge, I realize he must be living completely off of takeout, and I sigh.

“We can order in,” I suggest, but Cierra shakes her head.

“No! Soup, mommy. You made us soup last week, in the fridge.”

And that much is true, but the thought of going back there...

“C’mon, we’ll be back soon, and we can get kitty!”

“I don’t know, Cierra. What if we miss him?”

“Note,” she says, handing me the pad of paper she’d been drawing on. On the front page was three stick figures, done in blue, pink and red.

“Who’s this, huh?”

“You, me, daddy!”

I swear to God, Viktor, you better not disappoint this girl, I pray, and I pet her head. Maybe it would be good to head back home. I might feel a little less on edge, at least, back in my own kitchen. And if the cops were called... well, it’d just make things worse if I disappeared for a long time after two murders took place in my home. It’s better to face the music now.

“Alright, honey. I’m going to leave him a note saying we’ve gone home.”

She smiles at me, but she’s a bright kid. She can hear the hesitation in my voice. Honestly, I just don’t know how I’m going to handle the questions. Handle... what happened. We were innocent, it was self-defense, but innocent people don’t run.

So it’s time to not run.

I pack up our few belongings and we head outside to wait for our Uber.

Cierra’s well-behaved as usual on the drive back, and I’m relieved when we get there to see nothing seems to be particularly out of place. There’s no police presence… nothing.

We head on up the stairs into the building and the ease of it all begins to bother me.

Didn’t we hear sirens the other day? Weren’t they coming here?

There’s no way to know that, I tell myself. But then… that might mean I’m about to open the door to a ghastly sight for Cierra.

“Just wait here, sweetie. Mommy’s gotta run in and get something real quick,” I tell Cierra, giving her a kiss on the forehead.

I get my key ready and prepare to head inside, taking a deep breath before I slip it in and open the door.

But instead of a grisly murder scene I’m greeted by… nothing. It’s as if there were no killings on the floor. No sign of men dying. And I can’t wrap my head around it at all.

I’m confused for a moment, but quickly search around, checking the rooms of my apartment. Again and again, each room is empty, no signs of blood or death. Nothing.

It sends a chill down my spine, almost as bad as if I’d come back to the stinking corpses of the dead men.

“You almost done mommy?” Cierra says to me, standing there in the doorway, disobeying my orders to stay outside.

“Yes sweetie, just wait outside, mommy will be right there,” I tell her again before shaking off my discomfort and just getting down to work. I need to grab her a few things. Some food and toys, the things I didn’t bother grabbing when I was in a rush.

And luckily kitty is back, and I put her in her carrier.

Part of me wants to stick around and go back into the comfort of our home, but I know what happened here. And though I can’t see the bodies or the blood, I can feel it like a ghost that’s lingering over my shoulder as I gather Cierra and I’s things.

I use an old duffel bag, same one I used to come here originally for a brief trip. That brief trip where I met Viktor and conceived Cierra. I stuff as much as I can fit into it before getting ready to leave.

“Oh shoot,” I hiss before going to the fridge and pulling out the container of soup. This will definitely make Viktor’s place a bit more like home for us both.

“Alright sweetie, mommy’s ready now,” I say and turn around.

“Good, we’ll head right out then,” the strange man says, holding Cierra in front of him. There’s a gun in his free hand, out of her sight. “I expect that won’t be a problem for mommy, will it?” he says with a condescending smirk.

This time I have no choice. It’s not my life on the line. It’s Cierra’s.