I drop my shopping bags over a chair and close the front door. I grip the deadbolt, then have a thought.

If he’s stalking me at the hospital, he probably knows where I live.

My heart racing, I open the front door and step out onto the walk. I stare into the dark, down the quiet street, between the parked cars, into the recesses of the other buildings—nothing. Only a neighbor boy taking out the trash.

Feeling foolish and missing the adrenaline rush, I go back inside but pause over the deadbolt. Being home, facing a lonely night with no company but my grief—it’s my most feared time of the day.

I add to my list of insane actions and leave the deadbolt unlatched. I type my code into the security system and disengage it for the night.

The adrenaline returns. I embrace the fear I’ll now have to keep me company all night. If he tries, he’ll be able to get inside. It’s reckless, but it gives me something else to think about, something to keep me from another night of crying myself to sleep.

Besides, being perfectly good all the time, always doing the safe thing—it’s exhausting. I’m tired of it. I need something more than “nice” in my life.

If he wants to, he’ll be able to come in and . . . and . . . what do I want him to do? What am I afraid he’ll do? Maybe I’ll find out.

With a twisted smile and a ragged sigh of relief, I pull out my phone and type a text. I don’t want to send it, but it’ll be easier to text my news about being moved off the intensive care unit than it will be to tell Amisha tomorrow.

I’m off NICU.

I don’t wait to see what she’ll reply. I drop my phone in the basket on the cherrywood table. I’ll see if she responds in the morning.

I turn to my shopping bags. Inside the hanging one is a dress—satin and lace, ice blue and ivory. The one I’ll wear to the hospital benefit dinner. It was his favorite color on me—the blue that matches my eyes. He would’ve loved this dress, taken me out wearing it, showing me off like his prize. I was his prize daughter, if his only daughter.

My perfect grades—enough to get into the best medical schools in the country. My perfect looks—my trim figure, my pristine complexion, my highlighted hair, my fashionable makeup and clothes. Perfect for him to display.

It was the only way I could catch his attention—always giving him something he could present or brag to his work colleagues about.

I dig out the box for the new watch I bought and pry it open. This I can wear to work every day. The diamonds and the crystal face are too fashionable for a hospital job, but it’s pretty, small, and it won’t be in my way. It’s nice to have on something pretty when wearing scrubs all day.

The landline phone blinks with a message light. I groan. I know who left the message here since I ignored both of the ones he left on my cell. Blake, my older brother, means well, I think. But since he became the executor of the will, the finance manager for my trust fund, all around self-absorbed, number crunching, heartless, spineless . . .

I have no desire to talk to him. He hated our father, for a reason I still don’t understand, and he’s made the most painful time of my life seem like a surgical, clinical experience.

When I told him how much I missed our father—desperate for support from someone who should be sharing my grief—his response was, “You’ll forget him soon. Like everyone else should.”

Like a knife through my lungs. As if forgetting him isn’t the thing I fear most.

I don’t want to forget. I want to be numb. Distraction—I wonder if he’ll be there again tomorrow.

I wonder if he’ll sneak in my door tonight.

Just because I don’t want the answers to my old questions doesn’t mean the curiosity that’s plagued me for years has died. They reappear in my mind like ghosts, hovering over me. I want to not think about them. They should’ve been buried months ago.

But I was forced to move away from my family, across the country—from Nashville to California—and never told why.

* * *

I arrive the next day, and she’s already eating.

I gird myself against the instinctive need to go to her, to threaten her again. I force myself to wait beside the pillar at the entrance like always.

She has to come to me.

She hasn’t seen me yet, so I observe her puffy eyes, her hair flat and tightened in a ponytail, like she didn’t wash it this morning. Something sparkles on her wrist.

Diamonds. On a watch. Shiny and new.

Bitch.

I stare at the cloudless sky, forcing the urge to do her violence back into its tightly sealed hole. I can’t hurt her—yet.

“Who are you?” I know it’s her by the whispered sound of her voice. That would disturb me if I wasn’t so surprised to see her standing in front of me. Her eyes are wide like a scared little deer, like prey, fearing for her life. And still, she followed my plan, she came to me. “I don’t know your name.”

I can’t help my sadistic smile. This will be too easy. “We’ll keep it that way. For now.”

“How come?” she whispers, her eyes alight with an eagerness that excites me.

“My answers. You won’t like them. They’ll hurt you.” It’s a warning and a promise.

A gust of breeze blows a blond tendril of her hair across her eyes. She pushes it behind her ear with delicate fingers, fingers that move with a gentleness that bothers me.

Last night, when I touched her arm—her skin wasn’t just soft, it was supple, moldable, easily bruised. The sweetness about her, the naïveté—the need to devour it surges in me like a storm wrecks the shoreline.

I want to make her hurt.

I want to take her positive memories of that depraved man she called a father and obliterate them with the vile truth of the monster he was. Sunlight catches on the diamonds at her wrist, and the twist in my gut hardens to cement.

“You want the truth?” I say, with as much bitterness as I feel.

Her little throat clenches in a gulp. “I—yeah.”

It’s on my tongue. I lean toward her. She’s willing and listening. This is the moment I’ve waited for. My breath hitches. The evil in me bares its teeth.

But caution shouts in my brain, and I glance over my shoulder. Too many people, too close. No one can overhear. What I have to say is going to freak her out. She will get upset, and I don’t want her to make a scene.

“Why are you looking around?”

“Not here. Someplace else with no people.”

Her eyes sparkle, like I’ve said something she likes. “My condo.”

Surprise, delight—all those things roll around my head. She’s afraid of me, yet she’s giving me the opportunity to be alone with her. The beast in my chest roars with satisfaction.

“I’ll be there.” I give her a last brutal stare. I want her afraid. The more she fears me, the better it will be.

She closes her eyes and shivers.

Good. I turn and stride toward my truck.

Tonight, when I tell her that her father, a former president of Fenton University in Nashville, was in his private time a violent criminal—I won’t make it easy for her.

Tonight, she is going to cry.

* * *

My daydream of him in my condo—it’s going to come true.

What’s he going to do to me?

Amisha walks up beside me and pulls me from my fantasy. “Penny?” She glances where I was looking. “What are you staring at?” He’s too far away now for her to see him, thankfully.

A spark of self-preservation prompts me. “I have a date tonight.” I need a safety plan.

“A date?” Her eyes brighten, and she claps her hands. “That’s great. Who is he?”

“I met him online.” I feel bad for lying, but it’s better than telling the whole truth. I don’t want to have to talk more about my daddy issues. She’s spent years listening to me and my problems with him. I’d rather see her excited about the prospect of me going on a date.

She pulls out her phone. “I’ll call you to check in. Just tell me what time.”

A small smile creeps over my lips. She’s a great friend who really cares about me, and I’m glad for a little bit of help at least. I tell her what time, about an hour after I get home, giving me an hour alone with him.

“I’m so excited you’re going on a date, Penny. It’s been too long.”

Over four months. I almost wish it was a real date. But it is, in a way. It just started with him stalking me rather than over the internet.

I’m tired of being fragile and wounded. I want to be something else now.