His Deadly Obsession: She's his cherished possession.

The rain had turned the shortcut road that led into Green Meadows into a slick, black river. Aria Morgan's old Honda coughed, sputtered, and died. "No. No, no, no. Not tonight," she whispered, hitting the steering wheel. The dashboard lights flickered and went out. The rain hammered the roof so loud she couldn't hear herself breathe. She was eighteen, tired, and soaked to the bone even inside the car. She had closed her shift at the diner on Main at nine, counted her tips twice — enough for groceries for the week — and had been on her way back to her small apartment in Green Meadows when the car decided to quit. Green Meadows was not the nice part of Los Angeles. It was the part where the paint peeled, the streetlights flickered, and everyone knew everyone else's business. But it was home. It was where she had lived with Diana, and after Diana died, it was the only place she could still afford. She checked her phone. 10:47 PM. 3% battery. No signal. "Great. Just great." She zipped up her old hoodie over her red tank top, made sure her keys were tight in the pocket of her blue denim skirt, and stepped out into the rain. Her blonde hair was plastered to her face in seconds. Her apartment was still a twelve-minute walk if she cut through the clearing below the guardrail. The main road would take thirty. That's when she saw the lights. Three black Escalades parked on the shoulder just ahead, hazard lights blinking faintly through the rain. They shouldn't be there. No one from Green Meadows owned cars like that. Those cars belonged to downtown LA, to the hills, not to a muddy shortcut road. Aria's heart started to pound. She should go back. Lock herself in the dead car and wait. But that same curiosity that Diana always warned her would get her into trouble made her take one step closer to the guardrail and look down into the small clearing below. Three men. All in black. All wearing silver masks that caught what little light there was. On each mask, carved deep, was an emblem — a scorpion curled around an eagle's wing. They stood in a circle around someone on the ground. Aria couldn't see clearly through the rain and the darkness, and she was glad. She didn't see blood. She didn't need to. The stillness of the person on the ground, and the calm way the tallest of the three men crouched beside them, told her everything. This was not a fight. This was an execution. Aria's breath stopped. The tallest man suddenly lifted his head. Even with the mask, even from twenty feet above, she felt his eyes. Cold. Pale blue. Almost grey. He was looking straight up at her, straight at where she stood frozen behind the guardrail. Aria stumbled back. Her sneaker slipped in the mud with a soft, loud splash. All three masked heads turned now. The tall one tilted his head, studying her. Not surprised. Just... interested. Like she was a loose thread he hadn't expected to find. Then he stood up. Slowly, deliberately. Aria ran. She didn't remember scrambling back to the road, didn't remember yanking her car door open and locking it. Her hands shook so hard she dropped her keys on the floor mat. Her chest heaved. The rain blurred the windshield. _He saw me. He saw my face. My hair. My clothes._ Headlights flooded her rearview mirror. One of the Escalades had pulled onto the road behind her, stopping inches from her bumper. In the mirror, she could see the silver mask of the driver. Aria screamed and turned the key with all her strength. This time, the engine roared to life. She slammed her foot on the gas, tires screaming on the wet road, fishtailing as she sped toward the one streetlight that marked the entrance to Green Meadows. She didn't stop driving until she hit her apartment complex — Green Meadows Apartments, Block C, the one with the broken security gate. She parked crooked, ran up the stairs two at a time in her soaked denim skirt, and locked her door with both the deadbolt and the chain her neighbor, Mrs. Alvarez, had given her. She slid down to the floor, her red tank top soaked, her blonde hair dripping, shaking so hard her teeth chattered. She would tell no one. She needed a distraction. Her eyes landed on the small notepad on her desk Sketching had always been her escape. Her mother had discovered her talent when she was little and encouraged her to draw everything she saw. Over the years, Aria had become remarkably good at capturing faces from memory. Today, she wasn't interested in drawing anything beautiful She sat at her desk, opened the notepad to a clean page and picked up her pencil. Without thinking too much about it, she began to draw. The first mask appeared. Dark and sinister, covering most of the face except the eyes. She remembered the shape clearly, the sharp edges around the eye holes and the strange design carved into its surface. Then she drew the second. And the third. There was something similar about all three. She frowned and added the symbol she remembered seeing on each mask. A scorpion intertwined with an eagle. The scorpion's tail curled beneath the eagle's wings, while the eagle gripped it with its talons. "What the hell is that? It looked deliberate. Too deliberate to be random decoration. She continued drawing, her hand moving automatically until she reached the silver mask. She remembered him more clearly than the others. Perhaps because he had such captivating eyes. She drew the mask, then the cold blue eyes beneath it. Her stomach twisted. She had captured his eyes almost perfectly. "That's creepy," she whispered. She should throw the drawing away. She should forget everything. Instead, she carefully closed the notepad and placed it inside her desk drawer. She locked the drawer and slipped the tiny key beneath her pillow It was her little secret. Nobody in Green Meadows needed to know . Not her friends. Not her boss. Not the police. Nobody. Not Ryan — her best friend since they were five, who lived three blocks over in Green Meadows and who still kept a spare key to her apartment. If she told Ryan, Ryan would go looking for them. And they would hurt him. Not the police. Who would believe an eighteen-year-old girl from Green Meadows who said she saw three men in silver masks on a shortcut road? She would forget it. She would forget the emblem. For three months, she tried. She worked at the diner. She studied at the Green Meadows public library until midnight because her apartment Wi-Fi was cut. She applied for every scholarship she could find. And then, on a Tuesday morning that smelled like rain and cheap coffee, a letter arrived at her apartment in Green Meadows. *CAMPford UNIVERSITY — OFFICE OF ADMISSIONS* *PREMIUM SCHOLARSHIP — FULL TUITION + MONTHLY STIPEND + PRIVATE DORM* *Recipient: Aria Morgan — Green Meadows District, Los Angeles* Aria's hands shook so hard the letter tore a little. Campford University. The best university in LA. The one where old money families sent their children. The one girls from Green Meadows only saw on i********: reels. This was her ticket out. No more choosing between groceries and electricity. No more listening to the pipes scream at night. The stipend alone would cover her rent in Green Meadows and let her finally fix the Honda. She was laughing and crying at the same time when Ryan banged on her door — he never knocked properly — and came in holding two coffees from the corner store on the edge of Green Meadows. "Why are you crying on your kitchen floor again? Did the landlord raise rent again?" he said, in his plain white tee and jeans, hair still messy from sleep. Ryan. Her childhood sweetheart, though they never called it that. The boy who taught her to ride a bike in the parking lot of Green Meadows Elementary, who stayed after Diana's funeral when everyone else left. He had also applied to Campford. Business and Literature. "I got in," she whispered, handing him the letter. "Ryan, we got out." Ryan read it, then froze, then yelled so loud Mrs. Alvarez banged on the wall. "You got the premium! Aria, that's the top three in LA! You genius, fiery little—" "I know!" She was sobbing now. "We both get to leave Green Meadows." "We both do," Ryan said, softer now, and pulled a crumpled envelope from his own backpack. "I got mine yesterday. I was waiting to tell you at the same time." Two letters. Two kids from Green Meadows. Both going to Campford. For the first time since that night on the canyon road, Aria felt safe. Felt like that night was finally behind her. She folded her Campford letter and tucked it into her drawer. She didn't know that the emblem she had seen in the rain — the scorpion and the eagle — was embroidered on every Campford University blazer. She didn't know that the three black Escalades were registered to a private building on Campford campus, a building students whispered about called THE HUNTERS. And she didn't know that the man with the cold blue eyes had been looking for the blonde girl in the red tank top and blue denim skirt from Green Meadows for three months — and that her scholarship letter had just delivered her right to him.