ChapterThree
565 Words
CHAPTER THREE
Zariah
I didn’t go home.
Not right away.
Instead, I wandered—mind spinning, feet numb—through the scattered mist of central London, down streets I knew too well and through crowds I couldn’t feel. Cassian’s voice still echoed in my head, wrapping itself around every rational thought like smoke.
"You came back to the cage, Zariah. You just didn’t know I still had the key."
It wasn’t just arrogance. It was truth.
Somewhere between Rome and ruin, Cassian Moretti had learned how to bend people into shapes that suited his world. And now I was a shape he’d never stopped seeing—even if I spent five years trying to disappear.
I ducked into a late-night bookstore on Shoreditch High Street, needing silence, needing the past to stop screaming.
The owner, a balding older man with round glasses, gave me a nod but didn’t say anything. He knew me as “Anaya.” Quiet, private, obsessed with rare poetry and used crime novels.
He didn’t know Zariah.
No one here did.
Except Cassian.
He saw right through the new skin I wore.
I wandered to the back, between dusty shelves of hardcovers, and let my fingers trail along their spines until I stopped at the one that used to be mine—The Art of Disappearance. Fitting. I pulled it down. Opened it. Pretended like my hands weren’t shaking.
I hated him.
I hated that he still had this hold over my body, over my breath.
But more than anything, I hated that some part of me had always known he’d find me.
And maybe… maybe some sick part of me had been waiting for it.
---
Cassian
“Do we follow her?”
Adrian’s voice drifted through the cabin of the Bentley. I didn’t answer right away. My eyes were locked on her silhouette as she walked through the street, blending in with the others like a ghost with a face.
“No,” I said finally. “Let her think she’s free. She’ll come to me.”
Adrian snorted. “You sound awfully sure of a woman who vanished on you once.”
“She didn’t vanish.” I poured a drink, scotch neat. “She bled, she ran, and I let her go.”
Adrian turned, curious. “You let her go?”
I looked out the tinted window.
Zariah, stepping into that old bookstore. The one she used to talk about back in Rome, when she thought I wasn’t listening.
“I’m not making the same mistake twice.”
“Is this about revenge?” Adrian asked, voice lower now.
I swirled the amber liquid in my glass.
“No,” I said. “It’s about completion.”
He didn’t speak again.
Smart man.
---
Zariah
I stayed until closing. When the lights blinked and the old man yawned his way toward the front door, I bought two books and stepped back into the night.
Cassian wasn’t there. Not physically.
But I felt him in the air. Heavy. Inescapable.
I should have left London. Booked a flight to Cairo, or back to Cape Town. Or vanished to wherever the name “Zariah Blake” didn’t mean anything anymore.
But I didn’t.
Because the truth I buried five years ago still throbbed like an old wound.
And Cassian Moretti still had questions.
The problem was... so did I.
- Writer
