ALESSIA
I did not turn around.
Every muscle in my body wanted to — wanted to find the face that had written those four words, wanted to know if it belonged to a friend or a threat, wanted to understand who in this room knew a name that wasn't printed on any roster. Instead I folded the note once more, smaller, and held it in my closed fist under the desk, and kept my eyes on the slide at the front of the room like the sentence hadn't just rearranged the entire architecture of my morning.
He knows you're here.
Not he might. Not he suspects. Knows.
I waited until the professor called a ten-minute break before I moved, and even then I moved slowly, gathering my things with the unhurried rhythm of someone who had nowhere urgent to be, and it was only once I was in the corridor, swallowed
