The Basement Wolf

Chapter 16. Collision

The marble gleamed like ice under a chandelier’s throat. Sandra kept her head down, the catering cap biting her scalp, collar starched stiff against the sweat pricking her neck. The uniform smelled of starch and borrowed time. In her ear, Andy’s voice slid in, dry as sandpaper:

“Breathe, Sonia. Scanners love confidence.”

The guard at the loading bay flicked his wrist. The tablet blinked. Sandra tilted the screen toward her face as if fascinated by her own fake name.

Green.

The gate beeped. The man waved her through with a grunt. One hurdle down. A hundred more waiting in the marble labyrinth ahead.

She pushed the empty cart down a corridor lined with orchids like pale eavesdroppers. Music murmured from some distant ballroom—a string quartet folding over laughter fattened with champagne. The smell was sugar, lilies, money. Her pulse jammed in her throat.

“You’re in,” Andy said. “Kitchen’s thirty meters east. Don’t stare at the art. It stares back.”

Sandra adjusted her grip and turned into the service hall. The swing door breathed heat into her face—steam, garlic, the bite of rosemary. Stainless counters flashed like teeth. White-jacketed cooks barked orders over the hiss of sauté. Noise thick enough to drown a body.

She slid into rhythm—plating, stacking, moving trays—her motions mechanical, her brain elsewhere: on the blueprint burned behind her eyes, on a pantry door that needed two pushes, on a boy whose lullaby had turned to a leash.

“Smile, sweetheart,” Andy murmured. “You look like you’re plotting regicide.”

“Maybe I am,” Sandra muttered, lips barely moving.

A crash of laughter cracked the kitchen. Someone cursed in Italian. Sandra kept her eyes down, fingers ghosting the edge of a tray until the pulse in her wrist cooled. She was blending, vanishing, until the air changed—thicker, heavier.

Boots scuffed tile.

“Hey.” A voice, too close. Male. Wrong.

Sandra looked up—and the world tilted.

The guard filled the doorway like a bad memory in uniform black. Square jaw, scar clipping his brow, eyes narrowing as if trying to scrape rust off a recollection.

“You,” he said slowly, head c*****g. “Do I—know you?”

Her stomach punched ice. Recognition slammed through her ribs like a fist. Loading dock, night air, his shout splitting the dark while I ran barefoot through gravel—

He took a step. Brows knitting. “Yeah. I’ve seen you—”

Sandra’s mouth curled before panic could eat her. A slow, lazy smile—a sin in soft motion. She dragged a finger over her bottom lip, let her tongue flick the pad, a glint of teeth under the fluorescents.

“Maybe,” she purred, voice dropping into smoke. “Maybe you’ve seen me…somewhere fun.”

His pupils bloomed. The scar twitched. “Fun, huh?”

She leaned in just enough for heat to whisper between them, breath sugared with the ghost of wine she’d never drunk. Her voice hooked under his ribs like a wire. “Maybe after my shift,” she murmured, letting the words hum against his ear, “we find a dark corner. See if your memory improves.”

The kitchen clanged on. No one looked. The world narrowed to his grin—slow, stupid, blooming like rot.

“Yeah,” he breathed, eyes sliding down and back up with all the grace of a crawling insect. “Yeah, okay.”

Sandra’s fingers trailed the edge of her tray, nails clicking like punctuation. “Then go. Before someone wonders why you’re drooling on the sauce.”

He laughed under his breath—wolf without teeth—and backed out, ego snug as armor.

The door sighed shut. Sandra’s spine sagged a breath she didn’t dare make sound.

“Jesus Christ,” Andy crackled in her ear, low whistle riding the static. “You just weaponized saliva.”

“Worked, didn’t it?” Sandra hissed.

“Worked so hard I need a cigarette,” Andy said. “Move. You’ve got a two-minute window before he brags to someone and the clock starts chewing.”

Sandra wiped her palms on her apron and pivoted toward the east wall. Pantry door. Heart pounding the numbers like Morse: one push, two. It sighed inward.

She slipped through and let the dark swallow her.

The service corridor was a throat lined with gray tile, air stale as secrets. Pipes hummed overhead like distant bees. She moved fast, rubber soles kissing silence, one hand grazing the wall for balance. Behind her teeth, Andy’s voice threaded calm:

“Fifteen meters to the bend. Your east blind spot starts now.”

Sandra’s pulse drummed. Every step cinched the knot tighter. She saw the blueprint in her skull—the spine of hall, the storage closet with the afterthought wire, the locked door like a clenched fist.

Five meters in, she crouched, peeled an adhesive strip from its backing, and slapped it under a frame. The door ping would sing if anyone breathed wrong on that hinge. Insurance. Not mercy.

“Status?” Andy’s voice.

“Alive,” Sandra whispered. “Moving.”

Then—she heard it.

Faint. Thin. A child’s melody, broken on the edges like glass worn by tides. Not imagined. Not memory. Real, winding through the ducts like a ghost humming lullabies to steel.

Her throat closed. Rage flooded in, raw and bright, chewing the oxygen to shreds. Liam. I’m coming. Hold on, baby—

She rounded the second bend.

And froze.

Smoke laced the air, blue and bitter. A shadow leaned against the wall, lazy as sin. Cigarette ember burning like a watchful eye. Suit black enough to drink the light.

Stefan.

Her gut hit ice. She pivoted, muscles coiled to retreat—but the corridor was too thin, her breath too loud, his smile too fast.

“Well,” he murmured, voice coiling like silk soaked in poison. “If it isn’t the ingénue who forgot her cue.”

Then he moved.

Steel fingers clamped her wrist, yanking her forward so hard her shoulder sang. Her back hit the wall, plaster biting bone. The cigarette smoldered on the floor like a dropped star. His other hand caged her throat, thumb grazing the flutter of her pulse with obscene intimacy.

“Still the same fire,” he whispered, breath a scorch of smoke and wintermint. His mouth hovered near her jaw, cruel heat dripping in every syllable. “Do you know how many nights I’ve thought about this throat? About the sound you make when—”

Her knee drove for his groin. He caught it mid-air, slammed it sideways until her hip screamed.

“Ah-ah,” Stefan crooned, pinning her tighter. “Not tonight, little stage. Tonight, I write the lines.”

Her nails carved arcs down his cheek, blood beading like rubies. He only grinned wider, teeth white knives in the dim. “Claws,” he hissed. “God, I missed those.”

“You’ll miss your head,” she spat, thrashing, heel grinding for his instep. He laughed low, pressed harder, hips a barricade.

“When I’m done tasting you again,” he murmured against her ear, words crawling like centipedes, “I’ll kill you slow. So slow the walls learn your name.”

His hand slid, rough silk down her spine. Her breath sawed, fury detonating behind her eyes. She bucked, twisted—but the wall held, merciless, biting into her bones while his mouth curved like sin.

“Still the best stage I’ve ever played on,” Stefan whispered, lips grazing her temple.

“Burn,” she rasped. “I’ll burn you to—”

CRACK.

The world snapped white.

Stefan’s head jerked sideways with a wet crunch. Blood arced like punctuation across tile. His grip slackened, knees folding wrong. He hit the floor boneless, smoke curling from the stub crushed under his boot.

Sandra sucked air like fire, throat raw, vision jittering between light and dark. A shadow loomed through the haze—broad shoulders, jaw locked in iron, eyes a storm barely chained.

Bradley.

The iron bar in his hand dripped red as the room held its breath.