One Week Later
The week passed in a blur of split shifts, sleepless nights, and carefully bottled panic.
Victoria had returned to the diner just three days after the attack—not because she had to, but because she needed to. The scent of coffee and syrup, the scratch of the chairs against tile, the buzz of the old neon sign—those were her anchors. Familiar. Human. Normal.
She scrubbed the counter with more force than necessary. She made jokes that didn’t always land. She laughed too loud, moved too fast, and pretended like everything was fine when customers asked why the diner had been closed.
“Plumbing,” she always said with a smile, "Total mess. Pipes exploded. I almost died.”
She never said how close to dying she’d actually come.
How she'd been thrown like a rag doll.
How she’d bi
