MARKED BY THE DEVIL'S GAZE

Clara's POV I could see the man watching me for the past three days, and tonight he decided to stop hiding. I saw him just as I had always seen him before: a shadow just past the streetlamp, not moving to the right, at the end of the campus path. Hood up. Plops his hands in his pockets. I kept walking. My heart said run. My pride replied, ‘don't you dare.’ "Hey." I stopped. I slowly wheeled around. The path was empty. Only wet pavement and orange light and the patter of rain against leaves. Nothing. Nobody. Then, he came out from the science building and fence, and my entire body froze. He was tall. Broad. Dark coat that I'm sure I spent more than I have paid for my whole semester. He had a face that stopped you right there not because it was soft but because it was not. Sharp jaw, dark disheveled hair and eyes, light as almost silver in the light of the lamps. The eyes looked at me as if I were the only one in the world. Then he was walking towards me. He asked, "Don't scream!" “Stop walking toward me like that,” I snapped. He stopped. There was a blink in his eyes. Surprise maybe. Or something older than a surprise. “Isabella,” he whispered. I blinked. "What?" “You look just—" He interrupted himself. His jaw tightened. He looked down at me with this heavy gaze, as if he had buried something a long time ago. He then blinked several times, and whatever it was closed back up. “I am sorry, you're not her." "No, I'm not," I said. “My name's Clara and, i don't know who you are, but you should back the f**k up now.” “I'm Adrian Leone.” The name made me shudder. I felt the eerie reverberation of it in me before it even had time to sink in. Leone. A name people in the city said quietly in fear. I said, “You're kidding me.” "I'm not." “Really back up. “Please listen to me," he said, "I need you to listen to me.” His voice was calm. The most terrible thing was that he was just as calm as if it were Tuesday night at his usual time on a regular evening. He used to corner female students on empty paths on campus between dinner and dessert. “Someone has been following you, not me, not my people, someone else, put a device in your bag 3 days ago and they've been watching your every move since Monday.” I laughed. It didn't sound as it should, it was too sharp, too loud for the empty path. “You've been watching me all this week. Well, what are you then?” “The difference," he said, "is that I'm the one here warning you. They're the ones who aren't going to.” I crossed my arms. But the rain started coming down, cold on the back of my neck, but I didn't move. I wasn't about to make him see my shiver. “Why should anybody follow me? I'm a broke college student, I have forty three dollars in my bank account, I eat instant noodles four nights a week, there's nothing that's worth tracking about my life.” “It's not about your life,” he said. “It's about looks”. I stared at him. "Isabella." "Yes." "Who is she?" There was something that passed through his face. A flinch, maybe pain. "Someone who's gone." "Gone as in dead?" He didn't answer. I took a deep breath out. In the bag I still had the tracker. I had not checked. There was a part of me that didn't want to, knowing that once I discovered it, I couldn't veil any of this from myself as being untrue. My fingers were moving but my hands weren't. I opened my backpack and thrust my fingers in the front pocket. I knew it right away, it was hard, small and round. It was a complete oddball that was there for no apparent reason. I took it out and lifted it in the light of the lamp. A tiny black disc. As tiny as a button.As small as a button. In all my life I never came across such a thing before. Adrian noted “it's been there since Monday.” “How did you know that?” He said, "I had someone watching you that night when I first saw you.” My eyes never strayed from his. “I thought you were somebody else, and when I realized you weren't, you were already in their system.” “Their system,” I said quietly. "What does that mean? Who are these people who are climbing the stairs? What do they want?" He said “they are looking for leverage. They believed that if they could track you, then they could come to me and they did make the same mistake that I did and they saw you on the street last week.” “They believe I'm Isabella." “They believe that you are related to her, related to me.” He paused. “Which means you're a target whether you like it or not.” I was there, in the rain, mulling it over. My number one worry at the end of last week was whether I could afford groceries AND phone bills this month. As a result, a mafia head was standing on my campus saying that I was being sought after because of my face. “I did not want this to happen,” I said. "I know." “It's not my issue.” “I know that's true," he said. “But, it's what it is.” I wanted to throw the tracker at his well made face. I wanted to yell at him to leave, that that was crazy, that I would go in and call the police and forget every part of this conversation. Except it was a real disc. Cold and little and very true in my hand. But Adrian Leone was not handled by the police. That was a fact in this city. “What is it you need from me? I asked. “There's nothing tonight," he said. “Tonight I just want you to take care.” He took out a card from his coat. He held it out to me. I didn't move to take it. In an instant he came forward, and placed it on the fence post between us, lying flat against the damp metal. “In case of any incident. Any incident. Call that number.” “If I don't wish to say it?” He locked his eyes on mine for a split second more than they required. “If that's the case, then I hope you're quicker than they” He turned, and began to walk back to the opening between the buildings. No rush. No looking back. Nothing in the world made Adrian Leone move faster than he wanted and he didn't feel the rain and the dark didn't bother him. I stood there until his footsteps were no longer heard. I then picked up the card. I said to myself that I must do this so I could throw it out later. I forced my way into my building, pressed the elevator button and I was alone in the lobby, trying to speak my heart down from a crazy to a normal speed. It was fine. Everything was fine. I hadn't been harmed, I was just being followed by people who were associated with the most dangerous family in the city of a terrifying, impossible, infuriatingly attractive man. The elevator opened. I stepped in. All the lights in the lobby immediately turned off. Total darkness. It looks like rain is going on outside, but I am completely silent except for my breathing. Suddenly, from some place above me, from the direction of my floor came a sound I felt in my bones. My door. Being kicked in.