Part 46
(Alex's POV)
Alex listened through the receiver, eyes half-closed, breathing steady.
Adrian's voice came through the static — sharp, cracking, scared.
Each word was like a pulse in her ears.
"You're lying," he said.
"Then how did it get here?"
She smiled without meaning to.
The tremor in his tone was beautiful — raw, honest fear.
Fear meant he still cared.
Fear meant he still remembered her.
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She adjusted the frequency slightly.
The device she'd hidden behind the light fixture whined, then steadied — just enough to let her voice slide through.
Not words this time, just sound.
A whisper, soft as silk, shaped by memory.
She doesn't deserve you.
It played perfectly.
Almost too perfectly.
She pictured him in the kitchen, staring at the flowers.
She'd chosen that flower carefully — one he'd once said reminded him of calmness and purity.
She'd turned that memory into poison.
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A small shiver ran through her as she watched the faint glow of the safe house through her binoculars.
Leah was pacing inside now, her hands in her hair, desperate.
Adrian sat motionless.
Everything was aligning.
But Alex could feel something else growing under her skin — a hum, almost like warning.
She'd wanted to show him Leah's deceit, to make him see the truth.
Yet as his fear deepened, a new question began whispering in her own mind.
What if he started fearing her too?
For a moment, that thought scraped across her chest like glass.
But then she buried it.
"No," she whispered to herself. "He'll understand. He always does."
She turned the transmitter off and tucked the receiver into her jacket.
The night air was damp, sweet with rot.
She looked once more at the house — her house, in her mind — and whispered to the darkness:
"I'm almost there, Adrian. You'll see. I'm the only one who's real."