Beauty and the Devil

chapter 26

Samantha’s POV

After dinner, I didn’t touch the ring.

Aaron had placed it between us with no speech, no gesture — just a box opened quietly and left there, as if time itself would make the decision for me. I stared at it while the candle flickered in its glass holder, while the server cleared our plates, while Aaron watched me with that careful, unreadable face.

I didn’t give him an answer.

Instead, I folded my napkin slowly and said, “I’ll think about it.”

It was the only thing I could say without lying.

He nodded. Not surprised. Not offended.

When we stepped out into the night air, the restaurant’s soft lighting spilled onto the sidewalk, and the cold finally found my arms. I pulled his coat tighter around my shoulders. I had forgotten mine again.

We walked to the car in silence. Just before I reached for the handle, he said it:

“You’ve got a month.”

I turned toward him.

He didn’t smile, exactly. But his expression shifted, a small tilt of his mouth that might’ve meant something once. Now it felt practiced. Finished.

“A month,” he repeated, “and then I’d like to stop waiting.”

He opened the door for me.

I didn’t respond. I got in and shut it. Not hard. Not loud. Just done.

***

Michael still hadn’t called.

Every morning, I woke up hoping for a single text — even just a “hey.” Something short. Something stupid. Anything that would tell me he was still out there. Still okay.

By the third day, I knew he wasn’t just avoiding me.

By the fifth, I stopped pretending.

I stopped checking for missed calls and started making them. I called every number he used to keep in rotation — ones I hadn’t dialed in years. I messaged guys I’d only met once, girls he used to party with, even people I didn’t like. No one responded.

Until someone finally did.

It was a voice message. Not a text.

I was sitting on the edge of the bathtub, fully dressed, lights off, scrolling my contacts again when it buzzed in.

I pressed play.

The voice was muffled, rushed, like it was recorded under a blanket or in a stairwell.

“Tell him to stop asking about the Vasilek crew. He’s playing with people who don’t bluff.”

That was it. No name. No context. No instructions. Just that warning, dropped like a stone in my lap.

I listened to it twice before deleting it.

I wanted answers. Not reassurances. Not vague concern. I didn’t need Aaron’s calm voice telling me everything would work out or his measured, lawyer-like tone that made every danger sound like a negotiation waiting to be postponed. I didn’t want another hot cup of tea or a folded blanket. I wanted something solid. I wanted someone who could look at a threat and not blink. Someone who could tell me what was really happening without sugarcoating it. I wanted force. I wanted certainty.

What I got instead was silence.

The next morning, while I was still deciding whether or not to reply to the voice message, a new message appeared on my phone from an unfamiliar number. No words. Just our street name and apartment number, sent plain and unmarked — as if whoever had written it didn’t think they needed to say anything more. The moment I saw it, my stomach clenched in a way that wasn’t fear exactly — more like the body catching up to what the brain had already started to understand.

A few hours later, another message arrived. This one had a photo attached. It was taken from across the street, zoomed in and slightly tilted, as if it had been snapped quickly and then sent just as fast. It showed me and Aaron outside the small café two blocks from the apartment. I was holding a paper cup, my other hand pushed into my jacket pocket, head turned slightly toward him. Someone had drawn two red circles around us, one around me, one around him, not neatly, but deliberately. The kind of thing people do when they want you to know you’ve been marked.

I waited until Aaron got home to show him. He’d gone out to get groceries, like it was any other day, and came back with a bag full of fruit and too much bread. I didn’t speak when I handed him the phone — just held it out. He took it, looked down, and stayed very still. He didn’t say anything at first. His expression didn’t shift much, but I saw it — that pause in his breath, the slow way his eyes scanned the image, the tension in his fingers as they curled just slightly around the phone. When he finally did speak, his voice was too even, too careful.

“I’ll report it,” he said. Then he paused. “But we can’t escalate this. Not yet.”

He tried to say it like it was strategy, like this was smart and responsible, but I heard what was underneath. He wasn’t calm. He wasn’t calculating. He was afraid. Afraid of whoever took that picture, afraid of whoever sent the text, afraid of what it meant if this was just the beginning.

And in that second, everything fell into place.

The soft hands. The long pauses. The quiet dinners and folded towels. The way he watched me, not with desire, not with confidence, but with hesitation. Aaron had always wanted to protect me, but he’d never been equipped to. He was the safety I told myself I should want, the quiet man in the quiet room, waiting for me to stop needing more.

But that kind of safety didn’t matter now.

Not when Michael was still gone. Not when people were sending threats instead of answers.

That night, after we’d both gone to bed and the apartment had gone still again, someone knocked on the door.

Just once. Quick. Sharp.

I didn’t move at first. I lay in bed, heart suddenly loud, waiting for something else — a voice, another knock, anything — but nothing came. After ten minutes, I got up and checked the cameras. There was no one there. Just a box sitting on the doormat.

I opened the door slowly. The air was cold. My hands were shaking.

I brought the box inside. Set it on the counter. I stared at it for a long time, then washed my hands before touching it again. There was no tape, no writing. Just plain brown paper, folded tight.

Inside was Michael’s hoodie.

It was soaked in blood that had already dried. Dark stains spread unevenly across the front. When I picked it up, the fabric crunched a little in my hands, stiff with dried patches. The smell hit me last — iron, sweat, something sour underneath.

I felt something in the pocket. I reached in and pulled out a single bullet.

No note. No explanation.

Just a bullet.

And a hoodie I’d seen my brother wear a hundred times — now ruined, filthy, and reeking of something I didn’t want to name.

I stood there for a long time, holding the fabric in my fists, not crying, not breathing properly, just staring at what was left. Then I moved to the floor and sat down with it in my lap like it was something fragile.

Eventually, I reached for my phone and typed a message to Clyde. I didn’t try to be brave. I didn’t try to make it neat.

Please. I need you. I think something’s happened to Michael. I think they have him. Please help me. Please.

I tried to call too, but it went straight to voicemail. I don’t know how many times. Eventually the phone started to overheat in my hand.

I sat there on the floor of the kitchen, phone glowing faintly against my palm, my knees pulled to my chest, and the silence pressing down from every corner of the room.

Aaron came in. I heard him before I saw him — soft steps, always too careful.

“Samantha?” he said. He crouched beside me. “What happened? Talk to me—”

I pushed him off. Not hard, but fast. He reached again, and I shoved harder.

“I said no,” I snapped.

“Please,” he said, reaching for me again. “Let me help.”

“No,” I said. My voice cracked, but I didn’t stop. “I don’t need you to hold me. I don’t need tea. I don’t need patience.”

He sat back, stunned.

“I need someone who can actually do something.”

And I sat there, surrounded by the quiet, by the blood, by the bullet, and by the man who thought he was helping — while the man I actually needed still hadn’t answered.

And in that moment, I felt it deep in my chest: Michael might be dead. Clyde wasn’t coming. And I was running out of people.