Chapter 11 - The Encounter
The heavy sea fog rolled off the harbor around 7:00 P.M.
Claire stepped out of the library, locking the front doors behind her after finishing her weekly support group session. The streets were quiet, illuminated only by the faint orange halo of gas streetlamps through the mist.
She pulled her coat tight and began walking down the cobblestone sidewalk toward her apartment.
As she turned the corner near the empty docks, she stopped dead in her tracks.
Standing under the lamp post twenty feet ahead, drenched in the mist, was a tall figure in a long dark trench coat.
Claire's body went completely rigid. Every instinct honed over five years of living alongside Chicago's most dangerous man screamed in her head.
The man turned slowly.
The light fell across his face—the sharp, harsh jawline, the dark, piercing eyes, the faint scar running along his left temple.
Damian.
Claire didn't scream. She didn't drop her bag. She didn't run.
She simply stood there in the damp cold, her expression flattening into absolute, terrifying neutrality.
Damian took three slow steps forward, stopping ten feet away. He looked at her with a raw, desperate vulnerability that no man in the Midwest had ever witnessed.
"Claire..." he whispered, his voice cracking.
Claire looked at him. There was no anger in her eyes. No hatred. No fiery accusation.
There was only nothing.
It was the cold, hollow gaze of a stranger looking at a ghost.
"You shouldn't be here, Damian," she said softly. Her voice was completely even, without a single tremor.
"I searched for three months," Damian said, taking another step, his hands open at his sides. "Claire, please... I couldn't breathe. Every time I closed my eyes, I heard that video. I heard his breath..."
"His name was Leo," Claire interrupted gently.
May you like
Damian froze.
"He lived for twelve hours and six minutes," Claire continued, staring directly into his dark eyes. "And in those twelve hours, I learned how to live without you. You need to go back to Chicago."
