Page 56 of Prey

I pull out of the garage and head toward Chinatown, following the ghost of a woman who’s haunted every moment of my thoughts since she disappeared.

The hunt is back on.

19

JENNA

Four weeks since I walked out of that warehouse. My knife slides between Dimitri Yakov’s ribs, finding the gap between bones like I’ve done this a hundred times before. His eyes go wide with surprise, then pain, then nothing at all. The light fades from them as his knees buckle, and I catch his weight before he can hit the warehouse floor.

“That’s for all the girls,” I whisper against his ear as he dies. “The lives you destroyed.”

Kim Chen was first—Maya’s brother, the piece of shit who moved girls through his massage parlors like they were inventory. I’d watched him for two weeks before slipping into his apartment, learning his patterns the way Nikolai learned mine. The knife found his throat while he slept, dreaming about profits from human misery.

The second was Viktor Petrov, a mid-level trafficker who specialized in Eastern European girls. Runaways, mostly. Kids who wouldn’t be missed. I’d followed him to a warehouse meeting and put three inches of steel through his kidney before he knew I was there.

Now Dimitri—another Russian, another predator who thought money and muscle made him untouchable. His bloodpools beneath my boots as I lower his body to the concrete, already planning my exit route.

The underground fight circuit taught me what it feels like to move with purpose, to strike with intent. But hunting these bastards—this gives me back my soul. Every name I cross off the list, every operation I dismantle, feels like reclaiming a piece of myself that was stolen long before that cell.

I clean my blade on Dimitri’s expensive suit jacket before sliding it back into my boot. His organization will fracture now, girls scattered to the wind instead of being shipped overseas. Not perfect—some will still get hurt—but fewer than if I’d done nothing.

The warehouse district is quiet at three AM. I move through shadows between shipping containers, staying low. My body remembers this too—how to disappear, how to become nothing more than a whisper of movement in the dark.

Back in my room, I wash Dimitri’s blood from under my fingernails and update the files on my laptop. Photos, financial records, communication logs—everything I’ve compiled over weeks of surveillance. The network is bigger than I first thought, tentacles reaching into legitimate businesses, police departments, and city hall.

But it’s not invincible. Cut off enough heads, and even the most organized operation bleeds to death.

My phone buzzes with a message from Rico.

Maya’s asking for you specifically tomorrow night, mentioned something about you owing her for her brother.

I stare at the screen, pulse quickening. Maya Chen knows. Somehow, she’s connected Kim’s death to Kathy, the quiet girl who showed up at the gym with no history.

Tell her I’ll be ready.

Fighting Maya will be different from the kills. She’s not some soft criminal who got rich off other people’s pain—she’s a trainedfighter, fast and technical. If she knows what I did to her brother, she’ll be motivated by more than just prize money.

Good. I need the challenge.

I strip off my black clothes and catch my reflection in the cracked mirror. The woman staring back has harder edges than the one who Nikolai took. Muscle definition from constant training. Scars from fights and close calls. Eyes that have seen men die and felt satisfaction in watching their last breath.

This version of me would terrify the old Jenna. The one who jumped at shadows and never let anyone close enough to matter.

But the old Jenna never woke up from dreams where she had powerful hands gripping her hips while something thick and pierced drove into her.

Stop.

I slam that thought down, but the physiological response is already happening. Heat pools between my thighs as the memory surfaces—his eyes above the mask, the sound of my name on his lips like a prayer and a curse. The way he’d touched me as if I belonged to him, like every inch of my skin was his to claim.

Thirty-one mornings I’ve woken up with my hand between my legs and his name on my tongue. Thirty-one mornings of coming to fantasies about my captor, about the man who kept me in a cage and called me his acquisition.

What does that make me? Stockholm syndrome victim? Trauma bond casualty? Or just someone so fundamentally broken that a man taking me from my home and locking me up gets me wet.

My hand drifts lower despite my mind’s protests, fingers finding wet heat that shouldn’t exist. Not for him.

But my body doesn’t care about logic. It only remembers how he felt inside me, that piercing dragging against places thatmade me see stars. The way he’d called me beautiful and baby and his—like I was something precious instead of property.

I stroke myself toward release, biting back the sounds that want to escape. Even alone in this shitty room, I can’t let myself make noise. Can’t risk someone hearing how desperate I sound when I’m chasing the ghost of his touch.