Heartless

Sienna liked routines. Not because she was boring, as her best friend Hailey loved to tease, but because they made her feel in control.

She woke up at six every morning, laced up her running shoes, and took the same three-mile loop around their neighborhood—quiet streets lined with perfect lawns and identical mailboxes. By the time she was back, the sun had barely cracked the horizon.

Her dad was usually gone by then, off on another “business trip.” That was what he called them, anyway. She had stopped asking questions years ago. He’d just kiss her forehead, promise to bring back something from wherever he was going, and disappear in his pressed suit and polished shoes.

To everyone else, she was just Sienna Moretti. Senior. National Honor Society. Photographer for the school paper. The dependable one who didn’t sneak out at night or show up to school hungover. Teachers loved her. Her friends called her “the mom” of the group. And most days, she didn’t mind it.

Still, there were cracks. Things that didn’t fit.

Like the way her dad ended phone calls the second Sienna walked in the room. Or the black SUV that had parked across the street two nights in a row last month. Or how her dad always seemed… on edge, especially when strangers paid her too much attention.

Sienna told herself she was imagining it. That her life was normal.

She believed it—right up until the Wednesday afternoon when she walked home from school, earbuds in, backpack slung over one shoulder, and her phone buzzed with a number she didn’t recognize.

She let it ring. Unknown numbers were spam ninety-nine percent of the time.

But when it buzzed again immediately after, her stomach flipped.

Sienna slowed, pulling her phone from her pocket. She hesitated, thumb hovering. Against her better judgment, she answered.

“Hello?”

For a second, only silence. Then a deep male voice, smooth and commanding, slid through the speaker.

“Don’t go inside.”

Her brows knit together. “Excuse me? Who is this?”

“Doesn’t matter. Just—don’t go in your house.”

Her pulse stumbled. She turned her head toward the familiar white brick home at the end of the street. Everything looked the same… until she noticed the front door. It wasn’t closed all the way. The lock was splintered.

And it was open. Just slightly.

Sienna froze on the sidewalk, the stranger’s voice still in her ear, steady and unyielding.

“Trust me. If you value your life, walk away.”

Sienna’s breath hitched. She stared at the door—open just an inch, just enough to know something was wrong.

Her first instinct was denial. Maybe she’d just forgotten to close it this morning. Maybe the lock had always looked like that. Maybe—

“Don’t,” the voice on the phone cut in, sharp now, as if he could hear her thoughts. “Turn around. Go back the way you came.”

Her feet felt glued to the sidewalk. “Who are you?”

No answer. Just the faint sound of breathing, calm and steady. Whoever he was, he didn’t sound panicked. He sounded…sure.

Her hand shook as she lowered the phone. She glanced up and down the street, expecting to see someone—anyone—watching her. A neighbor watering their lawn. A kid on a bike. But the street was too quiet, the kind of eerie stillness she suddenly realized she had never noticed before.

The phone buzzed again in her hand—same number. Against every shred of common sense, she answered.

“I’m not kidding,” the voice said. Slower this time. Deeper. “Walk away. Right now.”

A shadow shifted inside the crack of the door. Sienna’s chest constricted. Someone was in her house.

Her backpack slipped off her shoulder and hit the pavement with a dull thud.

The man’s voice came one last time, lower than a whisper.

“Run.”

Sienna didn’t remember running. One second she was frozen on the sidewalk, phone pressed to her ear, and the next she was three houses down, chest burning, vision blurring as she half-sprinted, half-stumbled toward the corner.

By the time she stopped, her fingers were numb around her phone. The line was dead. The unknown caller was gone.

Her hands shook so hard she could barely tap out 911.

By the time the first squad car screeched into her cul-de-sac, lights spinning, Sienna was standing on a neighbor’s porch, arms wrapped around herself. Mrs. Lawrence, who was ninety and hard of hearing, hadn’t even noticed her until the sirens came.

The officers didn’t waste time. Guns drawn, they disappeared into her house. Sienna hugged herself tighter, staring at her front door—the one she’d walked through her whole life—until a cop reemerged.

“Clear!” he shouted.

Clear. The word didn’t make her feel any better.

One of the younger officers approached her. “Miss Moretti? You called?”

Sienna nodded mutely, her throat tight. Her voice felt trapped somewhere between her lungs and her mouth.

“Did you see anyone inside?” he pressed.

“I—I don’t know.” She swallowed hard. “The door was open. The lock was broken. Someone called me. Told me not to go in.”

The officer exchanged a look with his partner. “Someone called you?”

“Yes.” She fumbled with her phone, showing him the missed number. “He sounded…older. I don’t know who he was.”

But she remembered the voice. Low. Calm. A voice that didn’t ask her to trust him—it commanded it.

Another officer stepped out of the house holding a small black box sealed in an evidence bag. Something electronic. He didn’t say what it was, just passed it off like it was routine.

Sienna’s stomach knotted. What else had been inside? What had they found that they weren’t telling her?

She thought about calling her dad. But he wasn’t answering. He always answered.

Her dad was out of town. He always seemed to be out of town when things like this happened.

For the first time in her seventeen years, standing on the sidewalk outside her perfect white brick house with flashing red-and-blue lights painting the walls, Sienna realized something:

Her family wasn’t normal.

And someone out there knew more about her life than she did.

The police eventually left. They promised to send a patrol car by every hour through the night, but Sienna still couldn’t make herself go back inside. Her house didn’t feel like hers anymore—it felt violated.

Hailey lived only three blocks away, and when she heard what happened, she all but dragged Sienna back with her. Hailey’s parents tried to make her tea, asked if she needed to call her dad, but Sienna shook her head until they stopped asking.

They camped out in Hailey’s room instead, a nest of blankets on the floor, the TV playing some forgettable rom-com neither of them were watching. Hailey kept sneaking looks at her like Sienna might crack open at any second.

“You’re pale,” Hailey whispered at one point. “Like, ghost pale.”

Sienna forced a laugh. “Yeah, well. Home invasions’ll do that.”

But her chest wouldn’t stop buzzing, the phantom echo of that voice in her ear. Don’t go inside. Run.

She pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders and glanced toward the window. Hailey’s room faced the street. From the glow of the lamppost, Sienna noticed it—parked across the road, half in shadow.

A black SUV. Windows tinted so dark they looked like mirrors.

It hadn’t been there earlier.

Sienna’s breath caught.

“What?” Hailey asked, following her gaze.

Sienna swallowed. “Nothing. Just…thought I saw something.”

But long after Hailey fell asleep, soft snores muffled by the blankets, Sienna stayed awake, eyes fixed on the SUV. It didn’t move. Didn’t so much as flicker its headlights.

It was just there. Watching.

By dawn, when she finally dozed off, Sienna knew two things for sure:

1. The voice on the phone hadn’t been random.

2. Whoever was in that SUV—they weren’t done with her yet.

The next day, Sienna tried to pretend things were normal.

She and Hailey walked into school together, and Hailey kept up a steady stream of chatter about prom dresses and graduation parties, but Sienna barely heard a word. Her mind was still caught on the image of that SUV outside all night, its tinted windows reflecting the streetlights like eyes that never blinked.

At her locker between classes, she let her forehead rest against the cool metal. She just needed to survive the day. Keep her head down, act like nothing was wrong.

Then she felt it—that prickling awareness along the back of her neck. Someone watching her.

“Miss Moretti.”

Her heart lurched. The voice. Smooth, deep, steady.

She turned, and there he was.

Leaning against the locker beside hers like he’d been there all morning. Tall, dark curls falling into sharp eyes that seemed to cut right through her. He looked older than the rest of the guys around here—not just in years, but in the way he carried himself. Like he belonged to a different world entirely.

“It’s you,” she breathed, her chest tightening.

One corner of his mouth lifted, the ghost of a smirk. “I told you not to go inside.”

Students brushed past them, oblivious. To everyone else, he was just another guy in the hallway. But to Sienna, he was the stranger who had saved her life.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

His gaze flicked over her shoulder, scanning the crowd. He leaned in just slightly, his voice for her alone. “Not here. After school. Don’t go home. I’ll find you.”

Before she could ask anything else, he pushed away from the lockers and melted into the stream of bodies, gone as quickly as he appeared.

The rest of the day dragged like a fever dream. Sienna couldn’t focus on notes or teachers’ voices or Hailey’s questions. Every tick of the clock tightened her chest.

By the time the final bell rang, her palms were damp. She walked out into the sunlight, scanning every shadow, every car. And then she saw it—the black SUV parked half a block down. Same one. Same dark windows.

Her steps slowed.

“You shouldn’t be walking alone.”

The voice came from behind her this time.

She spun. He was standing under the shade of an oak tree, arms crossed. No crowd now. Just him and her.

Her throat went dry. “Who the hell are you?”

He stepped forward, slow and deliberate, the air around him carrying weight she could almost feel. His eyes locked onto hers, unwavering.

“The reason you’re still alive,” he said, low enough to send a shiver down her spine.

“That’s not an answer.”

His mouth curved, not quite a smile. “My name’s Kade.” He stopped a few feet from her, close enough that she felt the gravity of him. “And from now on, you’re going to do exactly what I tell you.”

Her heart pounded. “Or what?”

The smirk vanished. His eyes darkened, voice dropping into something deadly certain.

“Or you won’t live long enough to regret it.”