Chapter 9 Mina and Mark

Chapter 9: The House Wasn’t Safe

Mark did not go straight to the door.He left the car a street away, engine cold, lights off, and sat until his breathing slowed into something usable. The house stood exactly as Mina had described it — modest, cared for, a place built on habit. Curtains half-drawn. A single light burning in the kitchen.He approached from the side, keeping to the fence line, shoes damp with grass. At the back of the house, he paused and lifted the blind no more than a finger’s width.There was a man sitting at the table.For a moment, Mark’s mind offered alternatives. A neighbour. A family friend. Someone who belonged there.Then the man raised a whisky glass, the movement unhurried, and the light caught his face.Antony.The cold hit first, then the stillness. Antony sat with the ease of someone who had already decided how the evening would end. He laughed at something Mina’s mother said, a sound Mark recognised too well, and took another drink.They hadn’t waited.They hadn’t watched from a distance.They were inside.Mark dropped back from the window and crouched behind the garden wall, pulse thudding hard enough to blur his vision. He stayed there as the back door opened.Antony stepped out, phone in hand, jacket half on, already finished. He didn’t hurry. Didn’t check the street. He walked down the path like a man who expected no consequences.That frightened Mark more than the knife ever had.The car pulled away slowly. Only then did Mark lift his head.Through the kitchen window, he saw Mina at the sink. She rinsed the glass, dried it, and placed it upside down on the counter. Then she locked the door and stood there for a moment, still.Guilt landed hard and heavy.Too late.Mark retreated to the car and sat in the dark, watching the house breathe — lights shifting, shadows moving — while he counted the cost of his delay. He told himself he should go to her now. That warning her immediately was the only honest thing left to do.He didn’t.She needed time. Or maybe he did.Either way, the danger had already crossed the line. There was no version of this where she stayed untouched.He checked the time.Tonight, then.Mina left the house just after midday, coat pulled tight against the cold, a folded list in her hand. She headed toward town without looking back.Only when she was gone did Mark move.He circled to the rear again, tested the door, found it locked. The upstairs window came easier than he’d expected — old latch, swollen frame. He eased it open and climbed inside, careful to leave no obvious mark of entry.The house smelled of soap and something warm beneath it — familiarity, comfort. It made his chest ache.Mark closed the window behind him and waited.