He Hunted Me for Three Years

Astrid's POV

My mad mother, in her final moments, pressed a set of Russian nesting dolls into my arms.

"These cost me thirty years of my life. In return, they'll give you three ways out of death."

The first doll told me to go to a bar and bring home the third strange man I met.

The second doll, she said to open on the eve of my wedding. There was no note inside. Only a photograph — my groom, killing a woman wearing the exact same wedding dress as mine.

Three years later, on the eve of another wedding, I opened the last doll. I read the note, smiled, and dropped it in the trash.

It was only later that I understood —

This mad woman saw more clearly than anyone sane in this world.

Mom, I'm sorry…

Everyone in town called my mother "the madwoman."

After my dad left, she spent her days hollow-eyed, staring at that set of nesting dolls — the one thing he hadn't taken. I thought it was nothing more than a sick obsession with a faithless man.

Then came her final hours. Her skeletal hand locked around my wrist and pressed the worn dolls into my arms.

"Astrid, three mortal disasters await you. These dolls cost me thirty years. They are your only way through — open them exactly as I tell you."

The day my university graduation ceremony ended, I returned to my empty apartment and opened the first doll as my mother had instructed.

The note inside was in her unsteady scrawl: Go to a bar. Bring home the third man you meet.

Absurd. I went anyway.

I stood at the counter, counting mechanically. The first man was bent over a toilet retching. The second had his eyes glued to my neckline, whistling. Then, in the far corner booth—a man half-swallowed by shadow, black coat, cigarette burning faint orange in the dark.

I dug my nails into my palm, walked over, and sat down on his lap.

"Here alone? Want to come home with me?"

The words had barely left my mouth when the smell hit me — rust and iron. Blood. His arm snapped around my waist, something cold and hard pressed into my ribs.

"Get me out of here." His voice was raw, low as something dragged up from underground. "Now. Or we both die."

On instinct alone, I half-carried this bleeding stranger back to my apartment. He collapsed the moment we were inside. I dug out the first aid kit, hands shaking, while sirens tore open the night outside.

By morning, a transnational organ trafficking ring had been dismantled. When police searched the suspects, they found a kill list. My name was first.

The man from the corner booth was Rafferty Sinclair. His sister Elowen had been one of the Stanton network's victims — murdered, dismembered, never fully recovered. Working as an informant, Rafferty had personally delivered Fletcher Stanton to justice.

The moment the verdict came down, Stanton's wife Lavinia screamed from the gallery. "Astrid! My son will tear you apart and make you beg for death!"

Lavinia died in prison. Her words didn't — a barb lodged under my skin, working deeper the more I tried to dig it out.

Rafferty was a man of few words, cold enough to keep the world at arm's length. Yet he kept appearing at the edges of my worst moments — saying nothing, just there. We walked toward the altar together.

On the wedding morning, I sat before the vanity mirror in my cathedral-length lace gown and opened the second doll. No note. Only an old photograph, edges yellowed, as though it had been crumpled and smoothed flat many times over.

The bride wore the exact same dress as mine. She was on the ground in a pool of blood. Rafferty stood over her, a knife buried in her chest — and on his face was a smile. Genuine. Unhurried. A smile I had never seen him wear.

"Astrid, you look stunning!" Brynn pushed through the door, voice bright as though the world were still intact.

I closed my fist around the photograph, stood, said I needed the bathroom, locked the door, stripped off the dress, and climbed out the window. I ran from Los Angeles and cut every thread connecting me to Rafferty.

The first year in Chicago, I lived like an animal poised to bolt — until I met Emrys, a therapist. Six years my senior, gentle, with a way of speaking that made your guard come down before you noticed. His pursuit was ardent yet restrained, like winter sun slowly thawing something frozen at my core.

For a year and a half we dated, kissed, undressed each other — but he never once had sex with me. The careful avoidance became unbearable. I ended things.

Three days later, Brynn called, crying too hard to speak clearly. "Astrid — my brother — he cut his wrists."

That was when I learned: Brynn was Emrys's sister.

I stood at his hospital bedside, looking at his pale face, the bandages on his wrists. He opened his eyes and gave me an apologetic smile. Beside me, Brynn sobbed and said he had only wanted to bring his most whole self to their wedding day — that he loved me more than he loved himself. My defenses shattered. I held him and wept and said yes to everything.

Just as I believed I had finally caught hold of something real, my mother's last doll surfaced in my mind.

I retrieved it from the back of the cabinet and set it on the table. I only stared at it.

Three mortal disasters, my mother had said. The first two times, she had been right.

But now I had found happiness. This last doll —

Did I still need to open it?