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any move to come closer, so she stayed.
    “Did Sharo do this?” She asked, her heart beating hard.
    “Yeah,” the man’s words were a mouthful of pain, spoken through all the bruises and swelling. “Boss don’t like it when a man oversteps his bounds.”
    “What?” she whispered.
    “I came to warn you,” he said. “Boss won’t like it, but you’ve got to get wise. That way, you’ll be ready.”
    “Ready for what?”
    The man shook his head, looking down. He squeezed his eyes shut as if this movement brought the pain to a head. Cora, heart soft from an afternoon of solitude, forgot about her plight. “Are you okay? You look like you might need to see a doctor.”
    “No,” the man gasped. “Boss takes care of his own. I went there that night, I didn’t mean to—“
    “Hurt me,” Cora finished his sentence, nodding soothingly. “I understand. I was just scared. I overreacted. What they did to you is my fault. I’m so sorry.”
    This silenced him. He stared at her in disbelief.
    “When I saw you outside my apartment,” she went on, but he shook his head. “No, not that time. The first time.”
    She fell silent, but he didn’t bring himself to say more, so she continued, crossing her arms in front of her. “The night at the club, when we danced and then you drugged my drink and then tried to rape me. Look, thank you for coming,” she dismissed him, not unkindly. She felt conflicted, wanting to stand up for herself, yet feeling pity for the victim before her. “You need to go. Really, Sharo is coming to pick me up and he won’t like—”
    “No— don’t go with him. Don’t trust him.”
    “Don’t trust Sharo?”
    “Him, Ubeli, any of them.”
    Cora just stared at him.
    The man glanced out the window as if someone was following him. “Look, do what you want. I have to disappear. I just felt bad. I mean, I was the one who scouted you.” He shrugged, and coughed a little as the movement caused him pain. “So I wanted to warn you.”
    Her head was spinning. “Wait a minute. Marcus and Sharo protected me. From you. Why should I trust you?”
    Your aunt,” he started, and then the word caught in his mouth and he choked.
    “My aunt? You mean you’ve spoken to her?” Cora waited as the man stopped coughing. He truly sounded horrible. She wondered if his injuries were all visible.
    “Yeah. Saw her two days ago.”
    “Where is she now?”
    “She’s safe. A little worried for you. She asked me to tell you that she’ll go to the cops if you don’t come back. If he doesn’t let you go.”
    “What? What do you mean?” Cora shook her head in confusion. Was this man sick from the blows to his head? “Who wouldn’t let me go?”
    But the man was going through another bout of coughing. “Boss don’t like it when girls get away. He won’t let them go. That’s why, that first night—”
    “The first night? The night we first…” she stumbled around for a better word, “met? When you drugged me. You were scouting me?”
    “Those were my orders.”
    “Wait,” she struggled to understand, “You took me to the car. You were going to—" She broke off because her informant/stalker/ former-would-be-rapist was shaking his head vigorously.
    “There was a plan. They wanted you drugged, scared up, and brought in.” The wheezing around his words was cruel. “I didn’t think you’d run. But it still turned out, all according to plan.”
    “Plan,” she said carefully, still holding on to disbelief. She looked up at the man for something dishonest, untrustworthy. All she saw there was a quiet pity, directed towards her.
    “Thank you,” she said, and stepped backwards. The newspaper was still in her hands, she held it between them like a shield.
    “Believe me,” the man said, looking worried. “I’ve got to go, but I wanted to make sure I told you the truth.”
    Cora nodded but didn’t answer. She didn’t feel like she had answers. Just a million more questions. The man wasn’t