Arden obeyed, stepping in front of the mirror. The black top hugged her curves without trying too hard. Her jeans fit like armor. The boots gave her enough height to be dangerous.
She looked strong.
Poised.
Lit from the inside.
“Damn,” Penny said with a slow nod. “He’s not ready.”
Arden grabbed her bag. “Thanks, Pen.”
“Don’t thank me yet. Thank me when you’re walking funny tomorrow.”
Arden laughed, flipping her hair over one shoulder. “Not happening.”
“Call me if it does.”
She stepped outside, the evening quiet and damp, the air charged in that post-storm way; ready to break again.
But not her.
Not tonight.
?
Amber light carved Sebastian into something almost sacred in its wrongness. Sharp lines. Precise angles. An engineered composure that barely disguised the hunger coiled beneath his skin.
Dylan sat across from him, taut and twitching, like a man forced to share a table with a loaded gun.
“You’re sure about this?” he asked, eyes flicking toward the envelope on the table—like the paper might detonate if touched wrong.
Sebastian didn’t answer.
He let the question rot in the air, until the silence pressed on Dylan’s chest, slow and suffocating. That was the beauty of silence—its slow, invasive power. It always made people show their cracks first.
At last, he spoke. Quiet. Precise.
“Red roses. One a week. Two, if I say so. No notes. No names. No mess.”
Dylan shifted in his chair, a flicker of instinct tightening his muscles—flight, useless and too late.
“You really think this is helping?”
A pause. A smile—serene, calculated, terrifying.
“It’s already working.”
He leaned back, fingers steepled, his expression unreadable as Dylan’s hand hesitated.
Not over a piece of paper, but over the storm curled inside it.
“Fear makes people reach for something to hold onto.” He smiled faintly. “I’ll be there when she falls. When she finally realizes she was never meant to stand alone.”
Dylan’s mouth opened, but the warning behind his lips never made it out.
It collapsed beneath the weight of Sebastian’s certainty.
“You think you’re the anchor?” he asked instead, voice flat with disbelief.
