“Good girl.” His praise sends shivers down my spine. “And feel free to use the private lab while I’m gone,” he adds. “I know you’re eager to analyze yesterday’s trial results.”
“I still can’t believe how quickly everything came together,” I say, watching him organize the papers into his briefcase. “The ethics approvals, the facility installation, even the subject selection.”
His lips curve into a smirk. “When I want something done, it gets done rather quickly. Especially with all the Founding Families on board.” He leans down, capturing my lips in a kiss that leaves me dizzy. “The perks of power, sweetheart.”
“At this rate, you won’t even need me to do any of the work at all,” I tease, though there’s a thread of insecurity beneath the words.
His chuckle is low. “I’ll see you later. Wear that pink dress we picked up the other day.”
The door clicks shut behind him, leaving me alone in a bed that still smells like him, wrapped in the remnants of our hunger, and already aching for his return.
Three hours since breakfast,and I’m tearing through Dom’s room with the fever of someone circling the edge of sanity. I need leverage. Something I can hurl in Kian’s face if he dares to corner me. Or proof. Proof that I’m not unraveling, that the wrongness twisting in my gut this morning wasn’t just the leftovers of another nightmare.
My hands sweep over the mahogany dresser again, prying open drawers with increasing force. Silk ties spill to the floor in a cascade of crimson and black, colors that once meant desire, now are a warning.
There has to be something.Anything.
The closet yields more with each violent search. Dom’s pressed shirts, arranged by gradient, immaculate and obsessive. The order stabs at my ribs. Hidden compartments crack open beneath my fingertips. Vials of Pulse. Eclipse Dust. Each one laced with danger, still humming faintly with residual charge. A ledger rests at the bottom, bound in worn leather and reeking of secrets. Names, debts, transactions from The Den cataloged with brutal precision.
I skim the pages hungrily. Maybe there’s a name I can use, someone who’d help me escape if I promised to clear their debt. The numbers smear as my pulse stutters, something foreign coiling in myveins, a deep instinctive revolt telling me that this place, this life, this man, no longer belongs to me.
Then, behind a false panel, my fingers find it, a wooden box, worn smooth by time and use. Inside are photographs. They spill out in a mess of memories. Dom, who claims sentiment is weakness, who mocks anyone who holds on too tightly, has been hoarding pieces of me like contraband.
My breath stalls. One photo from the Winter Solstice Gala—me in that emerald gown, Dom spinning me across marble under chandeliers, eyes locked on mine like I was the only thing left worth wanting. Another from the Silva masquerade, his hand curved possessively around my waist, face hidden behind a half-mask, but still undeniably him. And then the last.
The one that breaks something essential.
Our first night out as a couple. The Eclipse Lounge, grand opening. I’m in midnight silk, rubies dripping from my throat. Dom stands behind me, looking every inch the dangerous heir in his tailored black suit, fingers are laced through mine. We look drunk on power and desire.
My ruby pulses against my throat, its familiar warmth now foreign. These images should stir affection, even longing. I used to be safe here. Used to know who I was in this room, in his orbit. Dom’s girl. Dom’s love. Dom’s future.
When did that become a sentence instead of a choice?
I grip the photo tighter, but my skin prickles as if rejecting the contact, and my blood shifts again, recoiling. Every instinct screams this isn’t safety anymore. It’s decay.Don’t forget, I tell myself. Remember when his voice calmed you, when his touch meant comfort.Therewaslove here. There wastruth.
There had to be.
But now? I’m fractured. One version of me wants to crawl back into his sheets, curl beneath his scent until the questions go silent.Just stay. He loves you. You’re imagining things. You’re safe here.Theother is already reaching for the door, heart clawing at the inside of my ribs.Move. Now. Before they lock it and come for you.
The girl in these photos is a stranger. She smiled too easily, trusted too quickly, gave her heart like it wouldn’t cost her anything. I want to shake her. Want to wrap her in my arms and scream until she hears me—run.
What did they do to me?
The question pulses like a wound. When did I stop recognizing my own reflection? When did I become someone I don’t trust?
The floor-to-ceiling windows taunt me with their illusion of freedom. All I find is my own reflection shattered across the surface. Three stories below, the Blackwood gardens stretch out in layered perfection, every inch cultivated into something deadly.
Even from here, I can read the layout like a war map: red roses tangled with moonblossoms engineered to blind, their stored starlight capable of burning through flesh. The floating archways draped in frozen wisteria shift gently in the breeze, deceptively serene. I know better. I’ve seen what those suspended petals can do. How they flay open whatever stumbles beneath them.
A gardener moves through the maze below, his steps unnaturally precise. He skirts the ghost orchids with ritualistic caution. And rightly so. I’ve heard the rumors—those who brush too close have their souls siphoned into the translucent blooms, preserved forever as part of the Blackwood aesthetic.
My fingers twitch across the glass, tracing theoretical routes through the labyrinth below. Every path ends in some elegant death trap. Of course it does. Kian doesn’t build homes, he builds prisons draped in finery. Everything beautiful in this estate was designed to consume.
A breath catches in my chest as a void hound emerges from the shadows, violet eyes scanning the grounds in slow, calculated arcs. The man below freezes mid-step, waiting. The creature prowls past a bed of dragon’s breath. The flowers live up to their name, petals smoldering and exhaling spirals of iridescent vapor.
But it’s the blood roses that draw my gaze, floating weightless, encased in shifting thorns that bristle at the slightest motion. A single perfect bloom releases a single red drop. I remember the last time Dom tried to harvest one for me. He bled from more than the thorns that night.
I lean my forehead against the cool glass, studying my fractured reflection. The girl staring back looks haunted; wild-eyed, her hair a chaos from running desperate fingers through it. My ruby flares again, and for a moment my reflection seems to ripple, showing someone else’s features overlaid with mine. I jolt, heart pounding, but the strange double-image is gone.
