My fingers traced the spines.
And somewhere upstairs, Gideon Jones waited.
The house stretched endlessly. Room after room opened into more of the same—clean lines, empty surfaces, nothing out of place. The kind of quiet that money bought. The kind that made every breath feel too loud.
I moved through hallways that mirrored each other perfectly. Left wing, right wing, each corridor identical in its sterile beauty. The symmetry unsettled me more than chaos would have. Everything had its place. Everything followed a pattern.
Including me, apparently.
My fingertips dragged along the banister as I climbed a secondary staircase. Cold metal bit into my skin, grounding me when the silence threatened to swallow me whole. Each step echoed despite my careful treading. The house wanted me to know it was listening.
I glanced over my shoulder.
Nothing.
No shadow in the doorway. No figure waiting at the top of the stairs.
Just absence.
And absence, I learned quickly, could be louder than presence.
I pushed open a door at random. Another guest room. Pristine white linens. Curtains drawn. A bed no one had ever slept in. I closed it again, pulse jumping at the soft click.
The next room: a gym. Equipment arranged with military precision. Weights organized by size. Mats rolled and stored. Not a towel out of place.
The next: a media room. Leather recliners. A screen that took up the entire wall. Remote controls lined up on the armrest like soldiers.
Every space empty.
Every space waiting.
I kept moving, half-convinced I'd round a corner and find him watching. That patient stare. That knowing smile. The certainty that I'd come back upstairs eventually, because where else could I go?
But the hallways stayed empty.
The rooms stayed dark.
And somehow that absence felt more predatory than his presence ever had.
Because Gideon didn't need to follow me.
He'd already proven he knew exactly where I'd end up.
I stopped at the base of the main staircase again. Looked up toward the bedroom—our bedroom—where the door remained closed. Where he waited behind wood and silence and the suffocating weight of inevitability.
My legs trembled.
Not from fear.
From the terrible knowledge that part of me—some small, traitorous part I couldn't silence—wanted to climb those stairs.
I found the study again by accident.
Or maybe it found me.
The door hung half-open, spilling warm light into the hallway like an open mouth. Every other room had been dark, locked tight or deliberately empty. This one waited.
My pulse kicked.
