Satisfied?

Dahlia

Hours later, around 2 am, the manor had fallen into a heavy, suffocating silence.

I stood in the center of the guest bedroom Rafe had assigned to me in the West Wing, staring up at the ornate plasterwork of the ceiling. Sleep was a distant, impossible concept. My bottom lip still throbbed with a faint, stinging heat from his mouth—hard, ruthless, and entirely unprovoked on the terrace. My right palm still felt numb from the force with which I had struck his cheekbone in front of his brother.

“Better, Dahlia. Much better.” His words echoed in the quiet room, dark and mocking.

I paced slowly to the floor-to-ceiling windows. Outside, the rain had turned into a thick, low-slung fog that crawled through the ancient oak trees in the courtyard, swallowing the estate whole.

My mind kept looping back to the dining room. To Maelis Hollis, standing up with trembling, velvet-clad hands, her face as pale as fresh chalk as she stared through me.

She had been shaken to her absolute core. The hatred in her eyes wasn't new; it was an old, festering wound.

I crossed back over to the heavy mahogany door of my room and slowly turned the brass lever. It released with a faint, metallic click. I cracked the door open an inch and listened.

The corridor was completely silent. The dim, amber wall sconces cast long, distorted shadows across the dark wood flooring. Rule number one had been explicit: Do not enter my private study on the third floor. Rule number four was firm: Do not touch anything belonging to my late mother.

But Rafe hadn't said a word about his personal quarters at the end of the second-floor hallway.

I slipped out into the hall, bare feet moving soundlessly across the heavy Persian runners lining the floorboards. Every creak of the ancient house felt like a gunshot in the stillness. I kept my shoulder pressed lightly against the wainscoting, watching the shadows, my pulse hammering a steady, frantic rhythm against my ribs.

I was taking a massive risk. If Rafe caught me wandering his private floor in the dead of night, the contract would be torn to shreds, and I’d be thrown off the property before sunrise. But I didn't come to this estate just to collect a paycheck or play the role of an unhinged lover. I had my own reasons for accepting his absurd offer—reasons locked so deep inside me that not even Rafe Hollis with all his power and resources could be allowed to pull them into the light.

Reaching the massive, double-paneled doors at the terminus of the hall, I paused. My fingers hovered over the cold brass handle of his master suite. I held my breath, listening for any movement within.

Nothing.

I squeezed the handle down slowly. To my surprise, the latch slipped free without resistance. The door moved inward with a soft, whisper-quiet glide.

I stepped inside and closed the heavy door behind me until the latch caught with a muted thud.

Rafe’s private bedroom was vast, cold, and shockingly barren for a man who controlled billions. There were no expensive paintings, no decorative knick-knacks, no lingering signs of excess. A king-sized bed sat neatly made against the far wall, draped in dark charcoal linens, untouched. The air inside smelled faintly of rain, woodsmoke, and the sharp, amber fragrance that clung to his skin.

Across from the bed stood a massive, black oak desk positioned beneath a high arched window. Moonbeams cut through the glass, casting a pale, silver grid over a stack of leather-bound ledgers and silver desktop accessories.

I moved toward the desk like a shadow, keeping my movements deliberate. If there was anything in this house that explained why Maelis looked at me like a ghost, or why Rafe’s eyes darkened at the mere mention of specific names, it would be here.

I stepped behind the heavy oak chair and pulled open the top right drawer.

Financial manifests. Portfolio updates. Boring, standard corporate paperwork.

I pushed it closed and slid open the middle drawer. Bound legal contracts, property titles, and encrypted hard drives. Nothing out of the ordinary.

I reached for the bottom drawer. It was deeper than the rest, fitted with a heavy brass lock mechanism, but the key had been left sitting half-turned in the keyhole—careless for a man who controlled every detail of his environment, or intentionally left open as a trap.

My heart thudded against my sternum. I gripped the key, turned it until the lock popped with a dull metallic sound, and pulled the heavy drawer out.

Inside lay no documents, no files, no ledgers. Just a single, velvet-lined mahogany box sitting in the center of the dark wood.

My hands were cool, but my palms felt damp with adrenaline as I lifted the lid.

Resting inside the velvet lining was a single, physical photograph.

I lifted it by the very edges, stepping sideways into the pale rectangle of moonlight spilling through the window so I could see the image clearly.

The breath died instantly in my throat.

It was a picture of me.

I stared at the glossy surface, my vision tunneling. In the photograph, I was sitting on a green wooden bench in a public park, holding a paper coffee cup in both hands, looking slightly away from the lens as if laughing at something someone off-camera had said. My hair was longer, pulled back into a messy clip. I was wearing an old denim jacket I hadn't owned in half a decade.

The picture had been taken from a considerable distance, shot through a high-powered telephoto lens from an elevated position—likely a window or a parked car across the street.

In the bottom right corner of the print, stamped in faint, light-blue digital lettering, was the camera’s hardcoded timestamp. Very old.

A cold, sickening wave of nausea rolled through my stomach. My fingers began to tremble, forcing me to grip the photo tighter to keep from dropping it.

In those specified years, I was twenty-one years old, struggling through university, living in a tiny apartment on the other side of the country. I had never heard the name Rafe Hollis. I didn't know his face, his family, his money, or his ruthless reputation.

Yet here it was—a surveillance photograph of my life, kept in a velvet box in his private quarters.

Raphe had chosen me because he had been tracking me long before he ever dropped a three-million-dollar proposal on my desk.

"You were always terrible at following simple instructions, Dahlia," a voice rasped from the dark corner of the room.

The sound sent a surge of pure, primal adrenaline straight to my heart.

I spun around, slamming my back against the edge of the oak desk, jamming the photograph behind my hip.

Rafe was standing in the shadowy alcove near the doorway, leaning casually against the doorframe. He had shed his suit jacket and tie; his white dress shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, the sleeves rolled up to his forearms. He held a glass half-filled with dark bourbon in his right hand, the ice melting quietly against the crystal.

He had been standing in the dark, watching me the entire time.

"Find what you were looking for?" he asked softly, taking a slow, deliberate step out of the shadows and into the moonlight.