LOGINChapter 25: Follow The RosesThe door opened without knocking.Two maids walked in. A third behind them. Between them — a dress. Red. The kind of red that didn't ask permission.I sat up in bed."Mrs. Rose." The first one smiled. "The boss asked us to get you ready."I looked at the dress. Then at them. "Get me ready for what. Where is he."My phone buzzed on the nightstand.I picked it up.Don't ask too many questions kitten. Get dressed and come down.Heat moved up my neck before I could stop it.I put the phone down."Fine," I said. "Let's go."One hour later I stood in front of the mirror and didn't recognize myself.The dress fit like it was made specifically for this body on this night. Red. Floor length. The kind of cut that was somehow both modest and devastating at the same time. My hair was pinned up with pieces falling loose around my face. The makeup was minimal — just enough to make my eyes look like they meant something.I stood there and stared.Then I walked out.With
Chapter 24: DravenThe ceiling was familiar.That was the first thing I registered. The particular height of it. The stillness.His room.I turned my head.Damien sat beside the bed. Jacket off. Elbows on his knees. Eyes fixed on my face with something in them I had never seen there before — unguarded, stripped clean of everything he usually kept layered over himself.The moment my eyes opened his hand found my face."Are you hurt." Low. Careful. "Does anything hurt.""I—" I tried to sit up.His hand moved to my shoulder. Gentle but firm."What happened." I pressed my fingers to my temple. "I can't remember. The last thing I remember was the card at breakfast and then—" Nothing. A clean wall where memory should have been. "Nothing.""High fever," he said. "You fainted. That's all."I looked at his face.Something about the way he said it sat slightly wrong. Too smooth. Too ready.I didn't push it."I'm fine," I said."I know." His thumb moved across my cheekbone. "I won't let anything
Chapter 23: The PhotographThe mirror told me nothing at first.I stood in front of it and looked. Really looked. Searching for whatever Charles had seen in eleven years of watching us both move through the same house.Just my face. My eyes. My hair.Nothing remarkable.Then I went still.And saw it.The way I was standing — weight slightly forward, head tilted a fraction to the left, every muscle completely motionless while my brain worked.Exactly the way Damien stood.I hadn't learned it from him. I'd known him days.Which meant I came with it.I stepped closer to the glass.Pressed my palm flat against it.The mirror fogged. Not from breath. From my hand. The glass responding to the contact like it recognized it — a perfect fog print spreading from my palm outward.I yanked my hand back.Watched the print fade slowly.Stood there breathing.No.I shook my head. Said it out loud to the empty room.No. I'm exhausted. I haven't slept properly in days. I'm in a strange house with a st
Chapter 22: SimilarI woke up alone.Again.Except this time the emptiness sat differently. My body felt it before my brain did — that deep settled weight that comes after something that can't be taken back.I stared at the ceiling.Waited for the regret to show up.It didn't.I got up. Showered. Pulled on clothes and came downstairs and found breakfast already on the table, staff moving quietly at the edges of the room like they'd been trained to exist without being noticed.I sat down.And beside my plate — a black card. No name. Just a note in handwriting I already recognized.Spend however you like.I picked it up. Turned it over. Set it back down.Looked around the dining room. The black walls. The high ceilings. The quiet that lived in this house like it belonged here.For the first time since I arrived I didn't feel like a visitor in it.I picked up my coffee.And let my mind go where it had been trying to go since I opened my eyes.His eyes. Fully red. Not a flash — both of th
The first thing Rose noticed when she woke was the emptiness beside her.Damien was gone.She reached over, pressing her palm flat against his side of the bed — still warm. He hadn't been gone long. She exhaled slowly, blinking up at the ceiling, when the bathroom door swung open and he stepped out.Just a towel.Water trailed down the hard planes of his chest, following the cut lines of his abdomen before disappearing beneath the white fabric knotted low at his hips. He ran a hand through his damp hair, unbothered, completely unaware — or pretending to be — of the way Rose had gone utterly still.She couldn't help it. Her eyes moved over him slowly, hungrily, tracing every ridge and curve. She thought about those arms. How they had held her down. How certain they had felt around her body. The memory of the night before rushed back in a wave — the way he had taken her apart, piece by piece, until she had shattered completely — and heat bloomed low in her stomach, spreading fast."Like
Chapter 20: The Locked DoorSleep didn't come.I lay there staring at the ceiling with the sheets pulled up and the room completely dark and my brain running at a speed that had no intention of slowing down.I gave up after an hour.I slipped out of bed, pulled on a hoodie over my shorts and padded out into the corridor. The house was quiet. A light under the study door at the far end of the hall told me where Damien was.I went the other direction.The house was different at night.Still black. Still massive. But quieter in a way that felt less cold than it had this morning. I moved through the corridors slowly, one hand trailing the wall, and waited for the unease that should have been there.It didn't come.Instead something else settled over me. Slow and strange and impossible to name. Like the house recognized my footsteps. Like the walls had been waiting for exactly this — me, barefoot, moving through the dark like I'd done it a thousand times before.Like I belonged here.That
His eyes did it before his hands did.Pinned her. Held her completely still without touching her. That red glow barely contained behind the green, watching her body betray every word coming out of her mouth.She held his stare anyway."Why do you even care." Not a question. Flat. Defiant. "You don'
Chapter 18: Two Turns LeftThe drive home was silent.Not the comfortable kind.I sat against the door with my arms crossed and my jaw tight and my eyes fixed on the city moving past the window. The leather seat was cold. The partition between us and the driver was up. The space inside the car felt
Chapter 17: Goodbye For NowThe Albert estate had never been louder.I heard it before I walked through the door.Voices overlapping. The kind of controlled chaos that happens when people with power realize they have no control over something.I pushed the door open and walked in.The entrance hall
Chapter 16: TermsBreakfast was almost done.The question sat between us on the table.I shoved it down and pushed my plate forward."I'm going home."I moved to stand—The chair jerked forward.Damien pulled it with one hand on the armrest — dragged the whole thing between his knees until I was ca







