All Chapters of SIGHTLESS OBSESSION : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Seraphina Vellaro – POV The study was my battlefield, and the journal was my enemy and my ally. For days, I had returned to the clay map, my fingers tracing the paths I had created, searching for a flaw in my own logic. The lily, the Alps—it felt right, but it was too broad. A continent was not a address. Lucian’s presence was a constant, silent pressure. Since the reunion with Gloria, his scrutiny had intensified. He no longer sat across the room; he paced, a restless panther circling his prey. The scent of violence that sometimes clung to him was a stark reminder of the world outside this gilded room, a world he ruled with absolute, terrifying authority. But I was learning to navigate his silences. The longer he paced, the more he needed what I had. Today, I had abandoned the map. The next layer of the code wasn't in the structure; it was in the details I had overlooked. My mother was a master of misdirection. What if the key wasn't in the symbols themselves, but in the spaces be

Lucian Moretti – POV The gala ended with a silent, seismic shift. The guests departed with hurried farewells, their eyes avoiding mine, their minds racing to process the apparition on the balcony. The blind Vellaro heiress was no longer a rumor; she was a fact. And her presentation at my side had been a declaration I hadn't fully intended to make, yet found myself fiercely satisfied with. Rose had left without a word, a storm contained within a sheath of silk. Her father, Don Velenti, had offered a terse, formal goodbye, his earlier smugness replaced by a wary calculation. He had expected to expose a vulnerability. Instead, I had showcased a strategic advantage he couldn't comprehend. I stood in the now-empty hall, the ghost of Seraphina’s presence lingering on the balcony like a perfume. The string quartet was gone, the clatter of cleaning staff the only sound. Her words echoed in the vast space. True power is silent. She saw through the pageantry with an unnerving clarity. While

Seraphina Vellaro – POV The ghost of his heartbeat pulsed against my palm, a frantic, trapped bird against my skin. Long after he had stormed from the study, the memory of that rhythm lingered, a secret more intimate than any I had pulled from the journal. I had touched the monster and found a man. A desperate, furious man. And in doing so, I had forged a new weapon. He thought my threat was about demanding pretty things, more privileges. He misunderstood. I was no longer bartering for scraps from his table. I was renegotiating the terms of my captivity entirely. The ledger was my leverage, but his obsession was my true capital. And I was learning to spend it wisely. When Appy came to bring me my evening meal, her steps were hesitant. "Miss? Are you well? Mr. Moretti, he seemed…" "Angry?" I finished for her, my voice calm. I sat by the window, the cool glass a comfort against my forehead. "He was. But it is a focused anger. Like a scalpel. It will pass." She was silent for a mom

Seraphina Vellaro – POV The silence in the observation room was a physical weight, heavier than any darkness I had known. The echo of the Cardinal’s broken voice was gone, replaced by the chilling finality of Lucian’s lesson. 'Never confuse the tool for the hand that wields it.' My shoulders still burned where his hands had rested, a brand of ownership. I had been so sure. I had felt the frantic bird of his heart and thought I held its cage. I had believed my offer of partnership was a masterstroke. It had been a child’s gambit, and he had dismantled it with the ease of a man swatting a fly. Matteo’s heavy tread entered the room. “Miss,” he said, his tone neutral. No pity, no judgment. Just a functionary performing his duty. I stood, my legs steady despite the tremor in my soul. I would not let him see me falter. I allowed Matteo to guide me from the room, back through the corridors that were becoming as familiar as the lines on my own palms, yet no less a prison. The Rose Room

Seraphina Vellaro – POV The days after his lesson in the observation room passed with a new, chilling rhythm. Lucian was a ghost in the periphery of my world, his presence announced only by the shift in air pressure when he entered the study, the scent of sandalwood that lingered after he left. He did not pace. He did not loom. He observed my work with the detached focus of a scientist studying a particularly complex organism. The message was clear: my utility was being measured, quantified, and catalogued. The bridge I had tried to build was ash, and I was back on my side of the chasm. But the chasm itself had changed. I had seen the other side. I knew what was there. I poured every ounce of my focus into the ledger. But I was no longer just reading it. I was learning it. I committed the names, the dates, the amounts, the specific phrasing of the transgressions to memory. I began to cross-reference them in my mind, creating a web of connections he could not see. Inspector Riggs wa