Page 1 of Dark Soul (Tainted #1)

They always think the room is empty when the lights are off. That privacy is a matter of doors, walls, and keycards.

They think they’re unseen because they can’t feel the knife yet.

They’re wrong.

I sit in the shadows of my floor on the forty-ninth of an unlisted high-rise, somewhere between the city’s pulse and its decay. There’s no reception, internal logins, visitors, or trace.

The monitors hum like a distant hive. Twelve feeds with two flickering.

She’s leaving the arbitration building, jacket off, her hair pinned like a threat. Her shoulders are squared. Her chin is up, and her mouth is tight.

Vera Calloway.

She doesn’t know she made a mistake today. But I do.

She moved like someone who thinks she’s clean, with power heels over wet concrete, briefcase slung with elegance.

The cameras follow her as she nods to a guard she doesn’t know. The man’s worked there nine years. She’s never once made eye contact.

She thinks that makes her strong.

It makes her visible.

Her deposition this morning should’ve been an afterthought. One more puppet show for the watchdogs. But she tore through Miriad’s offshore disclosures like a wolf in silk. She knew where to look and when to cut.

She thinks she’s clever and that she’s won. She thinks she’s buried a corrupt hedge fund.

What she actually did was dismantle a twelve-month shell operation I’ve been funding under three names and two currencies.

She didn’t know or ask. She was too busy playing Joan of Arc in Armani to notice the matchbook was labeled mine.

Now the assets are frozen. The man fronting the deal is burning. And three sensitive communications I buried with surgical precision have been shoved into daylight, and she smiled while doing it.

That should be enough to warrant erasure. But I’m not going to erase her.

No. I’m going to break her slowly and precisely out of necessity.

The problem with women like Vera isn’t their righteousness. It’s their belief that righteousness protects them.

It doesn’t.

She walks like she knows how to hold power. Talks like she’s earned it. She’s wrong, of course. Her power is borrowed, fractured, and gift-wrapped in the illusion of autonomy.

The system let her rise because it was amused by the noise. Not because it was afraid.

But I’m not amused. I’m fascinated.

She’s in her car now. I don’t need to switch to that feed. I already know what’s waiting for her.

A single photograph. No note. No name. Just her, captured mid-step. A week ago, outside her apartment. Hair down. Coffee in hand. A faint smile she doesn’t remember giving.

I remember it.

Because I watched it live. Twice.

Because I took the photo myself.

People think obsession looks like chaos. Sleepless nights, frenzied texts, and blood on the floor.

They’re wrong.

Real obsession is methodical.

It calculates your rhythms. It learns your breathing. It decides how many steps you take from bedroom to kitchen, how long you pause in the mirror, what kind of silence settles in your home when you’re truly alone.

Real obsession isn’t frantic.

It’s still, and it waits.

On the desk beside me is an unloaded handgun. A ritual more than a threat. Next to it is a glass of whiskey I haven’t touched. And beside that is a folder.

Her name is inked in black across the tab: Calloway, Vera Elaine.

Inside are printouts, class rankings, dorm room photos, the sealed report I cracked six years ago.

Her past was supposed to vanish. She was supposed to be no one. But she built herself into something.

And now she thinks that makes her untouchable.

It doesn’t. It makes her mine.

I lean forward, tap one key. The screen flickers. She’s staring at the photo now and frowning as she tilts her head.

Somewhere inside her, the knowledge is blooming that someone sees her.

But not the kind of seeing she’s used to. Not the political or press kind. Not even the kind lovers try and fail to offer.

I saw past the polished version she rehearses to the real and vulnerable version of her. And I’m going to take her apart, until that version is all that’s left.

“There are three kinds of women in this world,” I murmur, voice low in the stillness. “Those who beg. Those who break. And the rare kind who look you in the eye while they fall to pieces.”

I watch the screen flicker as Vera sets the envelope down. Her expression is carefully expressionless.

“I think she’s the third.” I exhale. “I hope she is.” My finger lingers on the feed. “I want to watch it happen.”