Page 32 of Dark Soul (Tainted #1)

The streets thin to echoes. A glossy hush sweeps over the financial district, the kind of cold, metallic silence only late-night money can afford.

My heels strike pavement like punctuation, clipped and certain. I exit the chrome-walled lobby of the Lucent Building without ceremony, lips still drawn tight from the boardroom ambush.

They’d tried to corner me. Again. Kill the Athenaeum contract quietly. Restructure my proposal with more “palatable” language. Replace me with someone “less controversial.”

I hadn’t raised my voice—I’d sliced through theirs.

But now, as I walk out alone past midnight, my power is thinning around the edges. My assistant has already left. My driver has sent a curt cancellation: “Car stalled. Can’t reach. Sorry.”

The streetlights stutter overhead.

My phone buzzes once before the screen blinks black. Dead.

No taxis, no staff lingering. Even the street vendor who usually loitered near the garage gate is gone. Just my breath, sharp against the night air, and the click of my heels as I approach the parking complex.

Something twitches in my ribs.

I feel it before I hear it—footsteps, a half-second behind mine. Not hurried. Just close. Measured.

I don’t turn. Not yet.

The elevator is dead. Of course it is. I mutter a curse and take the stairs. Down two flights. My hand hovers near my keys, fisted in my coat pocket.

When I reach the second level of the garage, the lights overhead flicker, throwing long shadows across the concrete walls.

That’s when I hear it.

Breath. Right behind me.

A hand closes around my wrist—tight, calloused, reeking of cigarette ash and sweat. A voice like sandpaper rasps in my ear.

“You’re not worth dying for, sweetheart. Drop it.”

He shoves me backward into the wall.

I barely have time to register the glint of something metal in his hand that is either knife or device; I can’t tell when the screech of tires cuts through the night.

A black SUV tears into the garage like it has burst from underground. The doors flung open, and two figures in tactical black spill out—faces masked, movements practiced. Military-grade efficiency.

Before I can even scream, the man who grabbed me is face-down on the pavement, wrists zip-tied, his weapon kicked away.

One of the masked men grabs my elbow, but not roughly, not gently. Just decisively. He presses a small burner phone into my palm.

“Get in.”

The SUV doors close. I don’t have time to ask where we are going. I don’t even get to ask who they are.

By the time I turn, the attacker is unconscious. The other figure is already behind the wheel. The SUV pulls away without screeching this time. Smooth. Silent. Calculated.

The screen of the phone lights up. One unread message.

You’re not as alone as you think.

I almost drop it. Shortly after, they drop me off. I realize I’m a block from my apartment.

By the time I reach my apartment, my hands won’t stop trembling.

Every instinct tells me not to go in. Every rational thought screams that I’ve lost control of my own story. But the need to know burns hotter than fear.

I turn the key, slowly.

My apartment smells like lavender and cold air. Nothing seems off. No lights flickering. No furniture moved. No windows cracked.

But I notice it immediately.

The bedroom door is open.

And the hallway closet that is rarely used, mostly filled with coats and forgotten gift boxes, is ajar. Just a sliver.

My breathing shallow, I walk toward it, the burner phone clenched in my hand like a weapon.

I open the door.

At first, it looks normal. Just coats. Hangers. The scent of old cedar.

I turn, scanning the room as if the walls themselves have eyes.

On my nightstand, something new.

A single Polaroid.

Me. Sleeping. From above.

On the back, in thick, black ink:

“Trust is a luxury. You no longer have it.”

My knees hit the floor.

And for the first time since the scandal broke, since the gala, since the emails, since the black silk, Vera Calloway breaks.

Silent. No tears. Just the terrifying, private knowledge that the person who had saved me had never left.

And might never plan to.

The burner phone sits in my hand like a ticking fuse.

“You’re not safe. Not until you listen.”

I stare at the message as if it might blink itself away, vanish into pixels and paranoia. But it stays static and steady, daring me to deny what I already know.

My pulse throbs in my wrists. I should throw it. Burn it. Smash it to dust. Instead, I grip it tighter.

The apartment door closes behind me with a dull, too-familiar thud. The hallway is quiet, more suffocating than safe.

My heels click across the tile slower than usual. I don’t rush to lock the door. A useless ritual. Whoever sent that message didn’t need the door open to get in.

I toss my heels aside and go straight to the kitchen. Not for water. Not even for wine. I need noise, something real. The kettle switch clicks on, but my mind stays stuck in the parking garage.

That man’s breath in my ear. The black SUV. The calm precision of masked men, silent and efficient.

The way they hadn’t even looked at me when they passed the burner into my hand. As if I wasn’t a person, just a subject.

Who were they? Whose message was that?

I tap into my laptop. Sit cross-legged on the couch with one hand curled tight in the sleeve of my sweater. My inbox is chaos. Legal memos. Missed media calls. A passive-aggressive update from PR.

And a flagged notification from Finch’s internal comms system. Not from IT. Not from security. From an internal project folder I’m not even trying to open.

I frown.

The drive flickered once.

Then it opened.

A new root folder blinks on-screen, almost shy in its simplicity:

“PROJECT: GLASS”

No access badge. No credentials. It shouldn’t have let me in. But it does.

I open it.

It begins with audio logs. Muffled at first—footsteps, breathing, a clink of glass.

Then come the images.

One by one.

Me sitting on my office couch, sipping coffee.

Me stepping into an elevator, brows furrowed.

Me walking across the Finch lobby, laughing with Beth.

Me in my kitchen, reaching for a spice jar.

Me asleep, my cheek buried in a pillow, the blanket tangled at my waist.

My throat constricts.

There is no timestamp on the files. No metadata. But they are real—too real. Not screenshots. Not renders. Photos. Motionless memories from invisible angles.

I open a folder labeled “Live.”

The screen goes black.

Then loads.

And then—

Myself.

Right now.

In the reflection of my laptop screen, I can see it: my exact posture, the lift of my brow, the flicker of the blue glow in my irises.

I am watching myself.

In real time.

The camera is in my apartment.

I look around.

Not behind.

Above.

No blinking red dot. No obvious lens. Just me, centered in someone else’s sightline.

The video quality is crystal. The angle…elevated. Slightly angled downward. Like a hawk perched high above. The frame doesn’t move, but the message beneath it does.

It begins to type.

Letter by letter.

Each stroke like a punch to my stomach.

“He’s always been watching.”

I stop breathing.

I drag my eyes back to the top of the screen. Try to click exit. The window refuses to close. I hit the power button. Hold it. Nothing.

Only that silent, frozen livestream of my own life.

I grab my phone. My fingers hover above the burner.

Not until you listen.

Was it the same person? Or another one? Was it the stranger in my bedroom that night who touched me and left me melted into my sheets? Or was it something far worse? Something that didn’t even need to be inside to crawl under my skin?

I step back from the laptop. Slowly.

I cross the room. Open every drawer, every cupboard, scan the ceiling, pull back the curtains.

Nothing.

But that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

I return to the computer.

My own eyes stare back at me.

I look afraid.

That unsettles me more than the feed itself.

I close the lid. Don’t shut it down, just close it. As if I’m telling the watcher, I see you too.

I turn off the kettle, untouched.

Then I sit on the floor, back against the wall, knees to my chest.

My mind is no longer spinning; it is settling. Into something sharper, darker, and cold as steel.

Someone has done this. And someone is still doing it.

I think of Beth. Of Jay. Of Finch. Of that photograph I’d circled with red ink.

He’s always been watching.

Who is he?

And more importantly, why don’t I feel the kind of fear I am supposed to?

Why, beneath the nausea and the burn of humiliation, does my body still hum with the aftershock of being seen?

I should feel violated.

Instead, I feel owned.

Not legally. Not intellectually. Not emotionally.

But in some subterranean part of myself I can’t explain.

A predator knows my shape. My scent. My skin. Has memorized my breath.

And worse than that….

I want to know what comes next.

I need to.

Even if it destroys me.

The silence is heavy now and choking. It curls in the corners of my apartment like smoke, pressing against my skin in waves. The only light comes from the soft blue glow of the monitor, where I sit rigid before the screen, hands clenched so tightly the blood has fled my knuckles.

I should be panicking. Any reasonable person would be. But the more the fear coils, the colder my mind becomes.

My image flickers on the live feed.

I am seated on my own bed. Same silk robe. Same posture. Same pinched expression of disbelief. Captured in real-time.

I stare at myself from outside myself like prey watching its reflection in the predator’s eyes.

I don’t move for a full minute.

Then, in a slow, deliberate motion, I minimize the live feed.

And open Notepad.

I type one word:

“How.”

Then another.

“Why.”

Then the beginning of a list. Locations. Timestamps. Angles.

Whoever had watched me wasn’t careless. The images are clean. Sharp. Curated with a kind of intimacy that makes my skin crawl. But not just that. There’s intelligence behind them. Choices. Intent.

He’s always been watching.

That sentence is still pulsing at the bottom of the screen. Not a taunt. A confession.

I rise from my chair, wrap the robe tighter around me, and pace toward the mirror above my dresser. For the first time, I don’t see myself.

I see someone else’s version of me.

And yet…there is no sob. No breakdown.

Only a sliver of something harder. Older.

My gaze shifts to the fire alarm in the hallway—new, and too white. A possible lens. I cross to it, drag a step stool over, and unscrew the cover with a nail file from my vanity.

Camera.

I don’t flinch.

Instead, I hold my breath and whisper directly into it.

“I hope you’re still watching.”

Then I smile.

A small, surgical smile.

I dismantle the device with a precision that surprises even me. Each wire is separated, photographed, and documented in the notebook I pull from my kitchen drawer one usually reserved for old recipes and grocery lists.

Now it holds timestamps of betrayal.

The paranoia, if it ever was that, has calcified into clarity. I’m not crazy. I’m not imagining things. There has been something or someone in my orbit all along. Maybe not just recently. Maybe always.

I sit again and open the backdoor file. Look for traces of digital fingerprints. But whoever has built the network has laced it with deception. Proxy servers. Layered encryption.

This is personal.

And more terrifying still? It isn’t malicious.

It is devotional.

By midnight, my bedroom is a different kind of war zone.

Printouts taped to the wall. Images from the feed. Marked with red ink—angles, objects, blind spots.

The movement of obsession mapped across my home.

On my kitchen counter, I lay out the burner phone the masked men had given me. It is still on. Still silent. A glowing sentinel of unfinished business.

I press it to my ear.

Nothing.

But the silence is heavier now.

I speak aloud anyway.

“Come out. I know you’re listening.”

No answer. But I feel it. Like gravity.

Like breath behind my ear.

I turn around quickly.

Nothing.

But in the window across from mine, a light flicks off.

Morning comes grey and muted.

I haven’t slept. My makeup is gone, my hair undone. But my posture is new—upright, predatory. I brew coffee not like someone waking up, but like someone preparing for interrogation.

I don’t eat. Don’t check my phone.

I pull up my browser, open a VPN, and create a new encrypted account.

If he wants a game, I will play.

But not as the hunted.

This is no longer about survival.

This is war.

And I have every intention of drawing first blood.