Page 37 of Dark Soul (Tainted #1)

I shouldn’t be here.

But I am.

The screen before me glows, soft and cold. Vera stands in the center of the room I designed, staring down at the collar like it holds answers she doesn’t want but desperately needs.

She hasn’t touched the wine. Hasn’t even opened the file with her name printed in gold. But the collar…her fingers skim its edge like it’s glass and razor in one. She doesn’t flinch and doesn’t recoil.

That’s how I know. She’s ready.

I push the button for the intercom. “You came.”

My voice is softer than I intended.

My thumb hovers over the remote feed control, but I don’t press anything. I let the camera roll. No interruptions. I want to watch her longer than I should.

Observe how her eyes flick toward the shadows. The way her shoulders rise not in fear, but awareness.

She suddenly leaves.

The veil is lifting. She knows something bigger is circling her now. But it’s not enough..

***

I watch her enter her apartment on screen.

Watching her through the screen doesn’t satisfy anymore.

I want air. The air around her.

The vault doors lock behind me as I leave the surveillance hub buried below Finch’s architecture. I take the elevator up past the executive floor, past the wine-dark penthouse I own but never rest in. I change my coat. Switch gloves. No weapons. No mask. Tonight, I’m not hiding.

I don’t take the car. I walk. Seven blocks. Quiet. The air tastes of storms and ozone. I feel the pulse in my throat with every step is steady, slow, and alive.

I scale the side entrance of her building. My passkey still works, of course it does. No one revoked access I never requested. No one even knows it exists. I use the stairwell to reach the rooftop.

I quickly send the encrypted text before I change my mind.

“Your roof.”

I wait.

It’s cold up here. The wind claws through my coat, tugging at the ends like it wants something from me. I stare at her windows. Her apartment glows dimly from within. She’s home. That’s all I need.

I hear her before I see her.

Footsteps. Quick, precise, not cautious—furious. She slams the door open and steps into the night like a curse in motion. Her hair’s slightly tousled.

She hasn’t changed clothes since earlier. That neckline, open, careless, perfect. Her eyes find me immediately.

And God help me, I want her more than I want oxygen.

“Lucian Dane? You?” she asks, like it’s a crime.

I don’t speak.

“You’re here.” Her voice climbs. “You leave keys in boxes like breadcrumbs, send me to fucked-up rooms built like a dreamscape from hell, and now you’re just…standing on my rooftop like you own it?”

Still, I don’t speak. I watch.

Her fists clench at her sides. Her nostrils flare. She steps closer, slow, deliberate, the city humming below us like a second heart. She’s the kind of angry that comes with tremors, not from fear but restraint.

I like that. I need that. It means I still haven’t broken her.

“Say something, you coward.”

My mouth opens, then closes. She’s baiting me, and I want to bite. I want to bare every ugly, obsessed piece of myself and hand it to her like an offering. But I don’t.

I stay silent, letting the space between us fill with her rage.

She shoves me.

Hard.

My coat doesn’t buffer it much. Her hands hit my chest and stay there for half a second, just long enough to feel the way I breathe. She jerks back like it burns.

“You’ve been watching me,” she says, low and guttural. “You knew I was spiraling. You let it happen.”

I inhale. “I never let anything happen to you.”

She laughs. It’s bitter. Sharp. “You think that makes it better? That I should thank you because you only stalked me instead of destroying me?”

Her word choices don’t hurt. They validate.

I step closer, one pace. She doesn’t retreat.

“You want answers?” I murmur. “Ask better questions.”

She flinches slightly. Then: “What do you want from me?” Her voice cracks on the last word. “Is this about control? Dominance? Power? What do you get out of all this?”

The wind roars around us like a witness.

I look her dead in the eyes. My voice, when it comes, is soft. Lethal. Unapologetic.

“Everything you won’t give anyone else.”

She doesn’t blink.

Her breath stutters. Her body leans back but her eyes stay locked. It’s the moment she realizes she’s not the only one who’s been unraveling. That I’ve been falling apart right alongside her, but with calculation and purpose.

She stares at me like she’s trying to decide if she should kiss me or kill me.

Her mouth parts slightly. No sound. I don’t reach for her. I don’t speak again. I want her to make the next move to prove to herself what she’s already begun to feel.

But she doesn’t move toward me.

She turns, fists clenched, eyes glassy, breath shaky. Then she storms back to the stairwell, pausing at the door just long enough to spit out one word:

“Monster.”

And she’s gone.

I stand alone beneath a skyline that’s never looked more beautiful.

She’s cracking. Not in the way I expected. Not in surrender. She’s evolving, turning into something sharper, more dangerous. She’s meeting me at the edge.

And I’ve never been more certain:

This isn’t the end of the game.

It’s the beginning of war.

She called me a monster.

Then she walked away.

But she didn’t lock the door.

And that’s all the invitation I need.

I descend the rooftop steps silently, each footfall absorbing the thunder in my chest. The camera feed in my ear still runs—silent, unobtrusive—recording her as she storms back into her apartment.

Her fingers tremble slightly when she tosses her coat to the side. She pours herself a drink, doesn’t sip. Just stares at the red liquid like it’s blood she wasn’t prepared to bleed.

I give her two minutes.

Then I knock.

Softly.

A moment passes before she opens the door, not startled—furious. Her eyes pin me before her voice does.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?”

I step in. She doesn’t stop me.

I shut the door behind us with a click that sounds far more intimate than it should. The silence between us swells.

Her apartment is warm, dimly lit, still thrumming with the energy she left behind. She turns, fully facing me.

“What do you think this is?” she hisses, voice low and laced with venom. “Some twisted seduction? A game?”

“No.” I take a slow step toward her. “This isn’t a game.”

“Then what—”

“You’re angry,” I say flatly, “but not afraid.”

She stops. Eyes narrowing. “You don’t get to make observations about me.”

“I already have. For months.”

Her breath hitches. She hates how much of her I see. How many layers I’ve peeled back without ever asking. She steps toward me, fire blooming in every movement.

“You think because you’ve seen me cry on my floor or undress in front of a mirror that you know me?” Her hand jabs at my chest. “You know nothing, Lucian.”

She says my name like it’s poison.

I lean in, just enough for her scent to wrap around me. It is a scent of clean skin, adrenaline, and something floral beneath it. Not perfume. Conditioner, maybe. An unintentional scent.

I speak softly. “Then tell me.”

“What?”

“Tell me who you are…when no one’s watching.”

She doesn’t answer. Instead, she grabs my coat lapel with both hands. The anger in her touch is a lie. What simmers underneath it is the truth.

Her fingers curl into the fabric like she wants to tear it from my body. Her face is so close I can feel the tension radiating off her skin like static.

“You want control?” she mutters. “You already have it. Isn’t that enough for you?”

“No,” I breathe. “Not even close.”

Her mouth opens, maybe to curse me again, maybe to demand another confession. But I don’t let her.

I kiss her.

Not a press. Not a test.

A claim.

It starts slow, but not gentle. Cruel. Precise. Her mouth resists for only a second, then it opens to mine with a breath that catches halfway through.

Her fingers clutch harder at my coat. My hands find her waist and hold, firm and possessive. Not coaxing. Not asking. Claiming.

She gasps into my mouth, and I feel her surrender struggling against her shame.

She wants this. She hates that she does. I taste both in the way her lips move, in the tension of her neck, in the way her body arches slightly as if trying to bridge the last space between need and resistance.

But when her hands slip beneath my coat, I stop.

I pull away. Not completely. Just far enough.

Her mouth parts in confusion, breath shallow, pupils blown wide. Her lipstick is smudged. Her chest is rising too fast. She’s shaking, but not from cold.

“Why—why did you stop?” she whispers.

I lower my head, my lips brushing the shell of her ear.

“Because next time…” I murmur, “you’ll come to me.”

“You scare me,” she whispers.

I lower my mouth to her ear. “Good.”

She yanks back then, but I catch her wrist. Just once. Just long enough for her to feel the way my pulse races.

Not control. Not calm.

Need.

“I don’t want to want you,” she says.

“I know.”

I release her.

She steps back, shaken. Her pupils still dilated. Her breath unsteady.

And then because I know the architecture of silence better than anyone, I let the moment stretch.

Let her feel the weight of what just happened.

What might still.

I walk away. No footsteps follow me. She stays frozen where I left her.

I smile to myself. She won’t come tonight, but she will eventually.

And when she does, she’ll never leave again.