Page 42 of Dark Soul (Tainted #1)

I sit in the silence of my apartment with the lights off.

The city flickers beyond the glass—soft golds, clinical whites, the kind of illumination that never feels warm. I haven’t slept. Not properly.

Not since I opened that box. Not since the collar. Not since the locked door. And certainly not since Lucian had stood inches from me on the rooftop with that maddening voice and touch that felt less like affection and more like a prophecy.

I don’t know who I am anymore when it comes to him. I only know I’m losing the version of myself I used to recognize.

Still, I show up to work. I paint on control. I sharpen my stare until it can draw blood. Finch Corp doesn’t care about my fractures; neither do I.

Not publicly. But inside? Inside, I’m already fraying.

I sit through meetings with a posture so perfect it hurts. I make notes on projects that are no longer mine.

I smile at new advisors who have no right to be on our floor—Lucian’s people, clean-cut and loyal, sweeping through departments like quiet assassins.

Every move he makes is surgical.

And still, no one else seems to see it.

Not Beth. Not legal. Not even the executive board. They saw the headlines die, the press quiet down, the fabricated “resolutions.” What they didn’t see was the way my access was slowly rerouted through his proxies.

The way my calendar fills itself without my input. The way even silence now has his signature.

Lucian is no longer haunting me.

He is integrating himself into my every breath.

I’m drinking burnt coffee in the internal lounge when I see him.

Black suit, no tie, expression unreadable. He stands at the far end of the hallway, speaking to Turner’s replacement. No cameras. No eyes but mine.

He doesn’t glance at me. Doesn’t need to. His presence grips my body in that sickening way where my stomach tightens, my jaw locks, and my breath comes out short, and I hate that he could still do that.

Still draw heat into my limbs with just a shadow of a gaze.

I stand. I have no plan, no words prepared. But I’m done letting him orbit unchallenged.

I cross the hallway, heels silent on polished floors, and wait for his conversation to end.

The moment the other man steps away, Lucian turns.

He doesn’t smile.

My hands curl at my sides. “You don’t get to play god with my agency. You don’t get to decide which threats vanish, which reports are silenced, or who watches me breathe from every corner of this building.”

“I never claimed divinity.” His voice is low and intimate. “Just competency.”

I step closer. “You’re not protecting me. You’re fencing me in.”

Lucian tilts his head. “Are you not safer now?”

“That’s not the point.”

“It’s always the point.”

He moves past me, and my chest caves with the urge to scream. I turn, follow.

“You think control is affection. That’s what this is to you, isn’t it? Some warped version of closeness?”

He stops and slowly turns.

And when his eyes lock with mine, I see it, the flicker of something unguarded. Something unholy.

“You still don’t get it,” he says.

“No. I do. You don’t want me to run. But you don’t want me to leave either. You want me in purgatory. Leashed, but walking freely enough to believe the illusion.”

Lucian smiles, barely. “Then stop pretending you’re not wearing the leash by choice.”

That is it. That one sentence. It cuts through the rest of my armor. My mouth parts in fury, or disbelief, or some deep, untamed ache I’m not ready to name.

But I don’t give him the satisfaction of a reply.

I turn and walk away.

And if he wants me to play this game on his board, then he’d better prepare for the moment I learn to flip it.

***

I don’t sleep. Not really. I just lie there, half-dressed, half-alive, staring at the dark ceiling above my bed like it holds answers I can’t form into questions.

The room smells like him. Not just the faint trace he left behind—no, it is in my pores now, soaked into the collar of my blouse, clinging to the skin between my thighs.

I hate that I can still feel his breath in my ear, hate more that I’m not entirely repulsed by it.

I keep replaying every second from the rooftop and then my apartment, every word, every flicker in his expression that hinted at something deeper, something wounded and feral.

I try scrubbing myself raw in the shower, but it isn’t dirt I’m trying to wash away. It is the fact that I didn’t scream when he touched me. Didn’t run.

When I step out into my apartment, morning has already bloomed cold and gray across the windows. Beth has texted twice. HR has followed up. A legal memo pings into my inbox. I respond to none of it.

Instead, I stand in my kitchen, trembling hands wrapped around a mug of coffee I won’t drink, wondering if I’ll ever feel in control of my own life again.

***

By the time I get to Finch Corp, I have stitched myself together with black eyeliner and silence. The building looms like it always did—clinical, steel-spined, pretending not to know the violence happening inside.

The elevator doors open, and there he is.

Lucian Dane.

Standing at the end of the executive hallway like a shadow that refuses to be banished. He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t need to. His presence presses against my spine like a warning, like a leash I’d pretended not to feel before now.

I walk past him. I don’t flinch. I don’t let myself breathe until I am inside my office.

Only then do I let the tremor pass through me.

There is a note on my desk. Handwritten. No signature.

“You still think you’re the one doing the watching.”

I crumple it before I can think. Drop it into the trash, set it on fire with a match from my drawer. Watch the edges curl and blacken like it might take the truth with it.

But the message stays.

He’s inside everything now. Not just my building. My body. My decisions.

I want to hate him. God, I need to. But hate requires clarity, and there’s nothing clear about the way I keep coming back to him like my own ruin is something sacred.

By mid-afternoon, I’ve gone through the motions of a dozen tasks I don’t remember starting. Files moved. Memos drafted. Staff meetings scheduled. None of it matters.

My mind has fractured into two warring pieces: the part that still functions in reality, and the part that existed in his.

He’s made a world of me. And worse, I’ve stepped inside it.

Beth knocks gently and pokes her head in. “They said you’re needed on the twenty-second floor. Internal security.”

“What for?”

Her eyes flick away. “They didn’t say. Just that it was…time sensitive.”

I stand too quickly. My legs ache. My spine feels hollow.

The twenty-second floor isn’t one I ever used. It belongs to Legal and Risk Management. If they want me up there, it isn’t about compliance. It’s about control.

I ride the elevator up in silence. Each floor ticks by like a countdown.

When the doors open, I walk into a hallway I haven’t seen before—same gray stone, same cold lighting, but the air feels…watched.

Two men in suits wait by a glass door. They step aside. One motions for me to enter.

Lucian is already inside.

Seated behind a long table, chair turned slightly, eyes on a digital tablet in his hands. He doesn’t look up. He doesn’t need to.

I step in, my heels clicking against the polished floor like a dare.

“This wasn’t on my calendar,” I say.

His voice comes quiet. Even. “It is now.”

There are others in the room. Legal advisors. A systems analyst. But they fade into static around him.

Lucian finally looks up. His eyes scan my face like he’s looking for cracks.

“I want a copy of whatever is being discussed here,” I say. “And a lawyer.”

“You’re not under investigation,” he replies calmly. “You’re being transitioned.”

“To what?”

“Integration,” he says. “Security is merging oversight teams. You’ll be working with new access protocols.”

I stare. “You’re reassigning me?”

He doesn’t blink. “I’m optimizing you.”

The phrase hits like a slap.

He rises slowly. Walks to the screen on the far wall.

A diagram appears—color-coded departments, digital links, access routes. My name hovers over a section marked “Target Asset: Internal Watch.”

I feel the blood drain from my face.

“Why?” I ask.

His gaze holds mine. “Because I need you visible.”

“You mean controlled.”

He doesn’t correct me.

And just like that, the walls I tried to rebuild splinter again.

He dismisses the meeting. People filter out like ghosts.

I remain.

We stand on opposite ends of the table.

“What do you want from me?” I ask, voice low.

Lucian steps closer. His voice is soft. “Not everything. Just what you’ve never given anyone freely, like I said.”

My throat tightens.

He moves past me toward the door, then pauses. “Beth is loyal. But not silent. Watch her.”

I turn. “Is that a threat?”

His smile is sharp. “A favor.”

He leaves.

And I stand alone, reeling in a room full of data that says nothing about how to survive a man like him.

A man who doesn’t take you. He absorbs you.

And I’m already disappearing.