Page 48 of Dark Soul (Tainted #1)

I wake up to silence so heavy it presses against my chest like a weight I haven’t invited. The sheets beneath me are satin, dark, and cool. But they smell like him. Power and restraint.

I roll over, half-expecting a shadow to loom nearby. Nothing. Just a vast, perfectly controlled room and an empty space where he should’ve been.

The ache between my thighs is sharper this morning. Thighs mottled with fingerprints and bruises. Bitemarks on the inside of my arm. A raw, blistering kind of soreness that doesn’t feel like shame.

It feels like proof. Last night had happened. All of it. The glass. The floor. His mouth on every place I thought was mine. And now?

Now, he is gone.

No note. No message. The bathroom door stands ajar, quiet and still.

His cologne clings to the air like an echo that hasn’t decided whether to leave me alone yet.

I sit up slowly, spine tensed, eyes darting for clues—something, anything to suggest this wasn’t just a fever dream carved out of lust and obsession.

But there is nothing personal here. No photos. No chaos. Just pristine control. A penthouse that feels more like a war room than a home.

I stand up, still naked, and walk to the mirror.

My reflection stares back with lips bruised, neck marked, mascara faintly smudged from God knows when. He hadn’t just taken me. He’d unmade me. And I let him.

I dress in silence, folding into the tension like a second skin. Every breath feels deliberate, every movement calculated, not because I want to perform for him, but because I don’t want to break in a place that still smells like his hunger.

On the elevator ride down, I don’t cry. I don’t speak. I just clench my jaw so tight it feels like it might crack. My nails dig half-moons into my palms.

Lucian hadn’t said goodbye.

***

Beth opens the door before I can knock twice. Her eyes scan me like a scanner searching for infection.

“Jesus,” she says.

I push past her without waiting for judgment. “Don’t start.”

She closes the door behind me. “Start what? I didn’t say anything.”

“You’re saying it with your eyes.”

Beth raises both hands in surrender, but her gaze lingers. I walk straight to her bathroom and lock the door behind me. Only then do I look at myself fully, in the blinding, cruel honesty of bathroom light.

I look possessed.

Hair tangled from fingers that weren’t mine. Bruises in places that make me feel both branded and exposed. And my eyes…God. My eyes look like someone who has lost something she wasn’t even sure she wanted to keep.

I splash water on my face. Cold, hard slaps of it. Anything to shock the memory off my skin. It doesn’t work.

When I step out of the bathroom, Beth is waiting with coffee and that look.

“What happened?”

“He didn’t say anything.”

Beth blinks. “After everything?”

“No note. No goodbye. No ride home.”

She hands me the coffee. “You played with fire and expected roses?”

“I didn’t expect anything,” I say, sipping the coffee with both hands. “I just…thought he’d say something.”

Beth sits beside me, cross-legged on the couch. “You don’t look like a woman who’s mad about being used.”

“Because I wasn’t used.” I don’t recognize the sound of my own voice. It is defensive, raw. “I baited him. He bit. We both got what we wanted.”

Beth frowns. “And what exactly did you want?”

To feel in control. To watch him lose it. To prove he wasn’t made of stone.

And then I remember the look in his eyes when he pulled out of me—not soft, not cruel, just…final.

“I don’t know anymore,” I say.

Beth studies me like I’m a bomb she doesn’t know how to disarm. “The news is still circling. People are whispering again. The HR scandal’s not over; it’s just mutated.”

I set the mug down too hard. “Let them whisper.”

“You’re the center of it now, Vera. And he didn’t protect you this time.”

That stung. More than I expected. Because she’s right.

Lucian always moved fast, redirecting storms, cleaning up messes before they reached me. But this time, he left me exposed. Like a pawn. Like a plaything discarded after the game.

I walk to the window, arms folded. “He won’t reach out.”

Beth nods slowly. “No. Because he already got what he wanted.”

I almost tell her that isn’t true. That what happened last night didn’t feel like winning. That the way he took me felt more like surrender than domination. That somewhere, in the madness, we both lost.

But I can’t say that. Not to her. Not yet.

I turn back to the room. “I need to go back to work. Act normal.”

Beth stares. “You sure you’re ready for that?”

“No,” I say. “But I need the world to think I am.”

She doesn’t argue. Just rises from the couch and hugs me tightly, and briefly, like she knows I’ll crumble if it lasts too long.

“Just promise me something,” she whispers. “Don’t let him take pieces of you without leaving some of himself behind.”

I don’t promise. I don’t speak. I just stand there, holding my breath in a room that feels too small for the ache blooming inside my chest.

***

The phone buzzes again. And again.

Beth muted the group chats, turned off the news alerts, tried to protect me from it, but the internet doesn’t need consent. It just needs blood.

I sit on the edge of the futon, towel-dried hair still damp against my neck, as I unlock the screen and look anyway.

There it is.

Photo after photo. Me. Damien. The bar. The black slit dress. His hand hovering a little too low. My faint, performative smile is frozen mid-flicker.

The final shot is Lucian’s arm around my wrist, dragging me toward the exit like I’m nothing but an inconvenience.

But that isn’t the worst of it.

The captions are something.

“Seductress turned liability?”

“Finch Corp’s internal audit consultant caught in scandal with rival investor.”

“Is Vera Calloway sleeping her way into power?”

The bile rises fast in my throat, but I swallow it down and keep scrolling. I need to know how deep it goes.

Comments under the tabloids are filled with anonymous poison

“She knew what she was doing.”

“That dress? Not exactly ‘workplace integrity.’ Classic bait and switch.”

One even said, “She probably begged Dane to drag her out like that. Drama gets clicks.”

I stare blankly at the words, not knowing whether to laugh or scream.

“Still going through it?” Beth’s voice comes softly from behind.

I don’t turn around. “Lucian hasn’t said anything.”

“Did you expect a press conference?” she asks gently, padding barefoot into the room. “He’s a ghost in public. He doesn’t do clean-ups. He does vanishings.”

“He could’ve said something,” I mutter. “Even just to me.”

Beth sits beside me, her presence warm but quiet. “You gave him everything. And now you’re realizing he only takes.”

“No,” I say quickly, bitterly. “He gives too. Power. Safety. A false sense of control. The illusion of choosing.”

Beth tilts her head. “That’s not giving. That’s setting a trap with pretty bait.”

I squeeze the phone harder. “Then why do I feel like the one who cut the rope?”

Neither of us speaks after that.

***

By nightfall, I’ve had enough of silence.

Beth offers takeout. I ignore her. The apartment feels like a cage, one Lucian hasn’t built but somehow still haunts.

So I leave.

No makeup. No heels. No armor.

Just leggings, a hoodie, and rage.

The city feels different at night. Lit from below, the streets shimmer like wet glass. I walk for what feels like hours, no destination, just the need to move to outrun the coiling scream building inside me.

At an empty park bench near 11th and Wren, I sit down and let the cold chew at my skin.

That’s when the voice in my head finally speaks up.

He used you.

He did.

Not just that night. Not just in bed.

He used my name to bury a scandal. Used my body to anchor his power. Used my silence to shape a narrative I couldn’t touch. And I let him.

I bent for him. I stripped for him. I shattered for him.

And what did I get? Not even a goodbye.

“He wanted control,” I whisper aloud. “And I let him ruin me.”

A taxi drives past. I don’t flag it.

Because beneath the boiling anger, somewhere low and small and ashamed, I miss him.

Not his hands. Not his power.

Him.

The way he watched me like I was the only thing tethering him to breath. The way he touched me like I was something holy to be desecrated. The way he didn’t ask because I gave before he had to.

I hug my knees to my chest.

He broke me, but I handed him the hammer.

And the silence now?

That is the loudest cruelty.

***

Beth’s apartment doesn’t feel like sanctuary anymore.

I stand by the window, one hand pressed against the glass, watching the rain bleed through the haze of the skyline.

The soft buzz of the city moves beneath me, yet I feel a step outside of time, like my body has returned but my soul is still dragging its heels somewhere between the penthouse floor and that cold leather chair.

Lucian hasn’t texted. Hasn’t called. Nothing.

He left me in his bed like a finished transaction that didn’t require a receipt or follow-up. Like my legs hadn’t trembled for him. Like I hadn’t whispered his name with a voice cracked open and raw.

I haven’t cried. Not yet. That would be letting him win. But I can’t stop pacing the room, can’t stop checking my phone even though I know better.

Beth tried. She brought me food. Talked about work. Gave me space. Now she sits on the couch, watching me walk the same ten steps like I’m wearing a rut into her rug.

“He’s not going to call,” she says quietly.

I don’t answer.

“Vee.” She leans forward, elbows on knees. “He wasn’t supposed to. That night, you said it yourself, it was bait. You wanted him to take the leash.”

“I didn’t ask to be discarded after.”

“But you knew the kind of man he is.”

I clench my jaw. “No. I thought I did. Thought I could dance the edge without falling in.”

The mirror across the room catches my reflection. My dress from the night before is slung over a chair, rumpled and black and mocking.

Bite marks still bloom faintly on my inner thighs like love letters he never intended to send.

I walk into the bathroom and turn on the light. My face looks thinner, drawn. My lips chapped. Eyes bloodshot. I’m not unraveling, I am just…peeling. And what is left underneath scares me more than his silence.

Lucian has broken me open, and now I’m not sure if what remains is mine at all.

***

Later, I pull on jeans and a hoodie and leave. Beth doesn’t ask where I am going. She just watches me with that cautious sympathy that makes my throat tight.

The city is noisy, chaotic. Neon signs smeared through puddles. Horns blare. Vendors yell. Life keeps happening.

But I walk like a ghost.

Every time someone brushes past me, I flinch like he might be among them. Like his scent might catch me off guard. I hate that I look for him. Hate more that I miss him.

My phone vibrates.

A new blog post.

“Is Vera Calloway the Common Thread in Every Corporate Collapse of 2025?”

I don’t click the link. I already know the story, rumors laced with enough truth to feel surgical. The photos aren’t gone. The narrative hasn’t died. It’s evolved.

And Lucian hasn’t lifted a finger.

He could have ended it. One word, one press release, one anything. But he is silent. And silence from Lucian Dane isn’t passivity. It’s strategy.

He is letting me fall.

I sit on a bench beside a closed café. The night air is sticky against my skin. The ache between my legs hasn’t fully faded.

The bruises are fading too. But the impression of his voice, low and wrecking, still haunts my ears.

“Next time you want to test me, remember this night.”

I do.

And I hate that I do.

Because the truth is that I’ve never been in control. Not from the beginning.

Every step I took was one he’d already mapped. Every rebellion he’d absorbed like it was choreography. I was the mouse running the maze, proud of discovering corners he had built.

It isn’t just betrayal.

It is humiliation.

I press the heels of my palms into my eyes, willing the tears not to come.

I’m not falling apart. I am being forced to look at what I’d never wanted to see:

That I had never mattered more than the plan.

And worse—

That some part of me still wanted to matter.