Page 52 of Dark Soul (Tainted #1)

I know something is wrong the moment I enter the boardroom. It isn’t the silence, Finch boardrooms are always quiet before impact, but the quality of it.

Half the faces at the table don’t look at me. The other half wore the kind of brittle composure that breaks under weight.

The door clicks shut behind me. One of the assistants, mine, offers me coffee I don’t take. I sit down, spine straight, hands folded. Not because I’m calm. But because I’m calculating who to eliminate first.

Rogan, the chairman, clears his throat. “Lucian. We…appreciate you coming on short notice.”

“You summoned me,” I reply, voice even. “What’s this about?”

HR doesn’t speak. Neither does Legal. It’s Petra, head of communications, who nods toward the screen set up behind them.

“There’s something we’d like you to see.”

The lights dim slightly. I lean back, watching as the projector flickers to life.

The footage begins.

Vera in the breakroom, laughing. The camera angle high, impersonal. It catches the curve of her lips, the way she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, how her body folds in momentary ease.

Next is me walking past her desk. A light brush of my fingers on her sleeve as I lean in. A fleeting thing. Intentional, yes. But only to me.

Then us in the hallway. She steps aside. I place a hand on her back as we pass—barely more than a graze. Not intimate. Not sexual. But in context? Suggestive.

They know what they’re doing.

And finally, her exiting my office with her blouse slightly rumpled, and her hair isn’t undone but not pristine either. The implication is loud.

The screen goes black.

No one speaks for a beat. Then Rogan shifts uncomfortably.

“We’ve received concerns. Quiet ones. That this could reflect poorly on leadership. That blurred boundaries, between executive and counsel, could be damaging to the firm’s reputation.”

I don’t respond. I just look at them.

It is Petra who falters first. “The footage is from security archives. We…we didn’t request it ourselves. It was flagged. Then reviewed.”

My voice is low. “By whom?”

No answer.

“Who pulled the surveillance?”

Still silence.

“Security says the request came through internal protocols. Anonymous credentials. We’re…looking into it.”

I stand slowly. Not a gesture of retreat. Of restraint. My eyes sweep the room. “You think I’m the liability?”

No one replies.

“You’re watching clips. I’m watching moves. And someone, someone in this room, thinks they’re clever enough to make Vera collateral in a game they don’t understand.”

Petra opens her mouth, but I cut her off.

“She’s being targeted,” I say. “This isn’t about workplace policy. This is personal. Coordinated. Strategic.”

I lean forward, placing both hands on the table. “You should be asking yourselves one thing—how much damage am I willing to risk before I lose this war? Because this is war now.”

Rogan clears his throat again. “Lucian—”

“You’ve made your point,” I say quietly. “Now let me make mine.”

I walk out. Don’t look back.

***

The garage is a tomb.

Concrete echo. Fluorescent flicker. Every footstep ricochets off steel beams and cement bones.

I don’t head to my car. I head to hers.

She always parks on the far side. Says it’s quieter there. Less crowded. It’s also less visible. More vulnerable.

I find it almost instantly.

The first thing I notice is the mark.

Someone has keyed her driver’s side door—vicious, deliberate. Deep grooves cutting across the paint like claws. It isn’t random. It’s methodical. An attack meant to humiliate, not just vandalize.

Then I see the paper.

Tucked under the windshield wiper, neatly folded. I don’t need to open it to know it isn’t anything benign. But I do.

Block letters. Sharp ink. All caps.

CORPORATE WHORE.

My jaw tenses. The paper crumples in my fist.

I don’t pace or rage; I stand there silent. Feeling the tight pull behind my ribs. The violence I won’t release until I find out who did this.

Whoever it was wants her reputation destroyed. They don’t want her just punished. They want her defiled.

This isn’t just about Vera and me. It is about control. About leverage. Someone thinks touching her will weaken me.

They’re half right.

I call her. No answer.

I call again. Straight to voicemail.

The urge to drive to her building and break the door down grips my throat. But I don’t. Not yet.

Instead, I text:

“Pack a bag. You’re not staying there tonight.”

Then I turn back toward the building, toward the one place connected to digital eyes that see and record everything—the control center.

If they think I wouldn’t dig into every recorded second of that garage, they haven’t been paying attention.

This isn’t protocol.

This is war.

And I don’t lose.

***

The surveillance wing is buried beneath three floors of executive marble and brushed steel. No board member ever steps foot inside it. Most don’t even know it exists.

I made it that way soon after I stepped in.

Private. Silent. Necessary.

But tonight, silence isn’t enough.

I enter without knocking.

“Mr. Dane—” The security head, Markus, stands so fast his swivel chair slams into the desk behind him.

“Logs,” I say. “Now.”

His eyes dart toward the secondary terminal. “What…logs, specifically?”

I take a step forward. “Who accessed archive footage in the last seventy-two hours. Internal servers only. Every user credential. Every terminal ID. Every fucking keystroke.”

Markus scrambles. “Yes, sir.”

I walk past him and take control of the master console. The screen flickers under my hand like it knows who I am.

Rows of time-stamped entries scroll by. Most are routine—door pings, elevator records, badge swipes. I filter by manual video pulls. Anything older than thirty days. Only three results populate.

One stands out immediately.

Accessed: 03:47 a.m., two days ago.

Terminal: INT-ARCH-7 Location: Sublevel Archive Node C Credentials: Cleared. Masked entry. No biometric trace.

A ghost login.

“Who the hell was on shift during this access?” I demand.

Markus is already sweating. “It didn’t go through primary logs. It bypassed them. Manual override. That requires…high-level clearance.”

“Higher than yours?”

He hesitates.

“I asked you a question.”

He swallows. “Only three people have that kind of clearance. You. Me. And—”

I raise a hand. “Don’t say it unless you’re sure.”

His voice cracks. “Petra. Head of Comms.”

Of course.

The PR strategist with a snake’s smile. She sat in that boardroom with clipped syllables and a ‘concerned’ expression. And all the while, she’d already seen the footage. Already planned how it would be weaponized.

I lean closer to the screen. The file names aren’t labeled by event. Just strings of numbers. But I know them.

Breakroom, 11:03 a.m.

Hallway, 4:29 p.m.

My office, late evening.

Vera.

All of them.

This isn’t someone stumbling onto inconvenient optics. This is a hunt. Someone has combed through days of mundane surveillance, looking for cracks they could split wide open.

And they had the gall to bring it to me like an HR issue?

No. This isn’t a leak.

This is an ambush.

“Check the access door to Archive Node C,” I say. “I want every camera angle. Who entered. What time. How long they stayed.”

“Yes, sir.”

I pace once, slowly, fingers steepled beneath my lips. Vera’s name isn’t even the real target. They are after what she means. What she touches. What she unlocks.

I stare at the wall of screens. Most are looping security footage, stairwells, lobbies, elevator feeds. Nothing out of place. And yet everything reeks of violation.

“Find them,” I say, voice quiet now. “Find exactly who did this.”

Markus nods quickly, tapping in search commands.

“Because if you don’t,” I continue, “I will. And I won’t stop at one.”

***

Back in my office, the lights are off. The glass walls glow with Manhattan’s midnight bones—steel ribs, window eyes, towers like knives pointed at heaven.

I don’t sit at the desk. I sit on the edge of the chaise, elbows on knees, fists tight.

The surveillance clip is still on the monitor.

I watch her.

Vera. In the breakroom. Laughing at something someone said, unaware she is already a weapon to be used. A reputation to be tarnished. A name they are sharpening like a blade.

They don’t know her. Not really.

They don’t know what it means for someone like her to survive in a world of men who valued power more than people.

But I do.

I watch her again, exiting my office. They’d zoomed in slightly, just enough to catch the dishevelment in her posture, the telltale signs of closeness—nothing provable. Everything insinuated.

It should’ve infuriated me. It does. But not because of how it makes me look.

Because of how they want to break her with it.

They want whispers. Side glances. Doubt. The kind that clings. The kind that shreds you silently over months until you resign with a smile and no reason.

I play it again.

This time, I don’t see the implication. I see the defiance. She hasn’t flinched when she left my office. She hasn’t adjusted her shirt or tried to tuck away her expression.

She hasn’t looked ashamed.

And that terrifies them more than anything else.

“They want to humiliate her?” I whisper. “Let them try.”

I eject the external drive and crush it with one decisive press of my boot heel. The plastic cracks. The fragments scatter like glass across the tile.

The only copy gone.

I pick up the phone.

“Driver,” I say. “Now.”

A pause. “Sir?”

“You know where she is. Bring her to the penthouse.”

“Yes, sir.”

I end the call and let my hand rest on the arm of the chair. The city glitters beneath me, unaware that someone has just declared war on the wrong woman.

This isn’t about saving her reputation anymore.

This is about burning theirs.

***

She’s still ten minutes away when I stand by the window, fists curled at my sides, watching nothing.

The skyline doesn’t register. Neither do the blinking red lights from aircraft towers or the occasional honk of a distant taxi. The world could’ve been on fire. I wouldn’t have noticed.

All I hear is silence.

Not hers. Theirs. The silence in that boardroom. The avoidance. The cowardice. The way they let her name hang in the air like something dirty. Not one of them said her name out loud, but every last one of them thought it.

That she was a problem. That she was leverage. That she was mine, and that meant she could be used.

I turn from the glass. Pour a drink I don’t taste. Sit on the edge of the chaise again, but don’t lean back. I don’t deserve rest.

The war has started, and it is my fault.

Not because I’d touched her.

Because I let them believe they could.

The door unlocks downstairs. I see it on the screen before I hear the elevator hum. She used the keycard I gave her weeks ago. She doesn’t call or text. Doesn’t ask why. She obeys.

Good girl.

Yet…the obedience doesn’t soothe me anymore.

It riles me.

Because obedience means trust. And trust meant she was still under the illusion that I could protect her without consequence. That I could keep her world neat, even as I scorched mine.

The elevator dings.

I don’t meet her at the door.

Let her walk into my space. Let her feel what it has become.

The foyer lights have been dimmed—deliberate. The security screens glow faint blue from the corner office. The penthouse is no longer a place of intimacy. It is a command center. A bunker. A shrine.

She steps in, heels slow against the marble. Her silhouette crosses the dark glass walls, and I don’t speak. I want to see how long it would take her to sense it.

The change.

She doesn’t call out. She doesn’t ask where I am.

She walks.

And when she sees me seated in the half-light, she doesn’t startle. She stops.

I can feel her gaze on me. Like she wants to ask something—but already knows she wouldn’t like the answer.

“You’re not safe,” I say simply.

Her brow furrows. “Is that why you sent your driver?”

“No.” I stand. Cross to the bar. Pour her a drink this time. Something neat. Something sharp. “That’s why you’re staying here.”

She takes it, barely. “Lucian….”

“They keyed your car.”

That makes her blink.

“And they left a note.”

“What did it say?”

I stare at her. “Something designed to reduce you. To strip away every inch of the woman you are and flatten you into a headline. A label. A joke.”

Her lips part. No sound.

“I told you, Vera. I don’t let things go.”

“Who did it?”

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll find them.”

Her voice is smaller now. “And then what?”

I step closer. “Then I make sure they never speak again.”

The silence that falls isn’t soft. It is hard and sharp like broken teeth in a velvet glove.

“You can’t fight everyone,” she whispers.

I smirk. “Watch me.”

She steps back. “This is…too much. We shouldn’t—”

“You think this is about us?”

Her mouth opens. I don’t let her speak.

“This is about the fact that every man and woman in that building looked at you and saw a crack they could pry open. Not because of who you are, but because of what you are to me.”

She goes still.

“And I won’t let that stand.”

Her hand trembles slightly on the glass. She doesn’t drink it.

I move to her. Close enough that the distance between us feels like a live wire.

The air between us turns electric. She is afraid. Not of me. Not yet. But of the shift. The weight of realization.

“This isn’t love,” she says.

“No,” I agree. “It’s war. And you’re the only territory I care about.”

She flinches.

And then—because I know I cannot hold her still with words—I reach out. My fingers graze her jaw. She doesn’t pull away.

“You’re staying here. Tonight. Tomorrow. Until I decide otherwise.”

She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t agree.

But she doesn’t say no either.

I take that as consent.

I leave her in the main room. Walk back to my office, glass walls clear, screens glowing.

I sit.

Watch the footage again.

Vera. Her eyes. The flicker of laughter. The ache behind it.

I zoom in until her face takes up the entire frame.

“You belong to me,” I murmur. “And no one touches what’s mine.”

I erase every copy from the mainframe. Personally. Manually.

One keystroke at a time.

If they want war, they just got it.