Page 53 of Dark Soul (Tainted #1)

I don’t sleep.

I lie in the penthouse guest bed—wide, cold, untouched—and stare at the ceiling as if I can read answers in the pattern of invisible cracks.

Lucian hasn’t joined me. He doesn’t ask if I need anything. He simply tells me I’ll be staying, and then leaves me in silence, like the final page of a story I’m not allowed to finish.

And now, hours later, with the city still curled in darkness, I’m wide awake in a stranger’s fortress, wrapped in designer linen that feels more like evidence than comfort.

I get up without turning on the lights. I don’t need them. I know where I am.

Everything here is too precise. Too orchestrated. It’s no longer the space he’d invited me to once, when things still had edges I could trace. That version had candles. Warmth. A window left open.

This version has surveillance monitors half-hidden behind sliding panels. Sharp corners. A silence that isn’t peace—it’s a muzzle.

I pad barefoot into the hallway, arms wrapped tightly around myself.

I don’t know what I’m looking for. Maybe just proof that this isn’t as bad as it feels. That I haven’t made the worst mistake of my life by stepping into that car.

But what I find instead…is him.

Lucian is in an inner office inside his office, one he's never let me see. The door is cracked open just enough. I can see the glow of screens bouncing off his face.

He doesn’t notice me at first. Or maybe he does. Maybe he always does.

He is watching footage. Not television. Not news. Not some muted conference call.

Me.

He is watching me.

Footage of the office. The garage. Finch’s elevators. Shots of me walking, talking, laughing—alone, unaware.

I step back. The floor creaks beneath me.

His head lifts. “Can’t sleep?”

I freeze.

He doesn’t sound surprised. Or alarmed.

Just…aware.

“I didn’t mean to intrude,” I say softly, retreating toward the hallway.

“Come in.”

It isn’t a request.

I stand in the doorway. The room is dim, illuminated only by screens and a single lamp. The walls are black. Soundproofed. The desk is covered in drives, cables, fragments of old phones—like a forensic lab, not a home office.

My eyes drift back to the monitors.

He pauses the footage.

“Why were you watching that?”

“To understand the threat.”

“Is that what I am now?”

His jaw tightens. “You’re the reason there is a threat.”

I look away. That hurts.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask. “About the boardroom. The footage. The note.”

“Because I handled it.”

“And what if I’d wanted to handle it myself?”

He doesn’t answer.

Because he doesn’t believe I can.

Or maybe he doesn’t care whether I can—only that he has to.

I walk further into the room, slowly, until I stand beside the edge of his desk.

“You thought I’d be fine just coming here and pretending everything’s normal?”

He leans back, eyes unreadable. “Nothing’s been normal since I met you.”

The weight of those words doesn’t land the way he means them to.

“I feel like I’m slipping,” I whisper.

“Into what?”

“Into you.”

The air between us thickens.

I can see it now—everything I hadn’t wanted to believe. The meticulous control. The choices made for me. The erasure of my own voice under the guise of protection.

“I didn’t ask for this,” I say. “I didn’t ask to be hunted, or pitied, or protected like glass.”

“You didn’t have to,” he replies. “You let me in.”

I shake my head. “You broke in.”

We stare at each other. The silence presses in. Not empty. Not passive. Loaded.

“You think I want to be saved by you,” I say. “But I don’t even know who you are anymore.”

“I’m the man who saw this coming,” he says, gesturing to the screens. “And did something about it.”

“No,” I say quietly. “You’re the man who made it worse.”

He stands. Slowly. Deliberately.

“You think I crossed a line?”

I don’t answer.

“I erased it.”

There is no remorse in his tone. Just fact.

And something in my chest cracks.

Because I realize then that this isn’t about me being safe. It is about me being his.

He thinks this is love. And maybe it is, in his language of surveillance, silence, and absolute control.

But for me, it’s a cage with velvet walls.

And I’m waking up inside it.

I don’t sleep after that.

Not even after Lucian turns off the surveillance feeds and leads me gently and wordlessly back to bed.

He doesn’t touch me. But the space between us hums with a tension I can’t name. He sits at the edge of the mattress for a while, watching me with the same look he gives his monitors. Assessing. Recording. Waiting.

At some point, he leaves.

I lie there in the silence of his penthouse, my mind moving in slow, trembling circles.

This is not about care. It isn’t protection.

It’s possession.

And now I know.

***

The next morning, the sunlight looks foreign against the walls. It streams in from the wide eastern windows, filtering through curtains I haven’t drawn. Lucian has already left the bedroom—if he’d ever returned to it at all.

I sit up. Take in the unfamiliarity.

The room is too clean. No traces of me. Not even in the glass of water by the bedside already refreshed. Like someone has erased the fact I was ever here at all.

I move quietly, barefoot across the marble floors. The penthouse feels like a museum of someone I’d never truly known.

Everything is curated. Arranged. Controlled.

There are no messes here. No accidents.

Just outcomes.

I find my phone on the nightstand, charged. But it doesn’t ring. It doesn’t buzz.

That is when it hits me that I haven’t heard from anyone. No colleagues. No Beth. No random Finch notifications or messages about case assignments.

Nothing.

I open my mail. Refresh.

Still nothing.

Then, slowly, a single message appears.

Sender: Finch Legal Ops Subject: [SYSTEM ACCESS BLOCKED]

My chest tightens.

What the hell?

I open it.

“Your internal credentials have been temporarily suspended due to a routine security review. Please contact Compliance to verify your digital identity. This is standard protocol. No action is required from your end at this time.”

No action.

The message is dated 3:17 a.m.

The same hour Lucian walked me to bed.

A sick, slow wave moves through my stomach.

I stare at the phone for a long time, fingers stiff around the edges.

This isn’t routine.

This isn’t random.

This is a leash.

And he’s clipped it around my throat while I slept.

The kitchen is empty.

The kind of empty that’s deliberate—like someone has cleared the space just to ensure there’d be no distractions. No clutter. No refuge.

But there’s coffee. Hot. Already brewed. My mug is on the counter. Steam rising. No note. Just preparation.

Like I’m not a person, just another variable he’d planned for.

I sit at the island, the silence wrapping around me like cotton soaked in blood.

I have choices. I do.

I could scream. Demand answers. Walk out.

But that would be expected.

And Lucian won’t flinch.

So I drink the coffee instead. Sip it slowly. Feel the burn on my tongue and let it ground me.

If he’s playing a long game, then so will I.

I open my phone again. Check the settings. Location: on. Of course.

Apps locked. VPN disabled.

There’s no way this is a routine compliance review.

He’s ghosted me from the inside.

Locked me out of my own job.

Made it look like nothing has happened and all while keeping me under watch, under roof, under thumb.

And maybe worst of all….

I understand why.

He doesn’t trust the world with me. Doesn’t trust me with me.

So he takes everything away.

And now, for the first time, I understand what it means to be someone’s world.

It means disappearing inside them.

But I won’t disappear, not yet.

I stand. Walk into the hall, past the guest bathroom, toward the office with the screens.

It’s empty now. Cold again. The computers dark. But not shut down—just resting. Waiting.

I step inside.

Stand in front of the desk.

And make a decision.

I won’t scream. I won’t fight him here.

I’ll let him keep watching me—until I give him something he doesn’t see coming.

I’ll find out who he really is. I’ll find out everything.

But I’ll play the role of the grateful woman. The protected possession. The quiet one he thinks he’s already won.

He calls it protection. That’s the story. That’s the script, and this morning, I play my part.

I don’t ask why my credentials have been suspended. I don’t mention the email. I don’t ask about my phone’s tracking settings or the sudden drop-off in communication from every person I used to speak to on a daily basis.

Instead, I walk back into the living room as if nothing has changed.

Lucian is already seated, dressed, reviewing files. Nothing casual about him. Not even this early. He looks like a man who doesn’t just run a company, but owns whatever air the rest of us breathe.

“Good morning,” he says without looking up.

“Morning,” I reply, matching the calm in his voice with something close to pleasant.

He looks up then. Studies my face like he’s searching for a disturbance in the surface.

“Sleep okay?”

“Eventually.”

He nods once. “Your things are in the guest closet. If you need anything else, just ask Janice. She’ll take care of it.”

“Janice?”

“My assistant. She’ll be in and out throughout the day. She’s discreet.”

Meaning: She won’t ask questions.

I nod. “Thanks.”

I move toward the windows, slowly. Pretending to admire the view, though I’m not sure if I’m trying to convince him or myself.

“I was thinking of stopping by my place later,” I say carefully. “Just to grab a few more things.”

Lucian looks up again. His jaw tightens. “That won’t be necessary.”

I turn slowly. “It’s just a bag. A few documents. Maybe some clothes.”

“You’ll tell me what you need. I’ll have someone pick it up.”

And just like that, the invisible leash tugs again.

Not yet, Vera. Not yet.

I smile. Small. Measured. “Of course.”

He seems satisfied with that. Or at least he doesn’t challenge it further.

“Beth’s been quiet,” I say after a pause. “I thought she’d text me.”

“She tried,” Lucian says. “But I had your number rerouted.”

I blink. “You what?”

“Temporarily,” he adds, like it makes a difference. “Until this all dies down. People are watching, Vera. Anything she says, even innocently, could end up in the wrong hands.”

I force my face to stay still. “You think she’d leak something?”

“I think people make mistakes under pressure. I’m eliminating pressure.”

It is almost laughable—the way he says it like it is logical. Kind. Noble, even.

“I’d like to speak to her myself,” I say quietly. “Soon.”

“You will.”

“When?”

“When it’s safe.”

My throat burns. But I don’t let it show.

I nod again and turn back to the window. He stands, walking over to the kitchen. I hear the clink of a glass. The scrape of a chair.

I slip my phone from my pocket and turn my body just enough to shield the screen.

Settings. Privacy. Restrictions. Nothing can be adjusted without a passcode. His passcode.

I stare at the screen for a long time before I close it again.

My voice, my accounts, my life—all gated behind a man who believes locking me in is the same as locking the world out.

I can’t fight this head-on. Not yet.

But I can test boundaries.

It starts with the drawers.

While Lucian is in a meeting call in the study, I move silently to the second hallway. There’s a guest bathroom I've never seen him use, and a linen closet across from it.

It is unlocked.

The towels are color-coded. Cream, white, gray. Everything folded within an inch of its life. But behind the second row, tucked behind a box labeled seasonal décor, I find it.

A signal blocker. Small. Matte black.

I don’t touch it. I just see it and know.

There will be no spontaneous texts. No emergency calls. No way to send a message unless he allows it.

He is planning for every variable. Every escape route.

But he hasn’t planned for this:

Me, playing the long game.

Later that day, while he’s distracted on a call, I take the glass he drinks from and slip it into the sink myself. My fingers move fast. Quiet.

Not to clean it.

To check for fingerprints.

I have no idea what I’ll do with them, but it feels like a seed. A beginning. A reminder that I’m not entirely at his mercy.

Somewhere inside me, a strategy has started forming.

Not a scream nor an explosion, but a quiet and deliberate plan.

I won’t run. That would trigger him. And I know Lucian doesn’t just respond to threats; he preemptively erases them.

No. I will become invisible. Still. Compliant.

Until the moment I’m not.

***

That night, he touches me again.

Nothing aggressive. Nothing rough.

Just his hand brushing my hair back behind my ear. A touch to my temple. A whisper of something he doesn’t say out loud.

I let it happen.

I smile, and I lean into him.

And I know, in that exact moment, that this won’t be the story of a woman rescued.

This will be the story of a woman watching. Waiting.

And burning her way out.