Page 57 of Dark Soul (Tainted #1)

He sets his coat down calmly, unbothered by the accusation.

“I asked you a question earlier. I didn’t forget it,” I say. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

His voice is flat. Frigid. Measured to cause the most internal fracture.

“You’re safer not knowing.”

I freeze.

The words aren’t sharp but they cut anyway.

“Don’t do that,” I say, stepping closer. “Don’t decide what I can handle. Don’t cage me with silence and call it safety.”

He doesn’t answer.

“Lucian—” I say, my voice breaking into something more brittle. “I didn’t ask to be kept. I asked to be trusted.”

He looks at me for a long moment. No anger. No warmth.

Just absence.

And then he walks past me, toward the surveillance room, without saying another word.

His silence echoes louder than anything he could’ve said.

I stand alone with the weight of what I now know. What I barely understand. And what I fear I’m still only scratching the surface of.

I am shaking, but not from weakness.

From something old.

From the memory of all the times I’d been left out of the truth because adults thought I was too young and too broken to handle reality.

Back then, it was case files. Foster records. Intake assessments whispered behind closed doors.

Now it is corruption, trafficking, and death but the exclusion feels the same.

Lucian thinks he is protecting me.

But I’m not that girl anymore.

This time the silence will not be enough.

Lucian hasn’t come back out since he disappeared into the surveillance room. I don’t follow. I don’t knock. I don’t scream.

Instead, I stand in the middle of his world of glass, steel, and shadows, and stare at the paper file in my hands.

Paper.

It is almost laughable. Lucian doesn’t do paper. His world is encrypted, invisible, built from silence and signals. He doesn’t leave traces, he leaves ghosts.

Which means this file isn’t casual.

It is urgent.

It is deliberate.

And maybe, just maybe, it’s been left for me to find.

I sit on the edge of the sofa, sliding the file open again, eyes scanning for what I might’ve missed.

The names aren’t just donors. They are architects. Builders of systems designed to look charitable while feeding off desperation. Programs that funnel the vulnerable into data mines, labor cycles, and worse.

I remember the intern from the restroom—the way her mascara had bled down her cheeks. The way she’d said, “You’re the one they’re trying to protect.”

I want to believe she meant Lucian. That he’s the one protecting me. That his silence, his distance, his increasingly cold restraint…is all in service of some noble strategy.

But noble silence still suffocates.

Especially for girls like me.

I grew up in homes where truths were rationed out like favors. Where men promised protection but delivered absence. Where caseworkers said, “This placement will be good for you,” before handing me off to strangers with kind smiles and locked drawers.

The older I get, the more I claw back control. Piece by piece. Word by word. Alone.

And now…now the man I trust most is locking doors again. Withholding. Staging my reality like a set piece.

“You’re safer not knowing.”

He said it like fact. Like love.

And maybe it is love.

But it still feels like being handled.

***

I stand and walk into the kitchen. Pour a glass of water and drink it slowly, letting the cold trace its way down my spine.

Behind me, I hear his footsteps. Quiet. Predictable. Lucian doesn’t move like a man—he moves like strategy.

I don’t turn. I speak first.

“Do you know how many of those programs use my name in their campaigns?”

He doesn’t answer.

“They call me a role model. A success story. They use me to sell trust to girls they’ll never protect.”

Still silence.

I turn now.

Lucian leans in the doorway. Shirt sleeves rolled. Eyes dark. Emotionless. But something in the line of his jaw gives him away. He is holding it in. Whatever it is.

“I want the full file,” I say. “Not just what you think I can stomach. Everything.”

His voice is barely audible. “That’s not possible.”

“Why?”

“Because once you see it, you’ll never unsee it. And I’d rather have your sanity than your help.”

I laugh. Once. Hollow. “So that’s what this is? You’re breaking me gently?”

His eyes flicker. “I’m trying not to break you at all.”

We stare at each other.

For the first time in weeks, I don’t want to be touched by him. I want to be told the truth by him.

But all I get is silence.

And the silence tells me everything.

He isn’t distancing himself because he doesn’t care.

He’s doing it because he does.

Because the thing he is about to dismantle—the web of rot, of exploitation dressed in tech jargon and grant money—is uglier than he wants me to see.

He would rather lose parts of me than watch me lose parts of myself in that darkness.

But that was his choice.

And I am done being the girl people chose for.

***

Later, I stand by the glass wall, arms crossed, staring down at the grid of streetlights below. The file lies beside me, its paper edges fluttering in the soft hum of the air vent. It looks wrong here and out of place in this cold, digital shrine of a home.

But it also looks real.

More real than anything Lucian had said.

More real than the silence he wrapped around us like safety.

I don’t know how long I stand there. Long enough for the city to fall asleep. Long enough for my anger to cool into resolve.

I won’t leave.

But I won’t stay quiet either.

He can keep his secrets.

I’ll find my own way into the truth.

Even if it means burning the whole pretty facade down.