Page 68 of Dark Soul (Tainted #1)

I leave before dawn.

The service tunnel beneath Lucian’s estate has always existed—built for silent staff entry, for vendors who never spoke English, for emergencies he believed he could control.

What he doesn’t realize is that I’ve memorized every twist of it months ago.

One corridor leads to a storage unit on the edge of the property.

The code to unlock it has been easy enough. He reuses numbers when he is emotional.

I wear plain clothes: denim, dark hoodie, a baseball cap tugged low, and a scarf that chafes under my chin. My breath fogs the car window as I drive. Each red light feels like a judgment. Each camera pole like a guillotine.

I know I have no more time left to play safe.

The burner phone buzzes once on the passenger seat, just enough to let me know the message has gone through. A reply pings two minutes later.

“Café Elna. 8 a.m. Ask for Henry.”

I almost turn the car around.

Almost.

Beth is mysteriously gone, and the whistleblower has vanished. My name is still a bonfire of digital ruin, and the man who once swore he’d protect me now guards me like a possession.

If I don’t do this, I’ll disappear into his world completely.

I arrive in Shoreditch just before 7:45 a.m. The sky is colorless.

London looks the way I feel—gray, burned out, defensive.

I park five blocks away, then walk, head down, conscious of every reflective surface.

Billboards still loop images of me. Newsboys on street corners still shout lies with conviction.

By the time I reach the café, I am shaking.

It is quiet inside—wooden booths, the smell of burnt espresso, windows fogged at the corners. A man at the back raises his hand when I step in. Mid-fifties. Kind eyes. Wearing a faded blue sweater and a crooked smile.

“Vera Calloway,” he says softly. “You did the right thing coming to me.”

I don’t respond immediately.

“Is it safe to talk here?” I ask, voice hoarse.

He leans forward. “I know somewhere better.”

The hairs on my arms lift. Something about the words feels wrong. But I nod anyway, heart a hammer beneath my ribs.

We walk. Two streets. Then five. I try to remember turns, signposts, exit routes. My instincts scream to stop when we reach the warehouse. A crumbling thing with rusted gates and broken windows, tucked behind a closed auto shop.

“I’ve secured this place myself,” the man says, already unlocking the door.

I hesitate.

Then I step inside.

The door slams behind me.

Darkness.

Then murmurs.

Then metal shifting in corners.

I turn to run but slam into a wall of muscle. Arms grab me. I scream once before something cold presses against my neck.

“Not a word, princess,” someone whispers. “You talk, you bleed.”

They tie my wrists. Sit me in a chair. Duct tape across my ankles.

Someone laughs. The voice from the café—the man who isn’t a journalist at all—steps into a pool of yellow light, now stripped of warmth.

“She’s not worth the leverage,” he mutters to someone behind him. “Just finish it.”

A gunshot.

Not theirs.

Not mine.

Something explodes beside the man’s jaw. Blood arcs midair. He falls like a puppet with its strings cut.

Screams follow.

Gunfire.

Flashlights scattered.

Another shot. Then another.

The chaos stops as quickly as it began.

And standing in the middle of the wreckage, pistol still raised, is Lucian.

His black coat hangs open. His breath comes hard, steam rising from his shoulders like smoke from a beast.

He doesn’t look at the bodies. He looks at me.

His eyes say everything.

He crosses the distance in five steps. Blood stains his collar. I can still hear it dripping from the walls.

He drops to his knees and cuts the tape with a knife I don’t see until it gleams beneath my wrist.

“You followed me,” I whisper.

He doesn’t answer. His hands shake as he frees my ankles. Not from fear—but from something far deeper.

“You were supposed to let me go.”

“I told you,” he says finally, voice low. “You’re mine to protect. Even from your own idiocy.”

That does it.

I slap him. Hard.

The sound cracks through the silence left by death.

He doesn’t flinch.

He just lets me hit him and then pulls me into his chest, like a man who can’t breathe unless I am against him.

I want to pull away. I don’t.

His heartbeat thunders beneath my cheek. And all around us, blood soaks into concrete.

This time, not mine.

But that doesn’t make it feel less like a wound.