Page 35 of Fractured Devotion (Tainted Souls #1)

It starts with footsteps.

Rapid and confused, too many of them clattering down the corridor just outside my office.

Then comes the silence, the kind that pulses with what it doesn’t say.

I look up from my console, still holding a stylus mid-air, the glow of Echo’s neuro-feedback interface fading into grayscale as my focus drifts. One by one, the ambient sounds inside the clinic flatten until all I can hear is the thunder of my pulse.

Something’s wrong.

I rise slowly, my legs resisting the movement like they already know.

My door cracks open before I can reach it.

Mara’s face peers in, drained of color, her voice clipped. “Dr. Varon, you need to come out here.”

She doesn’t explain, but she doesn’t have to. Not when her eyes refuse to meet mine.

I follow her into the main corridor.

Half the clinic has gathered like shadows bleeding into one another. Nurses whisper behind latex gloves, an intern presses a trembling hand to his mouth, and there, in the center, Reyes stands stiff, his eyes locked on the double glass doors that lead to the south courtyard.

A body bag rests on the gurney just beyond.

The hallway contracts around me, cold and still.

“Who?” I ask, even though I already know.

Reyes doesn’t turn when he murmurs, “Harper DuVall. She was found in the courtyard just before dawn. Fall trauma. No pulse when security reached her.”

The words slip free with the weight of news he wishes he didn’t have to give.

For a moment, the clinic’s humming fluorescence feels like miles away. The walls are too thin, and my skin is too small.

“No note?” I manage.

“Nothing definitive.” Reyes finally meets my gaze. “It’s been logged as a suicide.”

Of course it has.

I nod, or maybe I don’t. I can’t tell what my body is doing.

Mara’s hand touches my arm, her touch featherlight. I shrug it off without meaning to.

Later, I’m not sure how long I stand there. Minutes. Maybe an hour. Long enough for the gurney to be wheeled away. Long enough for the crowd to scatter, whispers mutating into half-truths.

But I don’t move.

Because all I can think about is the last time I saw Harper—tense, tired, and chewing the inside of her cheek as she worked. She’d seemed… off. But I hadn’t asked.

Because I didn’t want to know.

Because I was too busy unraveling in silence.

Now she’s gone, and the silence feels like guilt.

Hours later, I’m back in my office with the blinds half drawn and the lights dimmed, nursing a headache that’s bloomed like smoke behind my eyes.

I stay in my office throughout the day, thinking about Harper and not stepping out. It gnaws at the edges of every thought—how fast it happened, how easily a life can vanish, and how the city swallows its ghosts without a sound.

At the end of the day, a knock cuts through the stillness.

“Kade,” I say flatly without even looking.

The door opens, and he’s there, clean and calm. Like nothing ever touches him for long. His gaze moves over me carefully, as if he’s measuring how far I’ve cracked.

“I heard,” he says, his tone even. “I wanted to check on you.”

I nod. “I’m fine.”

He tilts his head slightly, taking a step closer. “You’re not.”

My voice tightens when I say, “What do you want, Kade?”

He hesitates, then answers, “To help.”

Something in me flinches. I’ve been keeping my distance since the night at the cliff and since Alec made himself too comfortable in my space, and I let him.

But now Kade’s here, and I’m tired. And I don’t know who I trust.

He speaks again, softer this time, murmuring, “You’re not safe here.”

I blink. “Excuse me?”

“There’s more to what happened,” he says. “I don’t think Harper acted alone. I think someone’s been watching you… and using her to get close.”

My breath catches.

“Let me sweep your apartment. Remember our last discussion?” he offers. “If there’s anything there, I’ll find it. I’m not the enemy here.”

I hesitate, but exhaustion cracks the last of my resistance. “Fine.”

“Now,” he says, “before it gets worse. With you present, of course.”

I unlock my apartment when we get there, and the moment we step inside, Kade’s demeanor sharpens.

He doesn’t touch anything at first. He just lets his eyes slide over the room like he’s trying to catch a breeze that’s moving the wrong way.

“Did you notice anything strange since the last time you stayed here?” he asks.

“No. But I haven’t slept here since the night of the cliff,” I admit.

He nods once and begins.

He checks the cabinets, vents, and under furniture. He’s methodical, like he’s done this a hundred times before.

It should unnerve me. And it does.

But there’s also a perverse comfort in the way he takes control. It lets me fall back into silence, into stillness.

And then, halfway through sweeping the bedroom, he freezes.

“What?”

He doesn’t answer at first. He just reaches up into the upper corner of the closet and pulls out something small, black, and blinking.

A camera.

My breath dies in my throat.

Kade turns to me slowly, holding it between his thumb and forefinger. “This was live and wired into a relay. Someone’s been watching. This is probably how that picture of you was captured.”

I take a step back, bile scraping at the base of my throat. “How long?”

“Too long,” he says. Then, calmly, he adds, “This isn’t Echo-issued. This is private. And precise.”

His jaw tightens.

I feel the last of my balance sway as the room warps, and the air turns cold.

And then, he steps forward, not fast, not urgent. Just close.

Close enough that I smell him—sharp and warm, like clean linen threaded with something darker.

His voice drops. “Do you believe me now?”

My throat tightens, my arms folding in on themselves as if I could shield myself from everything he’s implying and from everything that camera represents.

“Who put it there?” I whisper.

Kade doesn’t move. “That’s what I intend to find out.”

He walks over to the bathroom door next and slides it open. The light inside flickers, and I follow him in, slower and more hesitant. He checks the overhead panels, behind the towel cabinet, and behind the mirror. Another silence stretches.

And then, he finds the second one.

It’s tiny and hidden in the air vent above the showerhead.

This time, I do back away.

He uninstalls it without a word and drops it into a small, black pouch from his coat. Then he turns and faces me.

“There might be more,” he says, his voice low. “But I doubt they’d risk another. Two was already bold.”

“I feel like I’m being stripped,” I say.

His gaze flickers. “Then let me be the one to clothe you in truth.”

It’s a strange line, and it should feel manipulative. But coming from his mouth, it sounds protective.

My breathing is too shallow, and my back hits the wall as I move to escape the feeling.

He doesn’t pursue. He doesn’t press.

“I’ll look around and see if I can find the camera relay somewhere,” he says. “So we can trace the signal. But I doubt they’d be that dumb to want to get caught like that.”

I nod because it’s the only thing I can do.

He looks around for what seems like forever, and when he can’t find any other devices, he retreats, ready to leave.

And then, because something in me cracks wide, I say, “Stay. Just for a moment.”

Kade’s expression softens, just barely.

He nods once, follows me into the living room, and sits down beside me on the couch.

He’s close and still. Like a shadow that I invited in.

We don’t speak.

And that, somehow, is louder than anything else.

His presence next to me is like pressure, steadily increasing, yet not quite unbearable. Kade says nothing and does nothing. He just breathes in time with me.

I realize I haven’t done that in the longest time. Breathe with someone.

His shoulder brushes mine, barely, a whisper of heat under layers of clothes that shouldn’t mean anything, but do. I turn to look at him at the exact moment he turns to look at me. The space between us feels impossibly charged, held together by silence and all the things we’ve refused to say.

He lifts his hand with the focus of someone savoring the moment, and he brushes a strand of hair from my face. My skin tingles where his fingers pass, and instead of recoiling, I lean into his touch like a moth tilting toward flame.

He watches me. His gaze flicks to my mouth, lingering and questioning, and then he leans in. Our lips meet softly at first, tentative, but then deepen with an urgency neither of us admits to. I don’t pull away. I kiss him back, and in that moment, it’s not about guilt or grief. It’s about gravity.

But something clenches inside me. A flicker of memory, a bruised edge of restraint. I break the kiss, my breath hitching, my forehead resting gently against his.

Kade doesn’t speak. He only looks at me, steady and unreadable, as if bracing for a rejection I can’t yet give.

“Do you think she jumped?” I ask in a calm tone.

“No,” he says.

It’s not hesitation. It’s certainty.

“Then why didn’t you say anything this morning?” I ask.

His mouth twitches. “Because I needed to confirm it before putting more weight on your shoulders.”

I exhale shakily. “You think Harper was silenced.”

“I think she was unstable,” he says. “And someone took advantage of that. Maybe more than one person.”

My hand drifts toward the edge of the couch, my fingers tangling loosely into the hem of my sleeve. I should feel relieved that someone’s looking into this. Instead, it just feels like the weight shifted direction.

Kade turns to me then. “But I won’t let them get to you.”

His words land hard, and they’re too direct.

I let the silence stretch before saying, “You can’t promise that.”

He leans slightly closer and replies, “I can. And I do.”

And for the first time since this day began, I don’t pull away.

We sit there like that until exhaustion drags my body toward stillness. Until I’m no longer hyper-aware of the surveillance, or the blood-stained memory of Harper’s last steps.

There’s just heat, air, and a presence I don’t want to admit I trust.

Not yet.

But maybe soon.

I blink slowly, realizing how heavy my limbs have become. My body’s betraying me, aching for rest even if my mind’s still tangled in a thousand knots. Kade shifts beside me, just slightly, enough to read the exhaustion in my posture.

“You should sleep,” he says, his voice gentle and laced with that disarming calm that always makes me uneasy.

“I don’t want to be alone,” I say before I can censor it. It doesn’t come out as an invitation, just truth, naked and fragile.

He nods without hesitation. “I’ll stay on the couch.”

I start to protest, but stop. He’s already settled deeper into the cushions like he belongs there, like this has happened before and will again.

I leave him there, turning off the hallway light as I disappear into the bedroom. But I don’t close the door, not all the way. Just enough to let a sliver of shared night remain between us.

From the still living room, I hear the faint rustle of him removing his jacket. Then nothing. There’s a stillness we share from different rooms. A detente of grief and need and something more dangerous beneath it all.

Tomorrow, everything might feel wrong again.

But tonight, I fall asleep, not afraid. Not entirely.

And that, finally, is enough.