Page 8

The rain had started halfway through her shift.

By the time Isolde reached the apartment, her coat was soaked through, strands of her hair clinging to her face and neck like wet silk.

Her shoes squelched with each step up the cracked stairwell, the soft flickering hallway light blinking overhead like a dying heartbeat.

Everything felt off.

The door to her aunt’s flat—painted a faded sea green, with a rusted number “3” was slightly ajar.

Her breath hitched.

“Aunt Lucille?” she called, voice tentative, shivering from the cold and a rising instinct that hadn’t yet taken shape.

No answer. Just silence.

She pushed the door open. The scent hit her first.

Not rot. Not yet. But copper. Raw. Metallic.

The apartment was dark, save for the hallway light seeping through the cracked door behind her.

It cast long shadows over the worn carpet and the edge of the cracked sofa.

Isolde took one step inside.

Her bag dropped from her hand.

A trail of blood snaked across the floor.

Smeared. Thick. Leading from the kitchenette toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms.

She moved slowly. Like a girl dreaming the kind of nightmare you can’t scream through.

Her legs felt foreign. Her breath came shallow.

“Aunt…?” she whispered again.

Then she saw her.

Lucille’s body was half-hung over the small table beside the wall, arms splayed unnaturally.

Her torso had been slit open from navel to collarbone.

The skin had been peeled back and pinned each flap held in place by something sharp, glinting faintly in the dark.

Her face… oh god.

Her face was gone.

Not simply mutilated. Removed.

The skin had been carved clean off the skull. Muscle glistened beneath exposed sinew.

Her jaw hung open in a scream that had long since died, and her glassy eyes had been placed carefully on the table, beside a crimson-stained teacup.

The walls were painted in lines of blood dragged like a brushstroke across the wallpaper. Symbols. Shapes. One word in large, trembling letters above the body:

BEAUTIFUL.

Isolde collapsed to her knees, a scream ripping from her throat.

Her fingers fumbled for her phone, shaking violently.

It slipped once, clattering on the floor beside a pool of her aunt’s blood.

She picked it up with trembling hands and dialed.

9…1…1…

The operator answered.

“I—It’s my aunt—she—she’s dead—someone—someone cut her open—the blood—it’s—oh god—”

“Ma’am, are you in danger?”

“I don’t—I don’t know—” she sobbed. “I just got home—I didn’t—she’s killed—her face—oh god, her face—”

“We’re dispatching a unit right now. Can you get to a safe place?”

“I—I don’t—”

Then she heard it.

The creak of a floorboard upstairs.

Isolde’s blood turned to ice.

She pressed a shaking hand over her mouth and backed slowly toward the door.

The phone still against her ear, she whispered, “Someone’s still here.”

“Ma’am, leave the apartment immediately. Do not engage. Go to a neighbor. Lock the door. Stay on the line—”

Isolde bolted. Her legs barely obeyed her. She sprinted down the stairs, flinging herself out into the cold rain.

Her chest heaved. Her vision blurred with tears.

The neighbor two doors down answered after two frantic knocks. A middle-aged woman in a bathrobe, eyes wide in alarm as she pulled Isolde inside.

Two Hours Later

The apartment had become a crime scene.

Police tape fluttered in the wind. Uniformed officers and detectives moved through the halls.

Camera flashes lit the bloodstained walls like thunder without sound.

Isolde sat on the neighbor’s couch, her knee length long hair tangled and clinging to her damp skin.

Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Her lips had turned pale. Her eyes were locked on something far away that only she could see.

The lead detective, a tall man with silver at his temples and tired eyes, knelt beside her.

“Miss,” he said gently. “I know this is overwhelming. But we need to ask… was your aunt involved with anyone who might have wanted to hurt her?”

“No,” she whispered. “She gambled. But… she didn’t deserve this.”

“Any threats? Strange behavior? Did she seem afraid recently?”

“She was just worried for the debts,” Isolde said slowly. “But not afraid.”

He nodded. “And you? Have you experienced anything unusual lately?”

Her throat dried.

The notes.

The perfume. The dress.

But none of it had felt connected to this.

Nothing so savage. So… monstrous.

Still, she hesitated.

“Miss Isolde?”

She looked up, eyes glassy. “I’ve… been receiving anonymous gifts.”

“What kind of gifts?”

“Perfume. Clothes. Letters. A man. I don’t know who. He signs with an DV.”

The detective scribbled in his notepad.

“We’ll need those letters.”

She nodded.

She could barely breathe.

Across the street, in his penthouse above the lights, Dante Valencourt watched the rain.

He sipped from a glass of crimson wine, his suit jacket discarded, shirt stained faintly at the cuffs. Not blood wine. But the color matched too perfectly.

The storm outside reflected on the glass, turning his reflection into something ghostlike.

He didn’t smile.Not this time.Because she was hurting now. Raw. Vulnerable. Alone.

The perfect state.

His message had not been clear.

Dante lifted the photograph he’d taken from the ceiling beam above her aunt’s corpse.

It showed Isolde.

Kneeling beside the body.

Tears. Terror. Beauty.

She still doesn’t know why he killed her buy she will know soon.

He slid the photo into a black envelope and sealed it with a wax stamp.