Page 22 of The Final Contract (The Black Ledger Billionaires #5)

“ S eraphina…”

The sound of my name drifts through the dark, pulling me forward. I’m running, bare feet slapping against the ground, lungs tearing with every ragged gasp, but the shadows stretch and shift until I can’t tell where I am—only that something is behind me, and I have to keep moving.

Out of the corner of my eye, movement catches—a swirl of fabric, the twirl of a gown as skirts fan out, the deep dip of a woman’s body into her partner’s arms. The darkness reshapes itself, and suddenly I’m not running anymore. I’m in the center of a grand dance floor.

The opera house.

Masked faces whirl around me in endless circles, their movements graceful, their waltz elegant and precise, but the music that drives them feels wrong—distorted and hollow, like a broken record scraping against the silence.

I search the sea of dancers, my chest aching with urgency, hunting for him—my stalker.

Every spin and dip hides him, but I swear I see him just beyond the crowd, standing perfectly still in the shadows.

My heart leaps, but when I lunge forward the figure dissolves into darkness.

Another shape rises in its place, broader, taller—Killian, maybe—his storm-gray eyes catching the light for the briefest moment before he too vanishes, swallowed whole.

The press of dancers grows heavier, suffocating, until another face shimmers into view.

My twin. Stasia. Her eyes stream with tears; her lips form a scream I cannot hear as the dancers orbit around her, pulling her in and out of the light.

One moment she is there; the next she disappears into shadow, always just out of reach.

“Stasia!” I shout, pushing through, desperate to catch her hand, but my heavy dress weighs me down like lead.

I reach, fingers grasping at the air, but when I finally make contact it is only with darkness—cold and slick—slipping through my grip.

I trip on the layers of skirts and the floor drops away.

I crash hard onto tile, the impact knocking the breath from my lungs. The world is no longer the gilded opera house but a sterile, airless chamber, heavy with despair, the weight of it pressing against my chest until I can hardly breathe.

A sudden flash cuts across the black. White light burns my vision, strobing like static—jagged and disorienting.

“Seraphina!” Killian’s voice thunders in the distance—close enough to hear but far too far to reach me. I try to push up, but my arms won’t move—my hands feel pinned to the floor, fused to the cold tile.

Another flash bursts through the dark.

And then I see him.

He is seated in the shadows, his figure indistinct except for the eyes. One burns blue and vivid, glowing like a shard of ice, while the other is dark and lifeless. He watches me with a smile that doesn’t belong to the living.

In his hands rests a single white rose.

It should be pure, but the petals are dipped in red—each one dripping with blood that trails down the stem and stains his fingers, falling in steady drops onto the floor.

Terror grips me, choking off my breath.

“Seraphina—wake up.”

The voice changes, grounding me, pulling me free. I jolt upright with a gasp, eyes flying open.

Killian is there, sitting at the edge of the bed, his hand heavy on my arm, his storm-gray gaze fixed on me. His chest rises and falls with calm steadiness, but his eyes betray his concern.

“Angel,” he says, softer now, rough with something that feels too much like care. “It’s me. You’re safe.”

But my pulse won’t slow, and the bloody rose is still etched into the back of my eyelids—a vision I can’t shake no matter how tightly Killian’s hand holds me to this moment.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Killian’s voice is low, careful, like he already knows my answer.

I shake my head, my throat tight. “No.”

He doesn’t press. He just shifts, pulling back the covers and climbing in beside me—his bed, the one where he claimed every inch of me until the late hours of the night.

My body is still sore in all the right places, stiff from his relentless pace, but my heart hasn’t stopped hammering since I woke.

“Tell me about something,” I whisper, the words fragile, broken.

Without hesitation he drags me into his chest. I sprawl across the hard planes of his body, one arm banded around him, the other tracing feather-light touches up and down his arm. The gentleness is so at odds with him it almost undoes me.

He’s quiet for a moment, then his deep voice fills the silence. “I like to make things. With my hands. Wood. Iron. Glass.”

I blink, my cheek pressed to his chest, listening to the steady thump of his heart.

“I rent a shop not far from here,” he continues, his tone a little gruffer now, like he’s not used to sharing this.

“Some of the furniture in my place—I built it. Those chairs in the living room, the midcentury ones. Took me weeks to get the angles right.” He pauses.

“Cutting boards are popular too. My mother puts in requests around Christmas—says her friends won’t stop asking for them. ”

The image steadies me—Killian, not with a gun or knife in his hands, but with wood shavings on his shirt, his focus bent on something solid and harmless.

My breathing slows. He notices. His arm tightens around me; his lips brush the side of my head. “It’s okay to be upset, Angel.”

My throat burns. I want to resist, but the words tumble out anyway. “It was so real. The dream.” My voice cracks. “I was on a cold floor… and there was a man sitting in the dark. He had a rose.”

I swallow hard. “The petals were white, but the tips…they were dipped in blood.”

His body stiffens beneath me, but his hand never stops moving along my arm—steady and grounding.

He doesn’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing—my dream.

Maybe it isn’t just fear. Maybe it’s memory: pieces of the first encounter with him, the moment he fixated.

If I keep poking at it, maybe I’ll gather enough fragments to remember who he is, where our paths first crossed, and what he really wants with me.

The thought makes my stomach drop. Chills race down my arms.

Killian’s mouth dips lower, kissing a trail over my chest until my nipples pebble beneath his tongue. My back arches, ready to lose myself in him again, but his phone vibrates twice on the nightstand. He groans against my skin.

“That’ll be Finn.”

He rolls over, grabs the phone, thumb sliding across the screen. I can see the messages when he opens them, clear as day. He makes no effort to hide them. Relief floods me when there’s no Candi—no girl with a heart by her name. Just a small circle of people.

His mother. Finn. Lucian.

And Angel.

The name catches me, pins me. He could’ve saved it for someone else. But deep in my bones, I know it’s me.

I throw my leg over his thigh, needing his focus back on me. His eyes flare dark and molten in an instant. He grabs my chin and crushes his mouth to mine. Even his softest kisses ignite me like kindling, but this one burns hotter, sharper.

“Do you have to go?” I whisper against his lips.

“Yes,” he murmurs back, just as quietly. Neither of us wants to break this bubble—because the second he opens that door, he goes back to being my bodyguard, and I go back to being hunted.

His palm strokes down my back, heavy and warm. “Are you sore?”

“Yes.” I smile when he growls. “But it feels good.”

“Good,” he mutters, taking my mouth with more command, biting my lip as he pulls back. “That means I did my job and fucked you properly.”

He gets up, stretching, then heads into the bathroom.

The tap runs, water rushing into the deep tub.

His cock hangs thick and heavy, hard even now, and I can’t stop staring.

It must be the length of my forearm—a monster between his legs—and I can hardly believe I had the whole thing down my throat last night.

My throat aches at the memory, but heat pools low in my belly anyway.

He catches me. Of course he does. He seems to catch everything I do.

“Stop looking at my cock like you want to suck it.” His voice is amused, edged with that dark tease.

“But I do,” I answer, shameless.

“Fuck, Angel…little killer is what you are.” His brogue slips through, just enough to make me shiver. His smile sharpens, wicked. “Then get over here.”

He strolls back to the bed, jeans hanging open, no underwear—his cock free and heavy against the deep V of his hips. A runway straight to sin.

“Crawl over here and tell your bestie goodbye.”

The devil’s grin curves his lips, and I obey. The covers slide off as I move, back arched, tongue out, mouth open in invitation. He guides his cock between my lips, and I hollow my cheeks, sucking hard as he curses under his breath.

When I pop off, I press a kiss to the cool metal of his piercing, smirking up at him. “Will I be seeing you later?”

His thumb hooks under my chin, tilting my head until his storm-gray eyes pin me in place. “Take a bath. Eat what you want. But?—”

“I won’t leave,” I cut in.

His smirk deepens, approval rumbling in his chest. “Good girl.” He tucks himself back into his jeans, zipping them up. “When I get back, I’ll take you to your penthouse.”

A weight lifts from my shoulders. “Really?”

He pulls on a black tee and a black leather jacket and—fuck—if he doesn’t look good.

“Security upgrades are done. No more keeping you prisoner.” His mouth quirks, but there’s something behind it—like he’d rather keep me locked in here, in his bed, for just a little longer.

“Take a bath. Eat some breakfast. Be good.”

The command lingers after he walks away, heat pooling low as I realize I want nothing more than to obey.