Page 34 of The Final Contract (The Black Ledger Billionaires #5)

T he dream is back.

Familiar. At least, I think it is.

“Sera!”

The voice cuts through the fog, sharp and echoing. My heart leaps. Stasia? It sounds like her.

“Seraphina!”

Another voice now. Different. Deeper. Killian. He’s behind me. No—back the way I just came.

I freeze, breath catching. My arms stretch out in front of me, fingertips brushing against thick, wet air. The fog clings like cobwebs.

“Killian?” My voice comes out thin, shaky. It bounces back at me, distorted, whispering my name in a hundred directions.

I start forward, or at least what feels like forward. The ground beneath my bare feet is cold, hard. Stone, maybe. A corridor, shifting and endless. I can’t see the walls, only the press of darkness hemming me in.

“Sera!” Stasia again, somewhere ahead.

I run. My lungs burn, and the fog curls tighter with every step.

A turn. Another.

My palms scrape against damp stone as I spin around corners, chasing the sound of her voice. But the path keeps shifting—dead ends, sudden walls where there shouldn’t be any.

“Seraphina!” Killian again, closer now. Behind me.

I whip around, chest heaving. Nothing. Just shadows stacked on shadows.

And then I see something.

At the far end of the corridor: a figure.

He sits in perfect stillness, swallowed by the dark. But there’s light—no, not light. A single, sharp spotlight, cutting down through the fog. It illuminates the thing in his hand.

A white rose dripping with blood so red it glistens.

I stumble back, slamming into stone. My throat closes.

No.

I turn and run again, faster, twisting through passage after passage. I can hear my sister, hear Killian, both of them calling me, but their voices are warping, dragging at the edges like they’re being torn apart.

Another corner. Another hall, and he’s there.

Closer this time.

The rose bleeds between his fingers, dark drops spattering the stone beneath him. His head is bowed, features swallowed by shadow.

“No…” My whisper cracks, breaks. I bolt again.

My feet slap against the ground, heart hammering louder than my breath. The fog feels alive now, clawing at me, pulling at my clothes, my hair.

I whip around another bend?—

He’s there.

Closer still.

I can see his shoulders, the slope of his jaw hidden beneath the dark. The blood runs thicker now, spilling down his hand, slicking the stem of the rose until it drips in a steady rhythm to a white tile floor below.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Terror claws up my throat. I can’t breathe.

One more turn—one more chance to escape?—

And he’s waiting for me.

Right in front of me. So close I can feel his breath against my face.

The rose trembles in his hand. His head lifts.

Shadows cling to his face, but the blood doesn’t. It flows freely, spilling down his cheek, over his mouth, dripping onto the flower below.

“…Sera?”

The word rasps out of him, wrong and broken.

Then his hand lashes out, gripping my throat like a vise.

My scream lodges in my chest, and I jolt upright, gasping for air, the echo of blood still dripping in my ears.

I shoot up in bed with a gasp, lungs burning like I never got enough air.

Beside me, Killian jerks awake too, his body tight, on guard in an instant. His arm flexes around me before he realizes I’m not under attack—I’m trembling, drenched in sweat.

“I know who it is.” The words scrape out, raw. My voice doesn’t even sound like mine.

He stills, steel-gray eyes snapping to me, and I know he believes me without question.

“The stalker.” I pant. “It’s him.”

I fling the sheets off and pace, bare legs brushing against Killian’s T-shirt—the one that hangs to my mid-thigh, neckline slipping off one shoulder. The cotton feels too soft, too gentle for the storm clawing inside my chest.

I grab my phone, thumb fumbling. It’s before dawn, but Stasia will be on shift.

“It was the hospital,” I whisper, more to myself than him. The words come in fragments, like the dream still owns part of me. Images flood back—the blood, the rose, the shadowed face whispering, not my name, but Sarah.

The line clicks after only two rings. “What’s wrong?” Stasia’s voice is panicked, sharp.

“The girl’s name,” I blurt. “What was the girl’s name?”

There’s a beat of silence. “What girl? Stacy?” She chuckles softly, but it’s uneasy. “She was pissed at you?—”

“No.” My voice cracks. “The drunk driver. The couple. That night. What was the girl’s name?”

Stasia exhales, thinking hard. “Sarah… something.”

I knew it.

My heart slams harder. The more I try to pin it down, the further away it feels, like smoke slipping through my fingers.

Across the room, Killian has his phone pressed to his ear, already moving. His gaze never leaves me—stern, dark, like a hunter biding his moment. His voice is low, meant not to disturb me. “She says she knows who it is.”

“Something like… Town… or…” Stasia trails off, then snaps her fingers on the other end. “Appleton. Sarah Appleton.”

The name detonates inside me.

I look at Killian, wide-eyed. “Sarah Appleton. The hospital records from that night. The man she was with. It’s him. The rose. The blood. Sarah. That’s it. That’s who it is.”

His palm finds the side of my head, rough and grounding, but gentle all the same. His thumb strokes my cheek. “Good girl.”

Then, to his phone, his voice dropping into that ruthless calm: “You pulling it up?”

A muffled answer hums through the line. He nods once and flicks the call to speaker.

Killian drops his phone onto the mattress and pulls me into his lap like I weigh nothing. I straddle him, knees digging into the bed on either side of his thighs.

“We’ll hear it together,” he murmurs.

His arms cage around my waist, solid, immovable. I loop mine around his neck, press my face against him, and breathe him in. His skin, his warmth—anything to ground me. My heart still races like I’m back in that maze, my throat so dry it burns.

On the speaker, Jaxon yawns, the sound muffled by rapid keystrokes. “Hospital records are such a piece of cake.” He’s half-talking to himself, his voice edged with concentration. “Doing a wide search for Sarah Christina Appleton.”

Sarah Christina. Seraphina. Even her name is close. Too close.

“Shit.”

Killian stiffens under me. “What?”

“She could pass for Seraphina easy,” Jaxon says. “I’m sending you everything. Lucian too—he’s on the way over.”

Killian nods once, sharp, like Jaxon can see him.

“Got ’em,” Jaxon mutters, keys clacking faster. “Caleb Ward.”

The name is a shotgun blast. It ricochets through me—not because I know it, but because my bones do. My blood does. Every instinct inside me screams that’s him. The shadows finally have a name.

“Pulling up employer and last known.”

Silence for a breath. Then Jaxon curses. “You son of a bitch.” He exhales hard, disgust curling in his tone. “Lucian’s gonna be pissed. Just warning you now—maybe take the next week off to avoid his meltdown.”

“What is it, Jax?” My voice cracks.

“He works at the Ledger. Right now. He’s a janitor.”

The air leaves my lungs in a gasp. My fingers tremble as I grab the rendering off the nightstand—the one we made just days ago. I cover one eye with my hand, staring at the sketch, my voice breaking into a whisper. “Oh my God.”

Killian’s phone pings.

On the screen—his picture. Real. Current.

It’s him.

Nearly identical to the rendering.

Except for the black eye patch.

And I know—if it came off—I’d see it. That one blue eye that’s haunted me every night since this began.