“You think I’m flattered that some rich psychopath’s been watching me like I’m a fucking exhibit?”
He rises from his chair, and takes a walk around his desk before stopping only a foot away from me. “You don’t belong behind a bar, Lux.” I don’t move, stunned by his remark as if he knows me. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know you haven’t picked up a brush in months.” Something cold scrapes down my spine as he continues. “I know you don’t sleep unless you drink. I know your hands shake before the first customer walks in. I know you keep the sketchbook under your pillow like it can protect you.” My mouth tightens into a thin line as he continues. “I know you wake up some nights convinced something’s in the room with you,” he says, his voice still low. “And I know the part that terrifies you most—it feels like a homecoming.” The air between us is now pulsing, “I know what you are,” he finishes.
My voice cuts like ice. “Don’t.”
He tilts his head. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t pretend you know me just because you’ve been watching from the shadows like a coward.”
“You think I’m hiding?” he says, stepping closer. “I brought you here.”
“For what? To posture? To make yourself look like a Bond villain with a library fetish?”
He’s close now. Close enough that I can feel the heat coming off him. Close enough that I should step back,but I don’t. “You think knowing my secrets gives you power over me?” I hiss.
“No,” he says quietly. “It gives me clarity.”
“Fuck your clarity.” I push past him, or try to. His hand catches my arm firmly.
“I don’t want to fix you, Lux,” he says, making me freeze. His eyes find mine, and something in them flickers with a hint of darkness. “I want you as you are,” he says. “Sharp. Defiant. Dangerous.”
“You want control,” I spit.
“I want ownership.” Those words crack through me like lightning.
“You’re out of your goddamn mind.”
He smiles. Just barely. “Finally. Something we agree on.”
I rip my arm free and take a step back, heart pounding. “I don’t care how many cameras you’ve tapped or dreams you’ve hijacked. You don’t get to play puppet master with me.”
“I didn’t pull your strings, Lux,” he says calmly. “I opened a door and you stepped through it.”
“You think that makes you safe?”
“I think it makes you curious.”
“You think this is just curiosity?” I ask, voice rising. “This is me deciding whether I should burn this whole fucking place down before I walk away.
He nods slowly. “Good,” he says. “Then you’re exactly where you need to be.” He turns without another word and moves to the far wall. Another glass case waits there. Smaller than the others. Spotlit like a relic in a church. Inside it is a blade. The dagger is slender and elegant in a way that feels cruel.
Its blade curves like a fang, narrow and gleaming with a dark, tempered sheen that isn't quite silver, isn't quite black. The metal hums faintly under the glass, like it remembers being touched. Forged for blood, not ceremony. Etched into the steel are symbols that I don’t recognize, made of spined curves and branching lines, like veins, or roots, or something older. Something meant to mark more than names. The hilt is wrapped in weathered black leather, worn smooth along one edge like it's been gripped too tightly, too often. There’s a small tear right where the leather ends. At the pommel sits a single shard of obsidian, sharp as grief, set into a twisted iron crown.It looks ancient. Purposeful. And not just dangerous,hungry. Like it’s waiting. It hums with violence, even behind the glass. That’s not why my breath stops. I know that blade…because I drew it in my sketchbook months ago. The lines, the curve of the hilt, the split down the center of the steel…it’s exact. It was as if the weapon was copied from my mind and forged in secret. “What the hell is this?” I ask, voice sharp. He doesn’t look at me. Just stares at the blade.
“You tell me.”
I take a step forward; eyes locked on the weapon. My throat tightens. “I don’t…”
“You’ve never seen it before?” he asks, calmly. “Never touched it? Never dreamed of it?” I want to lie. But the truth is already unraveling in my stomach. He finally turns, and for once, there’s no smugness in his voice. No threat. Just certainty. “They weren’t just dreams, Lux.”
6
He Wasn’t the Only One
I walk out like I won’t shatter—chin high, spine straight, hands loose at my sides, like I didn’t just stare down a man who claims he wants to own me and somehow made it sound like a goddamn compliment.
The cold hits me like a slap; it’s damp and thick. I shove through the front doors, lungs aching with the need to be out, to breathe something that isn’t him. Gravel scatters under my shoes as I cross the drive. My car waits where I left it, headlights catching the edge of stone like eyes.
