Page 89 of Dark Billionaire Stalker
This wasn't a coincidence. This was calculated.
I should tell Gabriel. I should show him the card, describe the conversation, let him handle whatever threat this represents. He warned me someone was asking questions. This must be connected.
But something stops me.
Maybe it's the memory of Gabriel's face when he saidI'm handling it—the dismissiveness, the assumption that I couldn't understand or participate in my own protection. Maybe it's the creeping sense that there are things he's not telling me, secrets layered beneath secrets, and I'm stumbling through his world blind.
Maybe it's just the small, stubborn part of me that wants something that's mine. Something he doesn't control.
I slip the card into my pocket and walk out of the market.
James is waiting exactly where he said he'd be. He takes my bags without comment, loads them into the trunk, and holds the door for me as if nothing has changed.
Maybe nothing has.
Or maybe everything has, and I just don't know it yet.
The drive back to the estate is silent. I stare out the window, watching the city recede, my hand resting on the pocket where Zach's card is hidden.
Some of us have been where you are.
Some of us found our way out.
Is that what I want? A way out?
A month ago, the answer would have been obvious. Yes. Yes, of course. I was trapped, coerced, held captive by a manwho'd destroyed my life to make me need him. Escape was the only goal, the only hope, the only future I could imagine.
But now...
Now I'm not sure.
Now I wake up in his bed and feel something other than fear. Now I watch him move through his world—powerful, dangerous, utterly in control—and feel something that might be admiration. Now I let him do things to my body that I never imagined wanting, and I want more, always more.
Now I'm starting to forget why I should want to leave.
Is that Stockholm syndrome? Trauma bonding? Some psychological defense mechanism, I don't have a name for?
Or is it something else? Something real, something dangerous, something that defies the categories I've used to make sense of my life?
I don't know. I don't know anything anymore.
Except that my breasts are tender and I've been nauseous for three days and my period is—
I stop the thought before it can fully form. Count backward in my head, trying to remember dates that suddenly seem very important.
When was my last period? Before the gala? During the first week of the contract?
I can't remember. I can'tremember.
The estate appears through the trees, massive and beautiful and terrifying. Home. Prison. The serpent's den.
All of the above.
I go straight to the room that's officially mine—the guest suite Gabriel assigned me, though I've never slept there. I tell the staff I need to rest, close the door, and pull out the card.
Zachary Mercer.
I could throw it away. Pretend the encounter never happened. Go back to Gabriel's bed tonight and let his hands wipe the memory clean.
