Page 23 of Dark Billionaire Stalker
I don't answer unknown numbers. I never answer unknown numbers.
My hand reaches for the phone anyway.
It's still ringing when I pick it up. Still ringing when I bring it to my ear. Still ringing when I press the green button and hold my breath.
Silence.
Then his voice, warm and smooth and close enough to touch:
"Good evening, Poppy. I hope I'm not calling too late."
I can't speak. Can't breathe. The phone is pressed to my ear and his voice is inside my head and the walls are closing in.
"I wanted to follow up on our conversation this morning," he continues, as if we're colleagues, as if this is normal. "About the work I mentioned. Have you had time to consider my offer?"
My mouth opens. No sound comes out.
"Poppy? Are you there?"
"How did you get this number?" The words come out cracked, broken.
A soft laugh. "I'm a resourceful man. Surely you've realized that by now."
I should hang up. I should throw the phone across the room and never touch it again.
"What do you want?" I whisper.
A pause. When he speaks again, his voice is lower. More intimate. Like he's lying beside me in the dark, his lips brushing my ear.
"I think you know what I want."
The line goes dead.
I sit there for a long time, the phone still pressed to my ear, listening to nothing.
On the table, the dahlia watches.
Chapter 6 - Gabriel
The silence after I end the call is exquisite.
I set the phone down on my desk and lean back in my chair, savoring the echo of her voice. That broken whisper.What do you want?As if she didn't already know. As if she hadn't felt the answer in every moment since our eyes met across that ballroom.
She's afraid. That's good. Fear is useful—it keeps prey alert, keeps them thinking about you, keeps them from getting comfortable enough to make stupid decisions like going to the police.
But fear isn't what I want from her. Not ultimately.
I want what I saw in her eyes when she looked at me through that doorway. That flash of recognition. That moment when she saw the monster and didn't look away.
I want her to stop running from it.
My study is dark except for the lamp on my desk, a pool of warm light in the shadows. The estate is quiet at this hour—staff dismissed, brothers elsewhere, nothing but the old house settling around me. I should be tired. I haven't slept properly since the gala, my mind too full of her to quiet down.
Instead, I feel alive. More alive than I've felt in years.
I pull out the sketch again—the serpent and the dahlia, worn soft from handling—and smooth it flat on my desk. Her lines are confident, assured. She drew this without hesitation, her hand moving from some place deeper than conscious thought.
She felt me watching her. And this is what her subconscious produced.
