Page 54 of Dark Billionaire Stalker
Loyalty, Ms. Rivers. It's something I value highly.
I think you know what I want.
I know what I think he wants. What I'm afraid he wants. But thinking about it makes my stomach turn, and my skin flush, and I can't tell if the heat is fear or something else entirely.
The pen feels heavy in my hand. Such a small thing, a simple tool for making marks on paper. But the marks I'm about to make will change everything.
I think about the woman I was three weeks ago. The woman who got the biggest job of her career, who spent hours perfecting arrangements for a gala she thought would launch her into a new life. She was hopeful. Excited. She had no idea what was waiting for her in that candlelit study, what kind of monster was watching her from the shadows.
That woman is gone now. The woman holding this pen is someone else—harder, more afraid, more alone. The woman holding this pen has seen things she can't unsee and learned truths she can't unlearn.
The woman holding this pen is about to sign her life away to a murderer.
I sign the contract.
The pen moves across the paper, leaving my signature in blue ink. Poppy Rivers. Two words that used to mean something, that used to belong to me, that are now the property of Ambrose Holdings LLC.
I take a photo with my phone. Attach it to an email. Type the address from his business card into the recipient field.
My thumb hovers over the send button.
Last chance. Last moment to tear up the contract, block his number, pack a bag and run. My mother did it once, fled from whatever she was running from, and built a new life somewhere else. I could do the same. I could disappear.
But I won't.
Because some part of me—the part that drew serpents whispering to flowers, the part that kept his dahlia alive, the part that dreams of cool scales and knowing eyes—doesn't want to run anymore.
That part wants to see what happens next.
I press send.
The email whooshes away, carrying my signature to Gabriel Ambrose, and I sit back in my chair and wait to feel something. Regret, maybe. Relief. Fear. Anything.
But there's only numbness, a strange hollow calm, like the eye of a hurricane.
I watch my phone, counting the seconds. He'll respond. I know he will. A man like him doesn't leave anything to chance, doesn't allow any gap in the narrative he's constructing. He's probably been checking his email obsessively, waiting for this exact message.
The thought should disgust me. Instead, it makes something twist in my chest—something that might be satisfaction, knowing that I've occupied his thoughts the way he's occupied mine.
What is wrong with me?
The response comes in seven minutes.
I watch the time tick by on my phone, unable to look away. Seven minutes to read my email, review the attached contract, confirm that his trap has finally sprung shut. Seven minutes that feel like seven hours.
Then:Excellent. I'll have my assistant send the details for your first assignment. Welcome to the team, Ms. Rivers.
Welcome to the team.
As if this is a normal job. As if I'm a normal employee. As if there isn't a corpse and a midnight phone call and a slow-motion destruction of my entire life standing between us.
I laugh. The sound is harsh, too loud in my empty apartment, and it turns into something else halfway through—a sob, maybe, or a scream swallowed before it could escape. I press my hand over my mouth and breathe through my fingers until the urge passes.
Welcome to the team.
I'm on his team now. In his world. Under his control.
The dahlia catches my eye from across the table, its dark petals gleaming in the afternoon light. I've been keeping it alive for almost two weeks now, changing the water, trimming the stem, treating it with more care than I've treated anything else in my apartment.
