Page 14 of Dark Billionaire Stalker
She laughs, but it sounds forced. I've heard that laugh before—when I asked about my father, when I asked why we moved so much when I was young, when I pushed too hard against the locked doors of her past.
"Mom. Is there something you're not telling me?"
"Of course not, sweetheart. I'm just glad you're home safe. You sound tired. Did you sleep?"
"Not much."
"You should rest. Take care of yourself. And Poppy?"
"Yeah?"
"If anything strange happens... if anyone contacts you about the gala, or asks questions, or seems interested in you... You'll tell me, won't you? Right away?"
The dahlia sits on my table, dark petals gleaming in the light.
"Sure, Mom. I'll tell you."
"Promise me."
"I promise."
I hang up and sit there for a long time, turning her words over in my mind.If anyone seems interested in you.Like she expected this. Like she's been waiting for something to find me.
But that's paranoid. My mother's anxiety has always been formless, generalized—a fear of everything and nothing. It has nothing to do with Gabriel Ambrose or the Serpent Brotherhood or whatever I stumbled into last night.
It can't.
The afternoon fades toward evening. I haven't left the apartment. Haven't showered. Haven't done anything except sit and scroll and stare at the flower on my table, willing it to make sense.
I should get rid of it. Every time I look at it, I think about his hands—those same hands that arranged this stem, that touched these petals, that wrapped around a man's throat and squeezed until the life was gone.
I don't get rid of it.
Instead, I find myself wandering through my apartment, restless and untethered. I can't sit still. Can't focus. Can't exist in my own skin without feeling like something is crawling underneath.
I end up in my workroom—the second bedroom I converted into a studio, filled with supplies and half-finished projects and sketches pinned to every surface. This is usually where I feel most myself, surrounded by flowers and wire and ribbon, my hands busy with creation.
Now it feels like a crime scene. Every bloom reminds me of the gala. Every dark petal echoes the dahlias I arranged in that ballroom, under the eyes of masked strangers.
Underhiseyes.
I move to my desk, shuffling through papers without purpose, just needing to do something. Invoices, receipts, notes for upcoming projects. My sketchbook, lying open to a half-finished study of roses.
I flip through the pages idly, not really seeing them. Flowers, flowers, more flowers. A sketch of my mother's face that I never finished. A series of hands from a figure drawing class I took years ago.
And then I stop.
There's a page missing.
The edges are ragged—torn, not cut. I run my finger along the remnants, trying to remember what was there. I flip forward, flip back, searching for context.
The page before is a sketch of the estate's ballroom, drawn from memory after my visit last week. The sweeping staircase, the iron chandeliers, the way the light fell through those tall windows.
The page after is a study of dahlia petals. Close-up, detailed, focused on the way the colors darken toward the center.
And in between—nothing. A gap. A wound.
I close my eyes and try to remember. What did I draw that night, after I came home from the estate? I was restless, unsettled by the strange atmosphere of the place. I poured a glass of wine and sat at this desk and let my hand move without thinking, the way I always do when I need to process something I can't name.
