Page 43 of Dark Billionaire Stalker
He leaves, and I'm alone with my thoughts and the vast indifference of the city sprawled below.
Benedict is right about one thing: I don't fully understand why she's different. Why I can't treat her like any other loose end, any other problem to be solved and forgotten. Why the thought of her—sitting in her dark apartment, keeping my dahlia alive, gathering the courage to call me—makes something shift in my chest that I don't have words for.
It's not love. I'm not capable of love, not in any way that normal people would recognize. Whatever softness I might have possessed was burned out of me long ago, in a groundskeeper's cottage at St. Augustine's, with my hands around a monster's throat.
But it's not nothing, either.
It's hunger. It's fascination. It's the sense that she sees something in me that no one else has ever seen—or ever wanted to see.
And tomorrow, she's going to sit across from me and pretend this is a business meeting. She's going to shake my handand discuss terms and try to maintain her dignity while I watch her every breath, every blink, every micro-expression of fear and defiance.
I'm going to watch her fight herself. Fight the terror that tells her to run and the desperation that tells her to stay. Fight the darkness inside her that recognized the darkness inside me.
And eventually—maybe not tomorrow, maybe not for weeks or months—she's going to stop fighting.
She's going to give in.
I pull out my phone and text her the restaurant address, adding a brief message:Looking forward to tomorrow. Please don't be late.
A minute later, my phone buzzes with her response. Just two words:I won't.
I stare at those words for a long time, reading between the letters, looking for something I can't quite name.
She won't be late. She's committed. She's stepping into my world, even though every instinct must be screaming at her to run.
Brave. Foolish. Desperate.
Mine.
I set the phone aside and return to the window, watching the sun sink toward the horizon, painting the city in shades of gold and crimson. The light catches the glass of the surrounding towers, turning them into pillars of fire.
Tomorrow feels very far away and impossibly close at the same time.
I think about what I'll wear. What I'll say. How I'll position myself to watch her face when she walks throughthe door and sees me waiting for her. The private dining room at Umberto's is perfect for this—intimate without being claustrophobic, elegant without being ostentatious. A space designed for deals made in whispers and secrets exchanged over expensive wine.
She'll be nervous. She'll try to hide it, but I'll see it in the way she holds her shoulders, the way her eyes move, the way her hands tremble when she reaches for her water glass. I'll see everything, because I've been trained to see everything, because noticing the small signs of weakness is how predators survive.
But I don't want her weak. Not really. Not completely.
I want her to be strong enough to fight. Strong enough to resist. Strong enough that when she finally surrenders, it means something.
The game is about to change. The distance I've maintained—the surveillance, the phone calls, the careful destruction of her life from afar—is about to collapse. Tomorrow, she'll be real. Tangible. Close enough to touch.
And then we'll see what happens when the serpent finally gets close enough to whisper.
I already know what I want to say.
The question is whether she's ready to hear it.
Outside my window, the sun disappears below the horizon, and the city lights begin to flicker on like stars being born. Somewhere out there, in her small apartment with its barricaded door and its drawn curtains, she's preparing for tomorrow. Choosing what to wear. Rehearsing what to say. Steeling herself for an encounter she knows she can't win.
She's thinking about me. I can feel it, even from this distance.
And I'm thinking about her. Only her. Always her.
Tomorrow can't come fast enough.
Chapter 11 - Poppy
