Dark Billionaire Stalker (Dark Serpent Brotherhood #1)

Prologue - Gabriel

One Week Before the Dark Masquerade

I don't believe in fate.

Fate is a story weak people tell themselves to make their suffering meaningful. It was meant to be. Everything happens for a reason. Nonsense. The universe is chaos, and the only order that exists is the order we impose through will and force and the willingness to do what others won't.

I have believed this for eighteen years, since I was sixteen years old and learned what I was capable of. Since I discovered that the rules everyone else follows are just suggestions, easily broken, easily forgotten.

I don't believe in fate.

But I don't know what else to call the moment I first see her.

Ms. Schmidt requested this meeting. Something about the floral arrangements for the Dark Masquerade, final approvals needed, the vendor insisting on walking the spaces herself. I almost declined. I have people for this. Josiah could handle it, or one of the event staff, or anyone other than me.

But I've been restless lately. The noise in my head has been louder than usual, that static hum that only goes quiet when I'm hunting.

It's been three months since my last kill—too long, but necessary.

There's been too much attention on the family lately, too many eyes, too many questions about the Morrigan acquisition.

Josiah has been insistent: Lay low. Be patient. Wait.

I'm tired of waiting.

So I agree to the meeting, if only because it gives me something to do. A distraction from the itch beneath my skin, the hunger that's been building for weeks.

I'm in the library when she arrives. I hear her before I see her—footsteps in the entrance hall, a voice thanking one of the staff.

The sound is warm. Genuine. Most people who come to this estate speak in careful, measured tones, aware that they're being evaluated.

She sounds like she's forgotten to be nervous.

I move to the window that overlooks the entrance hall and I see her.

She's standing just inside the door, looking up at the vaulted ceiling with an expression of open wonder.

Her hair is loose around her shoulders, dark with hints of auburn where the light catches it.

She's dressed simply—black jeans, a gray sweater, practical boots—nothing like the polished professionals who usually handle our events.

She's carrying a notebook. As I watch, she opens it and begins sketching something. The ceiling, I realize. The way the light falls through the windows. She's not just seeing the space; she's studying it.

Ms. Schmidt approaches her, and they exchange words I can't hear. The woman—the florist—nods, gestures at something, laughs at something else. The laugh is unguarded. Real.

When was the last time I heard someone laugh like that in this house?

I should go down. Introduce myself. Play the gracious host, the hands-on client who cares about the details of his charity event. That's what Gabriel Ambrose would do—the version of me that exists for public consumption.

Instead, I stay at the window. Watching.

Ms. Schmidt leads her into the ballroom, and I lose sight of them. But I find myself moving—out of the library, down the back corridor, to the gallery that overlooks the ballroom from above. It's a space we rarely use, dusty and forgotten. Perfect for observation.

She's walking through the room slowly, trailing her fingers along chair backs, pausing to examine the iron chandeliers.

Ms. Schmidt is talking—I can see her mouth moving, the gestures toward various spaces—but the florist isn't entirely listening.

She's somewhere else. Somewhere inside her own vision of what this room could become.

She stops in the center of the ballroom and turns in a slow circle. Then she looks up.

Not at me. She can't see me; the gallery is dark, and I'm standing well back from the railing. But for a moment, it feels like she's looking at me. Like she senses something watching her.

She frowns slightly. Her hand comes up to touch her throat—an unconscious gesture, protective.

Then Ms. Schmidt says something, and the moment breaks. The florist turns back to her, nods, writes something in her notebook.

I don't move for a long time.

I learn her name within the hour. Poppy Rivers. Twenty-seven years old. Owner and sole proprietor of Poppy Rivers Florals, a small business operating out of her apartment in the city. No employees, one part-time assistant. Annual revenue suggests she's barely breaking even.

She was raised by a single mother, Linda Rivers. Father unknown—or rather, unlisted. The birth certificate names no father. They moved frequently when Poppy was young, never staying in one place more than a year, until settling in their current city when she was eight.

No criminal record. No debts beyond student loans, nearly paid off. No romantic relationships that show up in any searchable database, though that means nothing—people can be private.

She studied biology in college before dropping out in her third year. Her mother had health problems; someone needed to work. She took a job at a flower shop, discovered she had a talent for it, and eventually struck out on her own.

Her social media is sparse. Mostly photos of her work—arrangements for weddings, funerals, corporate events. Occasionally, a sunset, a cup of coffee, a street scene that caught her eye. Nothing personal. No selfies, no friends tagged, no glimpses into her private life.

She's a ghost, almost. A woman who exists in the margins.

I find this intriguing.

I tell myself I'm being thorough.

The Dark Masquerade is an important event. The Serpent Brotherhood's annual gathering, hidden in plain sight behind the mask of charity. Every detail matters, every vendor must be vetted, every potential security risk identified and addressed.

Poppy Rivers is a potential security risk. She'll have access to the estate for hours before the event. She'll see things, hear things, move through spaces that most people never enter. I need to know who she is.

That's why I pull her file. That's why I have her followed.

That's what I tell myself.

The man I assign to watch her is named Hutton. He's competent, discreet, and entirely without imagination—the perfect surveillance operative. He sends me reports twice daily, dry recitations of her movements and activities.

7:15 AM: Subject leaves apartment. Walks to coffee shop on corner (Bean Corner). Orders a large black coffee, no food. Sits by the window for approximately 40 minutes. Appears to be sketching in a notebook.

8:02 AM: Subject walks to the wholesale flower market. Spends 2.5 hours selecting inventory. Speaks with multiple vendors. Purchases a significant quantity of black dahlias, red roses, and various greenery.

10:42 AM: Subject returns to apartment. Does not leave again until 2:30 PM.

The reports are thorough and utterly inadequate.

They tell me where she goes, but not what she thinks.

They catalog her actions but not her essence.

Hutton can tell me that she sat by a window for forty minutes, but he can't tell me what she was drawing, what expression she wore while she drew it, whether she smiled or frowned or bit her lip in concentration.

By the second day, I've had enough. I dismiss Hutton and take over the surveillance myself.

I watch her from across the street as she works in the flower market.

She moves through the stalls with purpose, but she stops often—to smell a bloom, to hold a petal up to the light, to speak with vendors who clearly know her.

She haggles, but not aggressively. She asks questions. She listens to the answers.

At one point, she finds a bucket of dahlias that have wilted slightly, marked down for quick sale. She buys all of them. I watch her carry them to her van with something close to tenderness.

They're dying, I think. Why would she want dying things?

But I already know the answer. I saw it in the way she touched the flowers at the estate, the way she pulled a bruised dahlia from an arrangement and tucked it into her pocket rather than discarding it. She cares for broken things. Dying things. Things that others would throw away.

The realization does something strange to my chest.

That afternoon, I follow her to a cemetery. It's not part of her routine—Hutton's reports didn't mention it, and the route she takes suggests spontaneity, a last-minute decision to turn left instead of right.

She parks near the older section, where the headstones are weathered and the trees have grown thick enough to block the sun. I park at a distance and follow on foot, staying well back, using the mausoleums for cover.

She walks with purpose to a grave near the back corner.

The headstone is simple, small, almost lost among its grander neighbors.

I can't get close enough to read the inscription without being seen.

But I watch her kneel, watch her pull weeds from around the base, watch her place a small bundle of flowers—the wilted dahlias, I realize, the dying things she rescued—against the stone.

She stays there for a long time. She doesn't cry. She doesn't speak. She just sits. Keeping company with the dead.

When she finally stands and walks away, I wait until she's out of sight before approaching the grave.

The headstone reads:

BERTHA RIVERS 1952-2021 Beloved Grandmother "She gave us roots and wings."

Her grandmother. Dead for five years.

I stand there longer than I should, looking at the wilted dahlias already beginning to brown in the cold air. She brings dying flowers to the dead. There's something almost poetic about it. A recognition that beauty doesn't need to be permanent to be meaningful.

I have never thought about flowers this much in my entire life.

***

The night before the Dark Masquerade, I break into her apartment for the first time.