6.
The Velvet Grind’s patio buzzed with the lunch crowd, sunlight dappling through ivy-twined lattices.
Isolde perched on a wrought-iron chair, her floral tea dress (pale lavender, cap sleeves) fluttering in the breeze.
Her hair, loose today, cascaded like liquid platinum to her knees, a pearl clip pinning one side.
Across the table, her two friends leaned in—Mira Sato, the café’s barista, all leather jackets and smudged eyeliner, and Lila, a soft-spoken bookstore clerk in a chunky knit cardigan and braids.
“It’s not romantic,” Isolde insisted, stirring her chamomile tea.
Her choker a simple velvet ribbon now, not his bobbed as she swallowed. “The notes, the gifts… It’s wrong. He knows things. Private things.”
Mira snorted, flicking ash from her clove cigarette. “Oh please. Rich guys love playing stalker. Remember that tech bro who sent me a Rolex? He just wanted a kink dispenser.”
She smirked, her silver nose ring glinting. “But you?” She eyed Isoldes’s pearl-studded loafers. “You’re the type they wanna ruin.”
“A secret admirer?”
Lila leaned forward who was quite until, brown curls bouncing, green eyes gleaming. “Finally, someone has good taste.”
“You say that like I’m not always overlooked,” Isolde said with a soft, embarrassed smile. Her voice was warm and airy, every word tinged with gentleness.
Lila laughed.
She was a dancer fiery, confident, always with a comeback.
“Overlooked?” said the other girl, Mira, her tone soft but skeptical. “Isolde, you look like something out of a Grimm fairytale. If you weren’t so shy, half the men in this arrondissement would be at your door.”
Isolde blushed, her lashes fluttering. “It’s not just the gift. It’s the notes,” she whispered, glancing over her shoulder. “They’re… strange.”
“How strange?” Lila asked, already intrigued.
“He watches me,” she said softly. “He notices things no one else does. He knew I cried in the storeroom. He quoted something I said to myself when I thought I was alone.”
That silenced them.
Isolde fidgeted with the edge of her sleeve. “And this morning… there was another. In my coat pocket.”
“What did it say?” Mira asked, tone cautious now.
She hesitated, then recited quietly, “‘You are more beautiful when you’re afraid. –DV.’”
A chill rippled across the table.
“That’s not romantic,” Mira said immediately. “That’s dangerous.”
“But he’s given me things, too,” Isolde said, almost defensively.
“Perfume. A book I mentioned only once in passing. A necklace I found on my bed when I got home. Nothing… nothing violent.”
Lila arched a brow. “Nothing violent yet. You’re being watched, Isolde. That’s not love. That’s obsession.”
Lila frowned, her jade pendant slipping from her dress as she reached for Isolde’s hand. “Have you told the police? The broken lock, the rose…”
“They don’t care.” Isolde’s lashes lowered, shadows bruising her under-eyes.
“But… sometimes, when I read his notes, I…” She trailed off, cheeks flushing.
Mira arched a brow. “You what? Get wet?”
“Mira!” Lila hissed.
Isolde’s teacup clattered. “No! It’s—his handwriting. The way he sees me. Like I’m… I’m not invisible.”
Her whisper trembled. “What’s wrong with me?”
A waiter delivered a gold-stamped envelope to their table. “Pour Isolde,” he said, ignoring her choked gasp.
Inside: a pressed gardenia, its petals edged in gold foil, and a card.
“Your loneliness is a hymn. I am in its congregation.”
—D.V.
Mira snatched the card, whistling. “Damn. This guy’s got vocab. Bet he’s ripped, too.”
“These notes…” Isolde’s voice dropped to barely a whisper, “im drawn to him. I don’t know why. There’s something about it. The control. The attention. I shouldn’t want it, but I do. I ache to understand him.”
Lila and Mira exchanged a glance.
“That’s how it starts,” Mira warned. “The mystery. The allure. But when obsession turns into possession, there’s no escape.”
Lila paled. “Isolde, this isn’t a game. Let me stay with you tonight—”
“No.” Isolde stood abruptly, her napkin fluttering to the ground. “I’m… I’m fine aunt will be there.”
But her hands shook as she tucked the gardenia into her purse, fingertips brushing the dried dove wing she’d hidden there a sick keepsake.
Dante Valencourt watched the trio from his black Maybach idling across the street.
He’d chosen the gardenia deliberately its scent clung to corpses in Parisian catacombs.
On his lap lay a dossier Lila’s medical history (type 1 diabetic), Mira’s juvenile record (shoplifting, age 14).
He could crush them like rosebuds. But Isolde’s face held him rapt the way she’d blushed speaking of him. “Addicted already, little one?”
He adjusted his obsidian cufflinks, his suit a tailored tomb-black.
Beside him, a velvet box held his next gift: a necklace of human teeth, each plated in palladium.
He’d harvested them from a snitch last week. For her, only the finest.
He saw the way Isolde tucked a strand of hair behind her ear when she was nervous.
The way she leaned toward her friends when she whispered. Her lips moved around his initial like a confession DV
He liked hearing her say it. Even if she didn’t know his name yet.
She was curious. That was good.
But her friends… they were dangerous.
They filled her with doubts. They would try to rip her from his influence and dilute her devotion with logic and fear.
That wouldn’t do.
“Follow the Asian one,” he told his driver. “If she interferes again, stage an overdose.”