10.
She hadn't left the shelter in three days.
Isolde sat on the floor of her temporary bedroom, back pressed to the wall, her knees pulled tight against her chest.
Her long hair fell around her like a shroud, tangled and damp from a shower she barely remembered taking.
The room was silent. Too silent. She could hear her heartbeat in her ears, ticking like a bomb.
The videotape had been taken by the police. But it didn't matter.
The images were carved into her mind-her aunt's mutilated face, the old man's screams, the masked figure's voice slithering through the static like silk over broken glass.
"You're mine now..."
That voice haunted her dreams. The cadence of it. Not loud, not unhinged controlled.
Like he was savoring every syllable. And that terrified her more than any scream could.
She hadn't eaten.
She barely drank water.
But someone was still feeding him.
Because last night, there was another note.
It had been slipped beneath her door while she slept.
"The nightmares only hurt because you still think you're alone. You're not. I'm with you. Always."
Beneath it was a single object: a small, velvet box.
Inside?
Her favorite childhood hair ribbon.
She had lost it at age eight, the day her father died.
She had never told anyone.
She screamed so loud she thought her throat would tear.
The shelter staff had tried to intervene. A doctor came, suggested medication, therapy, a psychiatric evaluation.
But she wasn't mad.
He was real.
He was watching her.
And now... he was reaching deeper.
Somewhere above the city, in the penthouse high above the sprawl of Paris, Dante Valencourt watched the footage again.
He'd placed two new hidden cameras in her shelter apartment. One above the closet. Another beneath the faux-wood nightstand.
On the screen, she was sitting on the floor, hugging herself.
Her thin nightgown clung to her like damp petals. Her body was trembling. The light caught her eyes red, swollen, wild with confusion and despair.
She was perfect.
He paused the footage.
Zoomed in.
Her lips parted just slightly, as though she were whispering to someone who wasn't there.
He reached for his phone.
Typed a single text into an encrypted, untraceable message service.
Then hit send.
Isolde's phone buzzed.
She jumped.
The screen lit up with an unknown number.
Just one message:
"Look under your bed, my sweet. I left you something to help you sleep."
Her skin prickled.
Her hands trembled as she crawled toward the bed, heart pounding so hard it made her vision blur.
She reached underneath.
Her fingers brushed something soft. Fabric.
She pulled it out.
A pillowcase.
Silk. Pale lavender. Embroidered with her initials.
The one her mother had sewn before she died.
It had vanished years ago.
She dropped it like it burned.
"How did he get it? How does he know?"
Her breaths came faster. Her chest tightened. She grabbed her phone and began typing a message to Detective Renaud her thumbs shaking.
But before she hit send, the phone buzzed again.
Another message.
Don't.
Just that.
Nothing more.
As if he knew what she was doing.
She stood. Backed away from the phone. Her knees hit the edge of the bed and she stumbled, crashing to the floor. The walls felt like they were closing in. The room, suffocating.
She screamed.
Meanwhile, across the city, Dante lounged in the shadows of his private library.
The fire crackled low behind him. His shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, sleeves rolled to his forearms.
A glass of dark scotch rested near his fingertips.
He watched her scream. Again and again.
He didn't smile.
But his chest tightened with possession.
She was unraveling.
Just enough.
Not enough to break completely. Not yet.
He needed her soft. Fractured. But still full of breath and hope. A flower bent by the storm, not crushed.
His fingers moved over the screen.
He typed again.
Isolde's phone lit up once more.
"You're thinking about the rope in the storage closet, aren't you? The one the shelter uses to hang decorations?"
Her stomach dropped.
"You want the pain to stop. But that would disappoint me, my pretty little dove. I've waited too long to have you."
Another message followed:
"Don't die before you understand what it feels like to be wanted this deeply. To be touched so carefully it hurts. To be worshipped... violently."
She dropped the phone.
Collapsed.
Sobbing, she curled into herself on the floor, clutching her own arms like they might keep her from shattering.
She didn't know what this was.
Love?
Hatred?
Madness?
All she knew was that it wrapped around her like barbed wire.
Later that night, as she lay half-asleep, half-delirious, her door creaked open.
She jolted upright.
But there was no one there.
Only darkness.
Only silence.
She turned on the light.
There, on the dresser, was a mirror.
Oval. Antique. The silver handle carved with roses. The back etched with a single word in blood-red paint:
"MINE."
She dropped it.
The glass shattered.
The sound echoed like thunder.
She fell to her knees.
And when she looked up, there was something scrawled in the glass shards:
"Soon, you'll beg to see me."