"Let's walk straight into it, then. No flashlight. No excuses. Just the sound of our own breath and the feel of something waiting in the dark."
There's a moment, just before you fall asleep, when the world bends—when dreams and memories tangle in the dark, and you can't tell which is whispering to you.
That's where Lucian lives now.
In the quiet. In the curve of my thoughts.
And worst of all?
It doesn't feel like an invasion.
It feels like he's meant to be there.
He called me that night.
Not a number I recognized. A burner, probably.
I should've hung up.
But instead, I said, "Hello."
His voice was a soft hush in my ear.
"You remember the man with the wolf tattoo? The one you left near the lake?"
My blood turned to ice.
That was before. Long before the badge, before the neat case files and the applause of closed investigations.
I had never spoken that name aloud. I had never even thought about him in years.
"He begged you. You didn't stop. You were... beautiful."
I didn't speak.
I couldn't.
"I'm not saying this to frighten you, Aesira. I'm saying it because I know what it's like to feel seen. You see me, don't you?"
The next time we met, I didn't tell anyone I was going.
I told myself it was an undercover strategy.
Truth was, I didn't want to share him.
He wasn't a case anymore.
He was mine.
The villa looked different that night.
Lit up in soft amber light, like something holy.
Inside, he'd prepared a table. Not food—never food. A spread of case files. Flowers. Art. Ritual.
"You're not just a detective," he said, pouring dark wine into a crystal glass. "You're a curator of death. Like me."
I laughed once—dry, hollow. "Is that what we are now? Artists?"
Lucian met my eyes. "No. Lovers."
The word lodged in my throat.
"Don't flatter yourself," I said, trying to reclaim some kind of power.
But he just tilted his head.
"You've been with people before, haven't you? Slept with them. Kissed them. Maybe even said you loved them. But not one of them has ever seen the truth in you. Not like I do."
He walked closer.
Stopped just before touching me.
"You've been alone in every bed, haven't you, Aesira?"
I didn't answer.
I didn't need to.
Because he was right.
The rest of the night unfolded like a slow bleed.
He showed me sketches. Ideas for pieces. He asked what I thought of the lighting in one photo, the angle of the subject's body in another.
At one point, he pulled out a single white camellia from a drawer.
Held it out to me.
"It means 'perfected love.' Fitting, don't you think?"
I took it.
I didn't drop it.
I don't remember the drive home.
Just the silence. The way the camellia sat in the passenger seat like a promise.
And the terrifying truth blooming in me like something poisonous and sweet:
I was falling in love with the man I was supposed to kill.