Chapter 80

Amelia

I wore my hair down and dressed in careful neutrality, the sort of outfit that didn’t ask questions and didn’t invite them either. The fabric was soft, understated, professional. Pulled from the back of my closet, it carried no scent of Richard, no association with our campaign. It was the kind of outfit someone might wear to a harmless liaison meeting or a low-stakes administrative errand. I walked into David’s headquarters like I belonged there, posture loose, expression calm, heart pounding.

Jason was the last name on the access logs. The only one that didn’t make sense. His fingerprints were still all over the sabotaged press release, though he hadn’t been seen in weeks. If he was still working remotely, that meant someone had given him clearance. Someone close. Someone dangerous. I needed to see him. I needed to look him in the eye and figure out where the knife had come from this time.

The receptionist barely looked up. Her orange nails clicked against the keyboard, fluorescent under the lobby lights. I gave a fake name I’d come up with two nights ago in the dark. She nodded, handed me a temporary visitor sticker, and pointed toward the elevators with a yawn.

I didn’t take the elevator. Too exposed. I took the stairs, slowly, measured. Each step gave me time to breathe, to recite the version of events I was ready to sell if anyone asked. On the third floor, the air felt different. Tense. Like ambition soaked into the paint. Posters of David stared down at me, all strength and charisma, but the closer I looked, the more brittle the smiles became.

I passed cubicles, nodded at staffers I didn’t recognize. Jason’s office was near the end of the hall, his name emblazoned on the frosted glass. I knocked once. No answer. No sound.

A voice startled me. “Looking for Jason?”

I turned. An intern with wide eyes and a half-eaten granola bar stood a few feet away, lanyard twisted in her fingers.

“Yes,” I said, pitching my voice to something casual and unbothered. “He asked me to stop by.”

She bit her lip, glanced at the door. “He, um, hasn’t been in for a while. Maybe three weeks? I heard he’s consulting now, offsite. But... I don’t know.”

I nodded, thanked her, and turned back down the hallway. Each step away from his office felt like the world tightening around me. Jason was gone, but not truly. Still lurking behind edits, cloaked in uncertainty. Still holding a knife behind his back.

By the time I reached the elevator, my legs ached from the tension. When the doors closed, I finally let myself breathe, pressing my back against the wall. It didn’t feel like victory. It felt like a warning.

And I realized, as the floor dropped out beneath me, that I had never followed up on my scheduled visit to Ellis. The vampire militia situation, our border tensions, my intended errand from just the day before. I had completely forgotten. My pulse kicked. There hadn’t been time. Not with the press leak, the rewritten statement, the aftermath of Jason’s digital fingerprints. Not with Richard’s voice in my head, low and steady. Not with everything else I had let swallow me whole.

I texted Nathan from the lobby of our building, trying to play it off as a reschedule. A delay. Something mundane. He didn’t respond.

Back at headquarters, I headed to the staff locker room, hoping to grab a change of shoes and a moment of quiet. The room was empty. Still. I opened my locker and froze.

A sticky note waited there. Yellow, curling slightly at the edges. Ink smudged but unmistakable.

You’re still mine.

I stared at the words. My lungs didn’t work. My fingers closed around the paper with a tremble I couldn’t hide. I knew that handwriting. The tight loops. The slanted 's'. The arrogance etched into every curve of the pen.

Only Adam wrote like that.

The door creaked. I smelled him before I saw him. Woodsmoke and iron, bitterness barely masked by cologne. I turned just in time to see him rounding the corner near the staff kitchen, casual as if he belonged there.

“You haven’t returned my messages,” he said, eyes narrowing with faux sweetness.

“I haven’t received any,” I replied, already bracing.

He stepped closer, tilting his head. “Strange. I was sure you’d want to talk.”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“I’m not doing anything wrong,” he murmured. “Just saying hello.”

I moved to leave, but he blocked the path. Too close. I could feel the heat of his body, the itch of his presence.

“I know someone replaced my mark,” he whispered, voice no longer pretending. “I can smell it.”

I said nothing.

“Was it him?”

I stared past him, jaw tight.

“Tell me who touched what was mine.”

“You don’t get to know that,” I said. “You lost that right a long time ago.”

He laughed once, sharp and bitter. “I marked you first. That doesn't just disappear.”

“It does,” I shot back. “When it was unwanted. When it meant control, not care.”

His mask slipped. Just for a second. Rage cracked beneath the surface. I pushed past him hard, heart hammering, and made it to the stairwell. There, in the safety of solitude, I clutched the crumpled note and reached for Richard through the mindlink.

He answered at once. “Amelia?”

“Adam knows about the mark,” I said, voice brittle. “He confronted me. In the building.”

A beat passed. “We’ll handle it.”

That was all. No panic. No questions. Just calm certainty.

That night, I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t want to wake up in the dark with that note still haunting me. So I went back to Richard’s estate. The night air was cold. I kept my head down the entire walk there.

When he opened the door, he said nothing. Just stepped aside. I walked in and let the silence close around me.

We didn’t speak. He wore that worn hoodie, the one that always carried a faint scent of pine and ink. I didn’t take off my coat at first. We sat on the edge of his bed like two people who weren’t ready to sleep. Not yet.

His hand brushed against mine.

I didn’t move away.

The quiet wrapped around us like a second skin. It wasn’t safety. Not really. But it was enough for tonight.

Later, sometime between midnight and morning, I stirred. I hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but exhaustion had dragged me down. When I opened my eyes, Richard was still awake, lying beside me, watching the shadows on the ceiling. His hand found mine again, and then his lips brushed my knuckles.

“Come here,” he whispered.

I turned to him, confused but trusting. His hands moved down my hips, warm and sure. I let out a shaky breath.

“I want to make you feel good,” he said quietly. “Let me do that.”

I nodded.

He slid the blanket off me, kissed my thigh, then again higher. I gasped as his mouth met me, soft and deliberate. The tension in my chest unraveled thread by thread. I clutched the sheets, tears pricking at the corners of my eyes, not from pain, but from the overwhelming safety of it, the devotion.

He didn’t rush. He didn’t demand. He just worshipped, until I was trembling and quiet and warm all the way through.

After, he kissed my stomach, then my lips, and pulled the blanket back up around me. We didn’t speak. He held me and I felt whole again.