The rain came down like it had a vendetta.
Elise Monroe stood under a flickering streetlamp, soaked to the bone, clutching a manila envelope full of documents she couldn't read but had signed anyway. When you're desperate, you don't squint at the fine print. You just hold your breath and bleed into the pen.
Across the street loomed Vale Holdings, a black-glass monolith with no windows on the top floors and no name on the front, just a door, tall and silent, framed by silver carvings that shimmered when you didn't look directly at them. The kind of building that shouldn't exist, and yet did. Like tax loopholes. Or him.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket for the sixth time. Probably her sister again, asking if she'd made it safely, if the man in the suit had really said what Elise claimed. That he could save them. That he'd offered a contract.
And that all he wanted in return… was her.
Elise took a deep breath, wiped the wet hair from her eyes, and stepped off the curb.
The moment she touched the doormat, the door opened soundlessly.
Inside stood a man in a tailored black suit, his hands gloved, his face carved from something colder than marble. Lucien Vale did not smile. He merely looked her up and down, like she was a piece of meat trying to pass as porcelain.
"You're late," he said, voice smooth as wine and twice as dangerous.
"I had to walk," Elise snapped, teeth chattering. "Some of us don't have chauffeurs."
Lucien stepped aside to let her enter. "You won't be walking anywhere after this."
He shut the door behind her. It closed with the sound of a verdict.
The interior of Vale Holdings was quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that suggested either excessive wealth or demonic influence possibly both.
Elise walked slowly down the marble hallway, her soaked sneakers squeaking with every step like they were protesting her choices. She clutched the manila envelope tighter, as if it could shield her from the thick air that pulsed with something… wrong. The kind of wrong you couldn't name, just felt. Like a dream where the walls breathe.
Lucien led her without a word, his strides long and precise. He didn't glance back to check if she followed he knew she would. She was here, after all. She'd signed the contract. All that remained was delivery.
They entered a private office floor to ceiling windows, none of which had existed from the outside, black shelves lined with books that didn't have titles, and a fire that crackled in the hearth despite there being no logs.
"Sit," he said, gesturing toward a leather chair that looked too expensive for a human butt.
Elise sat. She tried to look calm, composed. She was pretty sure she looked like a wet raccoon auditioning for a crime drama.
Lucien settled behind his desk like a king taking his throne.