STELLA
Christian Harper had some nerve.
Anger simmered in my stomach as I unlocked my apartment and opened the door with more force than necessary.
It wasn’t an emotion I felt often, and it ate away at my insides like acid.
I didn’t know why I’d reacted so strongly to Christian’s dismissal. I’d heard worse from Meredith and the trolls in my comment sections.
But there was something about the way he did it that clawed under my skin.
One second, I thought he would kiss me. The next, he was kicking me out of his apartment. The man flipped hot and cold more often than a broken faucet.
Worse, there’d been a moment when I’d wanted him to kiss me. When the curiosity over how that firm, sensual mouth would taste pulsed in rhythm to the ache between my thighs.
Frustration twined with my anger.
I didn’t know how he managed to pull so many dormant emotions out of me.
Was it his looks? His wealth? Neither of those things had mattered to me before. I’d met too many rich, good-looking
jerks to be suckered in by their false charm.
I set my bag on a nearby table and forced my lungs to expand past the pressure. Confrontation always set me on edge. Even when I wasn’t in the wrong, I felt like I was.
You won’t find me in your apartment again, period.
The memory of my rash declaration erased any calming effect my deep breaths may have had.
I’d “quit” in the heat of the moment. But as stupid as the deal was, I had promised him I would care for his plants in exchange for lower rent.
What if he raised my rent or, worse, evicted me? What if he ended our arrangement? I hadn’t heard from Delamonte yet, but I’d already gained ten thousand followers since I posted the photo of us on our way to the fundraiser.
My account was growing for the first time in a year and ending our arrangement early would kill any momentum I had.
No momentum equaled no growth equaled less money. Regret kicked my heart palpitations into overdrive.
That was why I’d trained myself to suppress emotional outbursts. The consequences always overshadowed the temporary relief.
I closed my eyes and attempted to return to my deep breathing.
It didn’t work.
Dammit.
I was too tired and jittery for yoga, so I rifled through my bag for my phone. Social media wasn’t the best anxiety- reducing tactic, but it was a great distraction. I just had to stick to my carefully curated YouTube feed of cute animals, styling tips, and hair and makeup tutorials.
Any other app was too much of a minefield to navigate when I was feeling like this.
Lip gloss, moisturizer, cafe receipt…
I paused when my hand brushed a plain white envelope.
I didn’t remember putting that in my bag. I didn’t even own mailing envelopes since I did everything via email these days.
I picked up the envelope and slid a finger under the flap to open it. It was unmarked—no addressee, no return address, no stamp.
A sheet of equally plain white paper was nestled inside. Foreboding slithered down my spine when I unfolded it.
At first, I thought it was blank, but then my eyes focused on the single line of black type at the top.
You were supposed to wait for me, Stella. You didn’t.
No direct threat, but the message was ominous enough to send my dinner rising in my throat.
Ugly memories from two years ago swamped me in a rush.
Candid photos of me in the city—laughing with friends through the window of a restaurant, scrolling through my phone while I waited for the metro, shopping in a boutique in Georgetown. Letters that swung wildly from effusive declarations of love to graphic fantasies of what the sender wanted to do to me.
All sent to my personal home address.
That went on for weeks until I became so paranoid and stressed I couldn’t shower unless Jules was sitting right outside in the living room. Even then, I’d been plagued with nightmares of my stalker storming into my house and hurting her before he came for me.
Then one day, the letters and photos just stopped, like the sender had dropped off the face of the earth. I thought he’d either tired of me or gotten arrested.
But now…
Terror turned my blood into ice.
I was dimly aware that I hadn’t moved since I read the note. I should. I should check the house for intruders and call the police, not that they’d been any help the last time this happened.
But I was paralyzed, frozen with disbelief and the sharp, metallic taste of fear.
It’d been two years since I’d heard from my stalker. Why was he back now? Had he always been there, watching and biding his time? Or had he left, then returned for whatever reason?
And if the note was in my purse…
My breaths rushed out faster. Tiny black dots danced in front of my vision as the implication crystallized.
No stamps and address meant the stalker had gotten close enough to slip the envelope into my bag. He’d been right there. He’d probably touched me.
Invisible spiders crawled over my skin.
I’d cleaned out my bag last night and hadn’t seen the note, so it must’ve happened sometime that day.
My brain cycled through the list of places I’d visited that day.
Coffee shop. The Georgetown waterfront to shoot a campaign with my tripod. The grocery store. The metro. Christian’s apartment.
The list wasn’t long, but save for Christian’s house, every place had been crowded for someone to slip the note into my bag without me noticing.
The silence of the apartment morphed into something thick and ominous, interrupted only by my shallow, gasping breaths.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get enough oxygen into my lungs, and I—
The harsh, jarring ring of the doorbell ripped through the quiet and caused every hair on my skin to stand on end.
It was the stalker. It had to be. No one would visit this late at night without notice.
Oh, God.
I needed to hide, call 911, do something, but my body refused to obey my brain’s commands.
The doorbell rang again, and my fight or flight finally kicked in.
I stumbled toward the nearest hiding spot—a side table wedged between the couch and the air-conditioning unit. The phantom breath of my stalker brushed against my neck as I crawled beneath the table.
I could feel him behind me, a malevolent presence whose icy fingers clawed at my shirt and squeezed the oxygen from my lungs.
The floor tilted, and my head collided with one of the table legs as I attempted to sink as deep into the darkness as possible.
The pain was only a whisper of sensation compared to the chills swamping my skin.
Another ring of the doorbell, followed by knocking. “Stella!”
I couldn’t distinguish who the voice belonged to. I didn’t even know if it was real.
I just wanted it to go away.
I pulled my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. The A/C was off, but I couldn’t stop shaking.
I wasn’t ready to die. I’d barely lived.
The knocks continued, growing louder and more frequent until they finally stopped. A pause ensued, followed by the sound of a key turning in the door.
Footsteps echoed against the hardwood floors, but they paused when a whimper clawed up my throat.
A few seconds later, a pair of black leather loafers stopped in front of me.
I squeezed my eyes shut and scooted deeper into the corner until my back hit the wall.
Pleasepleaseplease—
“Stella.”
I had a taser in my bag. Why hadn’t I grabbed my taser? I’d only held onto the letter, which I’d dropped onto the
floor next to me. It was useless as a weapon unless I planned to paper cut the intruder to death.
Stupid, useless, disappointing…
Tears burned behind my closed lids.
Would my family care if I died? They might be sad at first, but eventually, they’d be relieved that the family’s biggest disappointment was gone. They hadn’t even wanted me. I’d been an accident, a disruption in their long-running plan to only have one child.
If I died, they could finally get their plan back on track.
If I—
A hand grasped my chin and tilted it up. “Stella, look at me.”
I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay in my well of denial forever.
If I can’t see the monster, it doesn’t exist.
But the voice didn’t sound like it belonged to a monster. It sounded deep and velvety and too authoritative for me not to obey.
I slowly opened my eyes. Whiskey. Fire. Warmth.
My chills skittered away at the banked fury glimmering beneath those dark pools of concern, but Christian’s face softened when our gazes connected.
“You’re okay.”
Only two words, but they contained such calm reassurance that the dam inside me finally broke.
A sob tore from my throat, and moisture spilled past my eyes until his face blurred.
I heard a low curse before strong arms engulfed me, and my face pressed against something hard and solid. Immovable, like a mountain in a storm.
I curled into Christian’s embrace and let out weeks of stress and anxiety until I ran dry. It wasn’t just the note, though that had been the tipping point. It was D.C. Style, my family, Delamonte, my social media, and the deep-
rooted sense that no matter how hard I tried, I would never live up to the expectations of those around me. That I would always be a disappointment.
It was my life.
Somewhere along the way, it’d careened so off course I couldn’t even see the main path anymore.
I felt like a total failure.
Christian didn’t say a word as I sobbed out my frustration on his chest. He just held me until my tears dried enough for mortification to seep into the void left behind by my expelled emotions.
“I’m sorry.” I lifted my head and swiped the back of my hand against my damp cheeks. My mortification deepened when I saw the tear blotches staining his expensive-looking button-down. “I—” I hiccupped. “I ruined your shirt.”
Of all the ways I’d pictured the night ending, having a mini meltdown in Christian Harper’s arms wasn’t one of them.
He didn’t even glance down. “It’s a shirt. I have plenty.”
We were still on the floor, and I would’ve laughed at the sight of him sitting so casually on the hardwood in his designer clothes had his words not created another well of moisture behind my eyes.
An hour ago, I’d thought he was the biggest jerk in existence. Now…
I blinked the fresh tears away. I’d embarrassed myself enough already, thank you very much, and I couldn’t keep up with my roller coaster of emotions.
First my argument with Christian, then finding the note.
The note.
Dread resurfaced as a slow, insidious wave that washed away my short-lived relief. Whoever sent the note was still out there. They hadn’t been a physical threat so far, but…
My eyes strayed toward the deceptively innocent-looking letter.
Christian followed my gaze. His face hardened, and I didn’t stop him when he picked up the paper and read the typed message.
When he lifted his eyes again, their cool amber color had darkened into obsidian.
“Who sent this?” His calm, almost pleasant tone contrasted with the danger flickering in the air.
I pulled it tight around me, taking strange solace in his quiet fury.
“I don’t know. I came home, looked through my bag, and found it.” I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “I’ve… I’ve received similar notes before. But it’s been a while since the last one.”
The flicker of danger ignited into a flame. The intensity of it soaked every molecule of air, but instead of unnerving me, it made me feel safe, like it was a titanium wall shielding me from the outside world.
I’d never told anyone except Jules about my stalker before. I wanted to tell Christian, if only because he was the security expert and would have ideas about how to track the creep down. But I was crashing now that the adrenaline from finding the note had worn off.
Exhaustion tugged at my eyes, and every time I opened my mouth to explain the situation, a yawn escaped instead.
Christian must’ve known I lacked the energy for anything except sleep because he didn’t ask for details. Instead, he stood and held out his hand.
After a brief hesitation, I scooted out from under the table and took it.
Dizziness overtook me as he pulled me to my feet, but when it passed, I almost did a double take at how normal my apartment looked.
Same aromatherapy candle sitting on the coffee table. Same cashmere blanket draped over the back of the armchair. No trace of the wild panic that’d cycled through me less than thirty minutes ago.
We always expected our external world to reflect our internal one, but it was situations like these that reminded me the world would go on no matter what happened to us individually.
It was equal parts reassuring and depressing.
I sank onto the couch while Christian did a quick security sweep of the apartment. My legs couldn’t hold my weight anymore, and I’d almost fallen asleep against the deep cream cushions when he returned to the living room.
“You can’t stay here. The apartment’s secure,” he added when I straightened with alarm. “But the person who wrote the note is still out there and probably knows where you live. You have to move.”
Anxiety tightened my stomach. “To where? This is my home.”
“It’s not safe.”
“I thought the Mirage had the best building security in the city.”
Christian’s only response was a tightening of his jaw.
I took a deep breath. My fog of terror had cleared enough for rational thinking to sink in again.
“Whoever the culprit is, they got to me outside the building. There’s nowhere I can move that would be safer than here. Besides…” My fingers curled tight around the edge of the couch. “I’m not letting some coward who hides behind anonymous letters drive me out of my own home.”
I’d spent too many years in the passenger seat of my life, letting other people steer me to where they wanted me to go. Living in fear of their commentary about my actions and making myself small to fit into whatever box they put me in. My parents’ expectations, my boss’s demands, my stalker’s notes, which left me so paranoid I jumped at every slam of a door and snap of a twig.
They acted, I reacted.
I was sick of it. It was time to wrestle back control, and learning how to say no was the first step.
“I’m not moving,” I repeated.
If the stalker had broken into my apartment, it would’ve been a different matter, but he hadn’t. Besides, I was right. There was nowhere I could move that would be safer than the Mirage.
Christian stared at me, his expression carved of granite.
I forced myself not to look away even as my body fought against the weight of his gaze.
He’d seen me vulnerable, but I refused to let him see me weak.
My breath pressed tight against my lungs, and it wasn’t until Christian dipped his head in acquiescence that I released it.
Relief and a kernel of pride rushed to fill the void.
He hadn’t said a word, but I had the unshakeable sense that I’d just faced off against a lion and won.
“Fine, but you’re not staying here without extra protection.”
I could live with that. I welcomed it, even, as long as the extra protection wasn’t too intrusive.
For a second, I thought Christian would offer to stay the night with me, and I hated how my heart skipped a beat at the thought.
“Kage, I need you for an assignment…yes. Overnight.” Several beats passed before he spoke again, his voice hard. “I don’t give a fuck if you’re dining with the Pope or having s*x with Margot fucking Robbie. I want you on the tenth floor of the Mirage in twenty minutes.”
Disappointment curled through me before I crushed it. Of course Christian wouldn’t stay with me. He was the CEO. That type of work was probably beneath him.
He hung up, and something niggled at the back of my mind in the silence that followed.
“Why did you come to see me? Before you…” Found me in the middle of a panic attack. “Before you realized what happened.”
Christian slipped his phone into his pocket. “I wanted to clear the air after our exchange.”
It was a smooth, neutral reply. Almost too smooth. “Why?”
“Do I need a reason?”
“You have a reason for everything, or you wouldn’t do it.”
The corner of his mouth lifted, but he didn’t elaborate on his earlier answer.
He’d said twenty minutes, but someone knocked on the door less than ten minutes later.
That someone turned out to be a mountain of a man, all muscles and tattoos and good-looking in a way that must be irresistible to women with a weakness for bad boys.
Kage, I assumed.
Christian briefed him on the situation, but they were so quiet I couldn’t make out what they said. Whatever it was, it brought a frown to Kage’s face that softened when he finally turned to me.
“Don’t worry, darlin’.” His soft Southern accent eased the knots in my shoulders like magic. Next to him, Christian’s jaw flexed, but it happened so quickly I might’ve imagined it. “I’ll be right here the whole night. No one’s gettin’ past me. They didn’t call me The Mountain in the military for nothin’.”
I mustered a small smile. “Here I thought it was because you’re as big as a mountain.”
The corners of Kage’s eyes crinkled. “That, too.”
“Kage is one of my best. Like he said, no one will get past him.” Christian’s face remained impassive, but when he rested his gaze on Kage, the other man’s smile disappeared.
Kage stepped back from me like I’d suddenly caught fire.
I yawned again, too tired to think much of their strange interaction.
Sleep tugged at the edges of my consciousness, and I didn’t resist when Christian lifted me from the couch with firm but surprisingly gentle hands.
“Don’t pass out on the couch. Mr. Unicorn doesn’t like to share sleeping space.”
“Funny. If the security thing doesn’t work out, you should be a…” Another yawn split my face as we walked toward my bedroom. “A comedian.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Christian’s dry response overpowered Kage’s chuckle from behind us.
When we reached my room, I fell into bed more than I climbed into it. I was a lead weight, and gravity was an anchor dragging me toward my mattress.
“Good night,” I mumbled. My eyes were already closed, but I felt Christian’s presence in the room like a warm security blanket. “And thank you. For….”
I never finished my sentence.
The last thing I remembered was a warm hand smoothing my hair out of my face before darkness pulled me under.
 |
CHRISTIAN
After Stella fell asleep, I returned to the living room to find Kage examining the note.
“Whoever put this in her bag knew how to cover their tracks,” he said. “It’s generic as hell. The paper, the type, the ink…unless he was careless enough to leave fingerprints on it, there’s no way of tracking him down with this alone.”
He echoed everything I’d already deduced.
If it’d been a digital message, I could’ve hunted the sender down in no time. Physical evidence was much harder to trace.
Whoever sent the note was smart, but they’d slip up eventually. Everyone did.
My hand flexed as the memory of Stella’s wide-eyed terror surfaced. Fury crackled through me, its cold burn searing me from the inside out.
I’d tamped it down earlier so I could focus on Stella, but now, it came rushing back like a tidal wave.
I was going to find the fucker who wrote her that note. And I was going to make them pay.
Not with a bullet—that was too good for them. They deserved something more painful. More prolonged.
But until then, I needed to keep Stella safe.
“I want you and Brock shadowing her until we find this fucker,” I told Kage. “Don’t let her see you.”
After Kage, Brock was one of my best guards, and he’d recently returned from a three-month job in Tokyo.
Skepticism crossed Kage’s face. “She’s gonna be okay with that?”
“She won’t find out.”
If I asked Stella, she’d say no. She’d already pushed back on moving; I wasn’t giving her another chance to compromise her safety. The only reason I’d acquiesced on the moving issue was because she was traumatized enough without me arguing with her right after her panic attack.
Where would she have moved to, anyway? Like she said, the Mirage is the most secure building in the city, a voice in my head taunted.
There was an obvious answer, but since she wasn’t moving, the point was moot.
“Fine. You’re the boss.” Kage glanced at the closed door to Stella’s bedroom. “Surprised you’re not staying with her. She’s your girlfriend, and you live right upstairs.”
My jaw tightened.
I was tempted. So fucking tempted. That was the problem.
I didn’t trust myself around Stella. I’d already broken too many rules for her, and staying with her overnight would cross the invisible line I’d drawn for myself.
It was always a dance for me, staying close enough to sate the beast inside me and staying far enough so I was never out of control. A constant war between want and preservation.
However, I’d come down to…not apologize, necessarily, since I didn’t do apologies…but to set things right between us.
When she didn’t answer, I thought she was in the shower, but the longer I waited with no response, the more my mind conjured all sorts of scenarios—of Stella injuring herself, of an intruder who somehow made it past the Mirage’s airtight security and into her house.
I’d never felt the sort of panic that’d consumed me when I thought something had happened to her, and that was not fucking okay.
She was already a weak spot for me; I couldn’t afford for that spot to grow.
“I separate my business and personal lives. This is business.” I responded to Kage in a clipped tone. My stare burned the air between us. “Touch her for any reason other than to save her life, and you die.”
I didn’t care how long Kage and I had been friends. No one touched her except me.
His face twisted into a scowl. “Give me more credit than that.”
He hadn’t been happy when I’d pulled him away from the woman he’d brought home, but he showed up as I knew he would. I didn’t trust anyone else to look after Stella tonight, not even myself.
“Text me updates every hour. I don’t care if it’s four in the goddamn morning. I want those check-ins.”
That was as close to staying with her as I would allow myself.
Kage sighed. “You got it.”
I cast one last glance at Stella’s bedroom door.
Every cell in my body screamed for me not to leave. I despised the idea that Kage was watching her instead of me.
When he’d called her darlin’ and she’d smiled at him, I’d come close to losing my best employee at my own hands.
In a rare moment of weakness, I’d used our fake dating arrangement to get closer to her, but a part of me had secretly hoped it would shatter the mystery and end my fixation with her.
Instead, it was doing the opposite. The more time I spent with Stella, the more I wanted to be around her. To let her into places I’d never shown anyone.
It was unacceptable.
I brushed past Kage, took the elevator up to my penthouse, and went straight to the bar.
The lights of D.C. glittered like a carpet of stars outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, but I couldn’t appreciate the sight. I was too wound up.
If anything had happened to Stella… Ice spread through my veins.
I filled my glass with a heavier than usual pour. Sat.
And waited for the first text from Kage.
