Page 69 of Vows of Silence

Isabelle:That doesn’t count. You watch me like a creep. That’s an unfair advantage.

Luca:And yet you keep talking to me.

Isabelle:Because I don’t know how to let you go.

Beside that conversation, written in black ink:

She likes being observed more than she admits.

Heat crept up my neck immediately.

“No,” I muttered aloud, shoving the page away from me like it had burned me.

My eyes darted around the room suddenly, landing on the computers, the monitors, the endless evidence surrounding me.

This wasn’t normal.

None of this was normal.

The amount of effort it would have taken to build something like this made my skin crawl.

Years.

This had taken fuckingyears.

And yet, the more I looked around the room, the more another feeling slowly started mixing with the horror.

Confusion.

Because none of this felt random. Obsessive? Yes. Violating? Absolutely yes. But it was careful, too. Intentional. Every conversation had been organised meticulously. Certain moments clearly mattered more than others. There were sections dedicated entirely to my panic attacks after my uncle died. Another filled with screenshots from nights where I’d spoken about wanting freedom, wanting to escape, wanting more from my life than endless parties and appearances.

One note near the middle of the folder made my stomach knot painfully.

She keeps asking Luca to save her whilst pretending she doesn’t want saving.

I stared at the words for several long seconds before turning the page quickly.

The next section was worse.

Photographs. And these were not paparazzi shots. These were private ones. Things he had to have taken himself.

I saw myself asleep on the sofa with my laptop balanced on my stomach.

Me crying in my car outside my therapist’s office.

Me laughing with Marco outside a restaurant.

Me sitting alone in the gardens at home staring at my phone.

Unease swept through me as I slowly realised something even more unsettling.

Luca knew things about me because I told him.

Silas knew things about me because he watched.

And somehow, standing in this room surrounded by evidence of both, the line between the two suddenly didn’t feel quite as separate as it should have.

Why had it been so easy for me to accept Luca into my life, and yet Silas horrified me? Weren’t they essentially doing the same thing?