Page 27 of Torn By Fate

The darkness was my oldest friend, and it has never disappointed me.

Tonight, it served me well.

I leaned against the rough bark of the oak tree, perfectly positioned in the shadow it cast across the hotel parking lot. From here, I could see her window—third floor, second from the left—without being seen myself. The angle was deliberate, calculated with the precision my father had drilled into me since childhood. Never expose yourself. Never give them the advantage of knowing where you are.

The darkness was not empty. It never was.

I had learned that lesson before I could read, before I could tie my own shoes, before I understood that the men who came to our house at night with their low voices and their hands in the pockets of their custom suits were not there to play cards.

The darkness held things. It held watchers. It held secrets.

And tonight, like every night since I’d found her in this small hotel, I was the thing the darkness held.

The light in her room shifted, and my body tensed instinctively. I watched as she appeared at the window, a slender silhouette against the yellow glow of her laptop screen.

Serafina stood at the glass with her arms crossed loosely beneath her breasts, her gaze moving across the street in a slow, methodical sweep that I recognized immediately.

My jaw tightened.

She was looking for me.

I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

She knew I was here.

The realization sent a strange, unwelcomed heat through my chest, curling under my ribs. It wasn’t pride or ego. No, it was something far more unsettling… the feeling of being truly seen by someone who shouldn’t have been able to see me at all.

Her gaze swept across the parking lot, paused briefly on my position, then moved on.

She couldn’t see me, of course. I’d made sure of that. I was a ghost, a figment, a phantom lingering just beyond the edge of her perception. Invisible until I chose otherwise.

She pressed her palm against the window. Even from this distance, I could see the set of her jaw, the uncertainty in her gaze, the tension in her shoulders. She was waiting. Testing. Trying to draw me out.

I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

After a long minute, her expression shifted. It wasn’t disappointment like I had expected—I would have recognized disappointment, would have cataloged it, and would have filed it away with all the other expressions I’d memorized from her face since we had gotten married.

This was something else.

The slight tilt of her chin and the way her lower lip caught briefly between her teeth before she released it… she was being thoughtful, in a very deceptive manner.

Her hand dropped from the window, and her fingers found the hem of her shirt. Serafina slowly played with the hem, almost teasingly before she pulled it over her head in one fluid motion.

Blood roared between my ears, pulse thundering at the base of my throat.

For a moment, every single thought evaded me.

I couldn’t fucking think.

The white cotton fell to the floor behind her, and my mouth went dry. She stood there in nothing but her bra and shorts, pale skin glowing in the dim light.

Something primal and unwelcome stirred in my gut.

My hand tightened against the tree trunk. The bark bit into my palm, and I welcomed it—the small, sharp pain that kept me anchored to this moment, to the reality of what was happening.

What the hell was she doing?

Serafina reached behind her back, unhooking her bra with practiced ease. The straps slipped from her shoulders, and my breath caught in my throat as she let it drop, joining the shirt on the floor.