Elena Rivers
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She hadn't left the apartment in four days.
The air inside had thickened—cloying and dry, perfumed with old coffee, sweat, and something else she couldn't name. The scent of him, maybe. Not literal, not physical, but present. Like the echo of someone who'd just stepped out of the room.
Elena barely recognized herself in the mirror anymore.
Her reflection was quieter. Eyes rimmed with the kind of darkness sleep couldn't fix. Hair unwashed. Shirt inside out. The version of herself that existed before Damien—before the first envelope, before the eyes she swore she felt watching her—was slipping through her fingers.
She'd tried calling a friend two nights ago.
Just to talk. Just to hear a voice that wasn't inside her own skull.
But when she picked up the phone, her hand froze.
What would she say?
"Hey, I think someone's in love with me… violently, invisibly, intimately. And maybe I'm not scared enough."
She hung up. Deleted the number. Again.
That was the real sickness—
It wasn't that she couldn't fight him.
It was that some part of her didn't want to.
He saw her.
Not the polished version. Not the sarcasm, the defenses, the false composure.
He saw the cracks. The raw pieces. The places that still bled.
And she hated him for it.
Hated him more because he made her feel real.
A sudden thud from the other room made her flinch.
She grabbed the nearest object—an empty mug—and stepped into the hallway.
Nothing.
But on her bed: a single white lily.
No note. No footprint. No sound of a door.
Only the flower. Delicate. Clean.
The same kind her mother used to leave on her pillow the night before she left for good.
Elena sank to her knees.
She didn't cry.
She just stared—at the lily, the silence, the truth blooming inside her:
He was already inside.
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