Emilia’s POV

The photograph weighed more in my hands than it should have.

The edges were bent, as though it had been handled too many times before it reached me. My image stared back—frozen mid-step in my living room, hair loosely tied, sleeves rolled up, paint smudged across my wrist.

But it wasn’t my face that made my heart pound.

It was the shadow in the doorway. Broad shoulders, tall frame, head slightly tilted like he was listening for something.

Like he was watching.

I shoved the photo into my apron pocket as my coworker walked past with a bundle of lilies. My voice caught in my throat when she asked if I was okay. I lied, said I was fine, that the shop just felt a bit warm.

It wasn’t warmth making my skin prickle—it was the feeling of being mapped by someone else’s eyes.

When the shift ended, I lingered inside the shop, pretending to rearrange flowers so I wouldn’t have to step into the street where Dante had been only hours before.

Eventually, I forced myself out into the cool dusk. The city’s noise wrapped around me—cars, footsteps, laughter from a bar on the corner—but it all felt like background static. My focus was the paper in my pocket and the weight of what it meant.

I kept my head down the entire walk home, checking my reflection in shop windows to see if anyone followed. No one did. That didn’t make me feel safer.

Inside my apartment, I locked the door, slid the deadbolt, and wedged a chair beneath the handle. My phone buzzed once on the table.

Unknown number.

Do you always leave your curtains open?

I dropped the phone like it burned.

Every instinct screamed for me to call someone—police, a friend, anyone—but the thought of explaining, of having to prove this wasn’t just paranoia, froze me. I deleted the message but kept the number.

The phone buzzed again before I could breathe.

Curtains or no curtains, you’re still beautiful when you paint.

The floor seemed to tilt under me.

My mind jumped back to Dante’s eyes in the shop, that slow, deliberate way he’d looked at me. But it couldn’t be him. Could it?

I went to the window, pulled the curtain closed with a sharp snap. My reflection stared back in the darkened glass, pale and tense.

That was when I saw it.

A single tulip.

It lay against the balcony door, its stem perfectly straight, petals deep crimson like a drop of blood suspended in bloom.

I didn’t touch it. I didn’t have to. My pulse was already pounding in my ears.

Because this tulip was different from the ones I sold in the shop.

The stem had been wrapped with the same black silk ribbon Dante wore in his suit pocket that morning.

Emilia’s pulse drummed in her ears as she trailed Dante from the shadows, matching his steps like she’d learned from watching street cats—quiet, measured, invisible. He walked with that slow, deliberate gait of a man who didn’t care to be followed, the occasional turn of his head sharp enough to cut air.

Her mind clawed through last night’s unanswered questions. The messages. The feeling of being watched. The black car.

If it was him, she’d see it. She’d catch him.

When he ducked into a narrow side street, Emilia waited, counted to ten, then stepped in—only to find the path empty. Her breath caught.

“Looking for me?” Dante’s voice came from behind.

She spun. He was there, expression unreadable, eyes like lit coals in the half-dark.

“I thought—”

“You thought wrong,” he murmured. “I’m not the only one keeping you in sight.”

Something moved at the far end of the alley—slow, deliberate. A shadow unpeeling from the wall.

For the first time since she’d met Dante, he looked… alert. Almost dangerous.

“Get behind me,” he said.

She did.

The shadow stepped forward.

And she realized—this wasn’t about Dante at all.

Emilia’s pulse skittered.

She’d been watching the black car’s reflection in the rain-slick glass across the street, testing her theory, willing Dante to slip up. But when the door of the car didn’t open—when instead, a shadow stepped out from behind the building across the alley—her breath snagged.

This wasn’t Dante.

The figure didn’t rush her. It moved with a deliberate, predatory calm, head tilted as though memorizing her face. A gloved hand lifted, palm out—not in peace, but in warning.

Then a voice, low and rough, threaded across the wet air.

“He’s not your only problem, Emilia.”

A car horn blared down the street. She flinched, and when her eyes snapped back, the shadow was gone. The black car had pulled away.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket.

A text.

Don’t trust the man who wants to save you.

The screen dimmed in her trembling hand. Somewhere behind her, footsteps whispered on wet pavement.

The shadow detached from the alley wall, moving with a grace that didn’t belong to anyone drunk or desperate. Emilia’s breath caught as she instinctively turned toward the streetlight—but the figure stayed just out of its glow.

“Looking for him?” The voice was low, unfamiliar, threaded with amusement.

Her pulse slammed against her ribs. “Who?” she managed, though she already knew they weren’t talking about just anyone.

The stranger stepped closer, and a faint scar caught the light across their jaw. “The man who watches you at night isn’t the only one interested in you, Emilia Hart.”

Every inch of her skin prickled. “You’re mistaken—”

They smiled, slow and unsettling. “Am I? Because unlike him, I don’t stay in the shadows.”

A gloved hand slid something small and metallic into her coat pocket before she could react. By the time she looked down and then back up, the stranger was gone—melted into the darkness like they’d never been there at all.

Her fingers closed around the object. It was warm from their hands. When she pulled it free, her stomach lurched.

A key. Old, heavy, and engraved with her initials.

Somewhere in the quiet, she swore she heard footsteps again—this time from the opposite direction.