Ashley's POV:
The message, "You shouldn't have burned it," was a cold, final nail in the coffin of her denial.
Ashley stood rooted on the crowded sidewalk, the words glaring up at her from the phone screen, the vibrant noise of the campus fading to static.
She tried to reconcile the mundane reality—students laughing, a delivery truck idling—with the profound, chilling terror reflected on the glass.
He knew.
And he was close enough to know her actions.
She risked a quick scan of the street; the certainty that she had been watched—surveilled—was absolute.
He wasn't just sending letters; he was here, breathing the same air.
Her fight-or-flight response screamed flee, run, vanish, but the mandatory literature paper, due tomorrow, provided a strange, grounding anchor—a scrap of normal life she clung to like a lifeline.
Her plan was stubbornly insane:
Practical first, panic later.
She told herself she'd talk to Daniel about the threat when she got home—after she finished her work.
The weight of the world felt lighter than the consequence of missing the deadline.
She headed straight for the University Library, seeking the false safety of its brick fortress.
By five-thirty, the campus building was nearly empty, a vast, echoing space that seemed safer than the open street.
As the sun set, the silence deepened, broken only by the low, regular hum of the ancient system.
Ashley found her secluded corner on the third floor, hiding behind a canyon of philosophy texts.
Her laptop glowed in the half-dark, the screen filled with spreadsheets and sources she barely understood.
She forced her focus onto the work, treating the bibliography as a spell that could ward off the shadows.
Time dissolved.
The hours bled into one another, the library staff having long since departed and left her alone in the cavernous structure.
When she finally looked up, finding her phone reading 11:58 p.m., a wave of relief washed over her—the work was almost done.
She raced to finish, typing the last few sentences in a breathless rush. Outside, thunder rolled again, soft and patient, like a heavy footfall in the distance.
Then the lights blinked once.
Twice.
Out.
The heavy, metallic clunk of the main power dying echoed from the floors below, immediately followed by an immense silence—a physical weight that swallowed the usual ambient sounds of the building.
Her heart seized as she realized the emergency lights hadn't kicked in. Just profound, oil-slick darkness.
Ashley exhaled slowly, rubbing the sudden prickle of goosebumps on her arms. "Great. Generator time," she whispered, her voice a thin thread in the void.
The low, distant hum of the city outside was the only constant sound now, mixed with the sharp drumming of the rain.
The aisles of books stretched away into darkness like ribs in a sleeping giant, concealing more than they revealed.
She needed to move.
She pulled out her phone, the pathetic, square beam of the flashlight bobbing ahead of her.
She started toward the maintenance door near the central elevator, counting her steps, trying to maintain a rhythm, trying not to listen.
The air felt wrong—heavier somehow, denser, as if the storm had slipped inside with her.
A faint, almost imperceptible scuff came from somewhere behind the history section, about two aisles away.
It wasn't the sound of the building settling; it sounded like the sole of a shoe dragged across the carpet—controlled, deliberate.
The sound was quickly swallowed by the thunder, but the vibration remained, sinking into her chest.
Ashley froze, her heart instantly slamming against her ribs, a violent drum solo in the sudden vacuum of fear.
She strained her ears, hoping for the wind, praying for settling metal, but heard only the manic static of her own blood.
She took one careful step, then another, the beam of her phone light trembling in the dark, revealing nothing but leather and paper.
And then, she felt it—a sudden, hot breath against the back of her neck, so intimate, so close it annihilated the last few feet of space separating them.
She didn't hesitate this time.
Instinct, sharpened by years of suppressed terror, took over. She spun, swinging the heavy phone like a weapon toward the anticipated face.
But he was faster.
A large, familiar hand, smelling faintly of expensive cologne—a clean, sharp note that always masked something rotten—shot out of the dark and caught her wrist in a crushing vice.
His strength was inhuman. Before she could scream, before she could even register the depth of the violation, she was lifted effortlessly off the ground, her feet scrabbling for purchase on the carpet.
A sickening, brutal force slammed her, back-first, into the nearest metal bookshelf. The impact drove the breath from her lungs in a painful, high-pitched rush.
For a moment, she was suspended, paralyzed, the world reduced to the agony in her shoulder blades where the sharp metal of the shelf bit into her spine.
A deluge of heavy, leather-bound books rained down around them, thudding onto the carpet, a useless, muffled percussion of the attack.
His body was a terrifying wall of heat and muscle, pressing her so tightly against the metal that she felt every rigid line of his expensive suit—the custom tailoring, the cold silk of his tie. He was an immovable object, and she was trapped.
His face, inches from hers in the impenetrable gloom, was defined only by the sudden, hot presence of his breath against her temple.
It smelled faintly of mint and that specific, sharp, expensive cologne—the same scent that had haunted her prison nightmares for years.
It was a smell of money, control, and absolute terror, and now it was here, sealing her fate.
"Class is over," his low voice purred, right next to her ear, the sound both familiar and utterly alien. It was a tone of tender, intimate ownership, making the violation ten times worse than a shout. "It's time for recess, Sunbeam."
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Author's Note —
My sweet, sweet Sunbeam thought a deadline could save her. She thought practical first, panic later was a viable strategy against a sociopath who watched her burn his love letter.
It wasn't a storm, darling. It was an appointment.
The lights didn't fail; they were turned off. The generator is just another lock on her cage. Ashley isn't playing against Roman anymore; she's playing against the clock and the crushing weight of that expensive cologne. She went from denial to being pinned to a metal bookshelf by the full force of her past in under five minutes.
And remember: the library is huge. Roman didn't just walk in the door. He was waiting in the dark. He planned the dark.
Next chapter: Ashley remembers how to fight dirty. But will instinct be enough against a man who already knows her every move? Hydrate, check the security cameras, and never, ever tell a predator your schedule.
— Vaanni🖤