The next morning, Emilia woke to whispers.
Not real ones. The kind that lived behind her eyes.
> He watches everyone.
He watched Annabelle too. Right until she vanished.
The sunlight in Calla's hideout came in crooked, dusty beams through half-cracked blinds. It made everything look like a memory. Or a warning.
Emilia sat up slowly. Her phone buzzed on the table beside her. No new messages.
Just that old one.
It pulsed like a curse.
---
Damien was already downstairs, drinking black coffee like it was his only defense against unraveling.
He looked up when she entered. Didn't smile.
"Sleep?" he asked.
She shook her head. "I burned three more things."
His jaw ticked. "Good."
"I want to talk to him."
He set the mug down. "Absolutely not."
"I want to bait him," she clarified.
Calla walked in just then, barefoot and sharp as sin, a cigarette between her fingers and a knowing smile already forming.
"Now that's a woman I can work with."
---
An hour later, they were in Calla's underground office. If you could call it that.
Concrete floors. Flickering monitors. A wall of photos connected by red thread and pinned curses. Most of them had been marked with dates and blood.
Damien stood like a guard dog at the door.
But Calla took Emilia's hand and dragged her toward the screens.
"This is what he watches," she said. "Now, we'll make him watch you."
"I don't understand."
Calla smirked. "You don't have to. You just have to look like you've fallen in love."
---
It wasn't makeup they gave her—it was armor.
A slick of red across her mouth. A bruise-colored shadow that turned her eyes lethal. She wore black satin, cinched at the waist. A necklace she'd stolen from her old life, back when she thought expensive things meant power.
Now she knew better.
The photo Calla took of her wasn't sweet or suggestive. It was calculated seduction.
Emilia staring directly into the camera, mouth slightly parted, one hand on her hip like a dare.
It was captioned in French:
"Je suis à lui."
I am his.
Sent.
Encrypted.
Uploaded to a private channel that Vale had once used to monitor "acquisitions."
---
Damien was pacing now. Angry. Silent. His shirt unbuttoned at the throat. The veins in his forearms looked like roadmaps to violence.
"You think this will stop him?" he growled.
Calla blew smoke toward the ceiling. "No, brother. I think this will wake him."
---
It worked faster than they expected.
By dusk, the monitors in Calla's bunker flickered.
Someone was in the system.
Watching her. Watching them.
Not just through Calla's cameras—but through new ones.
"How?" Damien snapped.
Calla's face paled. "He's closer than we thought."
And then one screen blinked out—then another.
A line of text scrawled across the largest monitor in blood-red font:
> You're wearing her smile, Emilia.
I remember how it cracked when she screamed.
---
Damien stepped forward, gun already drawn.
"Calla, seal the exits."
"Too late," she said, barely breathing. "He's here."
---
Upstairs, the power cut.
The house groaned like a throat clearing before a scream.
Emilia grabbed Damien's arm.
"What do we do?"
He looked at her like he wished he could lie.
But he didn't.
"We fight."
---