Charles paced the flloor, a scowl on his face. She was gone. Not dead. Not abducted. Not even scared. Just… gone.
And that was worse.
Charles finally sat down in the dark corner of his apartment, a one-bedroom rental with peeling linoleum and curtains he never opened. The blinds were drawn, the only light coming from a single lamp behind him. This was all done to his taste, deliberate.
He preferred the shadows. They suited him. They respected him.
She had vanished three nights ago. Left the club in the company of thatman, and hadn't returned. No shifts. No sign of her apartment. Not even a social media post.
She was hiding. Or he had taken her first. He couldn't accept that. Zane could not have anything else that belonged to him.
Charles turned the photo over in his hands again. It was one of the newer ones, taken from across the street, through a telephoto lens, on the night she left with Zane.
She'd worn a red jacket. Her eyes had been wary, but her lips had curled into a smile that wasn't part of her act. She'd smiled at him. At Zane. Really smiled. Not a fake smile. He was supposed to be the one to see that first. He should have been the first and last person to see it.
His grip tightened until the edges of the photo curled inward. Her smile should've been his. Along with her attention, and eventually, her fear. He couldn't believe she'd escaped him. Slipped right out of the web he'd spent weeks weaving in his head. The planning, so meticulous. The dress was ready. The bouquet had been arranged. The ring had been shined.
And she ruined it, by vanishing into the arms of a man with money and security and walls he couldn't breach.
Charles stood slowly, pushing his chair back with a deliberate scrape of metal on tile. On the far wall, pinned with thumbtacks, was his planning board.
It was one hell of a collage, showcasing an obsession deeper than the Mariana Trench. Charles didn't see that. He saw a foolproof plan, but he hadn't proofed it against this fool, and her foolish decision.
Photos. Printer maps flagged with times. He could see the patterns emerge when he began connecting the dots with strings of red thread. At the center: TARYN in block letters.
Beneath her, the newly added photo of Zane Williamson. Cut from a magazine. It had taken time to find one where he wasn't smiling. Charles didn't trust men who smiled too much. He didn't trust men like Zane at all.
Zane wasn't just a problem, he was an interruption, a monkey wrench thrown in to his painstaking work. He wanted to squeeze the life out of him, watch as his soul left his body. Surely it would head to hell for corrupting his angel.
He went back to the club the night after Taryn left, just to be sure. She wasn't there. He waited outside for hours, parked in his van, sipping stale coffee and watching the door with the patience of a statue. No red jacket. No flash of white-blonde hair. No presence.
He asked one of the dancers on her smoke break. "She's with someone," the girl said with a shrug. "Probably landed a rich one. Girl like her? So pretty, so intelligent. Wouldn't blame her if she never came back."
Charles smiled at the girl, just a quick, polite smile. She smiled back, unaware that she had just added herself to a mental list she'd never see.
He drove across town that night, rage simmering beneath his skin. It wasn't just that she was gone. It was that she chose someone else. And that meant she had to be punished.
The girl at Club Obsidian wasn't right,not exactly, but she was close enough. Similar build and eyes. She was new to the club, fresh and still blinking at the lights like she hadn't quite accepted her place in the world.
He followed her for two nights. He obseved, ticking items off a list. No security. No boyfriend. No one who would come looking right away.
Her name was Riley. She smiled when he offered her a ride after her shift.
She died quietly. Charles posed her carefully. The dress fit, even though it was a bit long. He tucked her hair just the way he'd imagined with Taryn, arranged her hands over the bouquet.
He took the photo of Zane and pressed it into the center of the roses.
Let the bastard see what he'd made Charles do. Let him feel the price of meddling in something that didn't concern him.
Riley now belonged to Charles, like the others. Now no one would have her.
And still—it wasn't enough.Because Taryn was still alive.
Still laughing. Still hiding behind Zane's wealth and power like it could protect her forever.
It wouldn't. Not with the power he had, power he had never used in his conquests. Now, he was considering the possibility. Charles opened the drawer in his desk and pulled out a second ring box. He hadn't meant to use it. Not unless he failed.
He had to finish what he started.
The first tribute was a warning. The next one? The next one would be personal.
She reminded him of his mother. That thought came to Charles unbidden, as he watched old footage of Taryn dancing on a cracked laptop screen in his dimly lit apartment. The video was grainy, recorded from a phone, but it didn't matter. He knew the routine by heart. Knew the exact moment she flipped her hair. The precise second she flashed a smile she didn't mean.
Just like her.
His mother had worn that smile too. Smiles that hid bruises. That begged for peace. That meant the opposite of what they said.
Taryn wore masks. All women did.
But Charles could see past them. And he had to end her suffering. Like he had ended his mother's. Such a long time ago now. How many years had he been doing this?
When he was nine, his mother had taken him to church every Sunday without fail. She wore pearls she couldn't afford and perfume that made him sneeze. She sang too loudly and cried too easily.
She told the neighbors he was "a good boy" even after the school found the class hamster dead in Charles's cubby.
She knew something was wrong with him. But she never admitted it.
Instead, she told him to be quiet. To sit still. To smile. "Smile, Charlie. The Lord is watching." But the Lord never did anything. Neither did she.
The day she died, she was wearing a white dress.