The gallery pulsed with soft jazz and soft lies. Paintings of fractured lovers and decapitated roses lined the walls, watched by the rich and restless. Sophia stood in a black silk dress that gripped her hips like temptation itself. She sipped red wine slowly, her eyes scanning the room until they landed on him.
Ethan.
He wore a tailored velvet jacket the color of midnight sin. His eyes met hers like a dare. Controlled, calculating, impossible to look away from. Something about him screamed danger, but her body didn't care. Her thighs tightened. Her pulse skipped a beat.
He walked over, slow and certain.
"You're standing in front of agony," he said, nodding at the canvas behind her two skeletons entangled in a kiss.
She tilted her head. "You sound like a man who prefers pleasure, But only when it hurts a little."
Her breath caught.
Without waiting for permission, he offered his arm. She took it, like the fool all doomed heroines must be.
---
He didn't take her to dinner.
He took her to his penthouse overlooking the city, where shadows curled like smoke and jazz played from hidden speakers. Sophia stepped inside and froze.
The room was hung with masks, dozens of them. Plague doctor beaks. Antique opera disguises. Venetian lace and leather ones too, redolent of sex.
"Do you collect identities?" she asked, turning slowly.
Ethan shut the door with a click. "I collect the truth. Everything else gets burned."
His hands slid to her waist.
"You can still leave," he murmured against her neck.
She didn't move. "I don't want to."
His kiss was fire. It devoured. Their lips crushed, tongues twisted. He backed her against the wall, rough hands beneath her dress, shoving the silk up.
"Tell me no," he growled.
"No."
He paused.
She smiled wickedly. "Not that kind of no."
Clothes vanished in chaos, his velvet jacket crumpled on the floor, her panties torn clean in half. His mouth found her breasts, sucking hard, biting the soft curve until she gasped. She clawed at his back, nails dragging down hot skin.
They fell onto the couch.
Ethan pinned her wrists. "Don't move."
Then he went down on her slow and savage. His tongue danced over her clit, teasing first, then relentless, flicking and sucking while she writhed. Her legs shook. She moaned, loud and unashamed, and still he didn't stop.
She came hard, screaming his name.
And he just smiled.
"I like the sound of your surrender."
---
After, they lay tangled in sweat and sheets, wine half-drunk on the table.
Sophia traced the scar on his chest.
"How'd you get this?"
Ethan stared at the ceiling. "Fire."
"Childhood?" Sophia asked.
"No. Revenge." Ethan answered.
She blinked. He didn't elaborate.
"I'm not a good man, Sophia."
She leaned closer. "Good men are boring."
His jaw clenched.
"Don't fall in love with me." Ethan said.
Too late, she thought, but said nothing.
Outside, lightning split the sky. A storm rolled in, unnoticed.
---
Back at her apartment the next morning, Sophia found an envelope slipped under her door. No name, just a wax seal: a serpent devouring its own tail.
Inside the envelope was a single Polaroid, Ethan, and blood on his hands standing over a woman's body.
The date in the corner was written "Two nights ago".
But he'd been with her then.
Hadn't he?
The photo wouldn't stop staring at her.
Sophia's fingers trembled as she turned the Polaroid over. Nothing. No writing. No address. Just Ethan, naked from the waist up, smears of blood down his chest and arms, standing in the middle of what looked like a dimly lit hotel room. The woman on the bed behind him was facedown, limp. Her hair, a violent red which was soaked with something darker than dye.
Sophia paced her living room barefoot, the tiled floor cool against her skin. Her stomach churned.
He'd been with her that night. She remembered the bite marks. The way he whispered her name like a vow or a warning. Unless he had...
Her phone buzzed. Ethan.
> "Come over tonight. I want more of you."
She hesitated… then typed back: "Midnight."
If he was a killer, she needed to know before she became the next name in his gallery of ghosts.
---
His penthouse was darker than before. Lit only by candles this time, as if he wanted to hide something.
Or someone.
He answered the door shirtless, his chest slick with sweat, hair wet as if he'd just stepped from the shower. The scar on his chest glistened in the glow. She couldn't help it. Her eyes drank him in like sin.
"You came." Ethan said
"I needed more," she lied.
He grabbed her by the throat. Not tight but just enough to show he could. Her breath caught, arousal twisting with dread.
"Did you think about me?" he whispered. "About my mouth on you, my cock buried deep in your perfect little body?"
"Yes." Sophia replied
His eyes darkened.
He pulled her in like prey and pushed her against the wall. His lips crushed hers, teeth clashing, tongues fighting. He lifted her like she weighed nothing, her legs wrapping around his waist.
He didn't bother with the couch this time. He slammed into her, hard and hungry. Her cries echoed off the walls, sharp and raw. She clawed his back, bit his shoulder. The edge built fast, violent.
When she came, she saw stars.
But she also saw something else behind his shoulder, in the mirror.
A red hair stuck to his neck.
She remembered the woman in the photo.
---
Later, as he slept beside her, Sophia slipped out of bed. She padded through the apartment, naked and silent. The hallway felt endless in the flickering candlelight.
Then she saw the locked room again, the one with the iron handle. Something tugged her forward.
She tried the door.
Locked.
She reached under the carpet. No key.
But as she turned to leave, she caught sight of the closet across the hall. Inside, behind a box of masks, there it was.
A silver key.
Her heart beat like thunder. She crept back to the door, slid the key in.
It clicked.
The smell hit her first. Metallic. Copper. Blood.