Chapter 12
Author: JAXON STEELE
last update2025-10-20 14:45:38
Elena did not remember when she had stopped being afraid of the dark. For years after that night she kept the lights dim and the curtains drawn as if shadow itself might contain memory, as if the city could be persuaded to forget. Now, standing in the hallway outside Adrian Cole’s door with her hand lingering on the brass plate, she felt the old fear return with the force of a tide. Her phone vibrated again in her coat pocket another anonymous warning, another threat but the words on the screen no longer startled her the way they used to. They were part of the atmosphere now, like the distant wail of sirens that had become the city’s lullaby. She pushed the door open and stepped inside because the compulsion to know burned hotter than the compulsion to run. She needed to see him. She needed to understand the man who had erased her sleep and resurrected a name she had tried to forget.

Adrian was not what she expected. He was everything she remembered and nothing she hoped for. He stood
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