Lashirah_Hash

> He saw her once—and that was enough.

Elena Rivers was just a waitress at a high-end gala she didn’t belong to, filling in for someone else's shift. She didn’t know her spilled glass of champagne would be the moment Damien Vale—billionaire, recluse, and dangerously obsessive—noticed her.

He never spoke to her. Not then. But he watched.

And when he wanted her closer, he made it happen.

Now, Elena is working directly under him, unaware that the life she thinks she controls is already entangled in the hands of a man who doesn't just want her—he needs her.

He’s patient. He’s powerful. And he’s been planning this from the moment she walked into his view.

OBSESSION IN SILENCE

It wasn't nerves. Not this time. The nausea curled up her throat like a whisper from beneath her skin—insistent and unfamiliar.

She stood over the sink, hands gripping the ceramic edge, waiting for the spinning in her head to stop. Her reflection stared back at her in the mirror above the basin—pale, drawn, with shadows under her eyes like bruises she hadn't earned.

He was her sanctuary. Her reset button. If she said it out loud—if she named what she feared—she might destroy the delicate peace they had built.

And worse, she might call something back to her.

She started keeping lights on at night again.

The bruises hadn't faded, not completely. She wore long sleeves in the sun and flinched when Christopher brushed her arm. He noticed but didn't comment. He waited with the patience of a man who knew ghosts couldn't be exorcised with questions.

She could feel him—his presence—pressing down on her like a second skin.

A hand around her ankle as she slept.

Once, she woke up with her nightdress bunched around her waist and a streak of red down her thigh. She hadn't bled in months. Her body had stopped its cycle when the trauma overtook her. And yet, there it was.

Because if she confirmed it… if the line turned pink…

When The Body Betrays