Chapter 115 Chapter 115
He pulled me closer, his arm wrapping around my waist while I rested against his chest. His heartbeat stayed steady under my cheek. Slow, grounded, and reliable. I focused on that rhythm like it could drown out every anxious thought spinning through my brain.
“You okay?” he asked softly.
“Yeah,” I whispered.
It wasn’t fully true.
But it wasn’t fully false either. I felt safe here, safe with him, inside our house wrapped in his warmth and quiet strength. Still, as I drifted toward sleep, I couldn’t shake the strange feeling pressing at the edge of my mind. Like someone else was watching from far away. Not touching or speaking but just… waiting.
And somewhere deep in my gut, a quiet voice whispered something I didn’t want to hear yet. This wasn’t over; it might not have even started.
Wedding planning sounded glamorous when people talked about it, but living inside it felt like being trapped in a very expensive hurricane that smelled like fresh flowers and panic. Every room of the house looked like a design studio exploded inside it. Fabric swatches covered dining tables, invitation samples sat in neat stacks across the kitchen island, and my email inbox had become a battlefield between planners, caterers, decorators, and at least three people arguing over chair shapes like it was a life-or-death decision.
Dad had been fully drawn into all the wedding chaos, and somehow he had become the unofficial taste tester for half the menu options. I passed him in the hallway balancing two plates of mini desserts like he was conducting serious scientific research.
“Red velvet wins,” he announced confidently as I walked by.
“You said that yesterday,” I laughed.
“Yes, but now I have supporting data.”
I shook my head and kept moving toward the office room Zaiel had set up for me when I started helping with his company’s SEO work. The space overlooked the water, glass walls letting sunlight spill across the desk in soft golden sheets. I loved working there. It felt calm, organized, and safe. Something about being inside his world professionally made everything feel more permanent, like I was stitching myself deeper into his life with every project I touched.
My laptop booted up while I grabbed coffee from the tray one of the house staff had left earlier. The screen filled with analytics dashboards, keyword tracking graphs, and traffic projection numbers that normally grounded me. Patterns made sense, data behaved logically, and people didn’t. My phone vibrated on the desk.
Unknown number.
My chest tightened automatically. For a moment I considered ignoring it, but curiosity won before caution could talk me out of it. I opened the message.
UNKNOWN: You looked beautiful leaving the house this morning.
The room went completely silent around me. My fingers hovered over the screen as heat crawled slowly up my neck. I reread the message twice, hoping I had misunderstood it somehow, hoping it was a wrong number or spam or literally anything harmless, but it wasn’t.
I typed back before I could stop myself.
TESSA: Who is this?
The typing bubble appeared immediately, like the sender had been waiting.
UNKNOWN: Someone who notices you.
My stomach twisted hard enough to make me set the phone down. The words weren’t threatening; they weren’t crude. If anything, they sounded almost… careful, and that made it worse. I locked the screen and shoved the phone face down against the desk, like I could suffocate the message by not looking at it.
Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was a prank. Maybe it was one of the vendors accidentally sending something weird.
I focused on work, forcing my eyes back to traffic metrics, backlink reports, and content calendars. Numbers blurred together as my brain kept replaying the message over and over again. After nearly twenty minutes of pretending to concentrate, I pushed the chair back and stood up, pacing slowly across the office.
I hated how familiar this feeling was, the awareness and the quiet sense of being watched even when logic said I was completely safe.
I walked toward the window, staring down at the gated drive below. Security guards stood at their usual positions. The property cameras rotated in steady, mechanical sweeps. Everything looked normal; I was protected, and Kai was in control.
Still, unease settled under my skin like static.
By the time lunch rolled around, I had convinced myself I was overreacting. It was stress from planning, combined with wedding nerves. Old memories crawling back at bad moments it was completely explainable.
I was halfway through reviewing vendor contracts when another notification appeared on my phone.
A photo and my breath stalled the second it loaded.
It was me. Sitting at this desk. Taken from outside through the glass wall at an angle that had to be from the hillside across the property. The zoom quality blurred some details, but it was unmistakably me. The timestamp said it was taken ten minutes ago.
Cold spread through my chest like someone poured ice water straight into my lungs. My hands started shaking before I even realized it was happening. There was no message attached this time. Just the picture it was happening again, Mark, Alex, and Zaiel. Now someone else.
I grabbed my phone and stood up, turning slowly in a full circle like I might magically catch someone watching through the trees. Nothing moved except wind shifting through branches in the distance. This wasn’t random; it sure as hell wasn’t harmless. This was intentional; suddenly every security camera, every gate, and every locked door felt like thin glass instead of protection. I was being stalked again.
“Tessa?”
Zaiel’s voice cut through the panic spiraling in my chest. I turned quickly as he stepped into the office, loosening his tie with one hand while scanning my face with sharp, immediate focus.
“Are you okay?” he asked, brows pulling together slightly.
“Yea,” I said automatically, locking my phone screen before he could see it.
He didn’t move closer. He just stood there watching me, studying the way my fingers gripped the edge of the desk too tightly and the way my breathing hadn’t fully steadied.
“You’re lying,” he said calmly.
“I’m stressed,” I said, forcing a small smile. “Wedding chaos.”
His gaze softened slightly, but suspicion still flickered behind his eyes. He crossed the room slowly, resting his hands on either side of my hips and leaning down to brush his lips against my temple. The contact grounded me instantly, warmth spreading through my chest where panic had been clawing seconds earlier.
“You don’t have to carry everything alone,” he murmured.
“I know.”
“Good,” he said, pressing another soft kiss near my hairline before stepping back.
I almost told him then, About the message, the photo. The sick, twisting fear sitting in my stomach. The words hovered on my tongue, heavy and ready, but I swallowed them because I knew him, and I knew what would happen if he thought someone was watching me.
That evening, the family gathered for dinner planning at Alina and Anthony’s estate. The house buzzed with noise the second we walked in.