Vivienne had watched people her whole life.
That's how she wrote. She read people like crime scenes—unspoken motives, body language curled around lies. A tilt of the chin. A silence where there should've been a name. She was good at it.
But watching Carmen was different.
You didn't observe Carmen Vale.
You surrendered.
It wasn't just how she moved—though that was part of it.
She walked like her bones remembered surgery. Like every step had been carved, tested, perfected. Grace didn't live in her; it obeyed her. A predator who never needed to run. A scalpel in heels.
It wasn't the beauty either.
Though Carmen was ruinously beautiful—skin like oil on obsidian, cheekbones cut from ancient statues. Her mouth looked like it should whisper scripture. It didn't.
It commanded.
And those eyes—
Not soft. Not reflective. They didn't shimmer, they studied. Like she'd already dissected you and was just waiting for you to realize it.
Vivienne hadn't meant to sleep with her again.
But meaning didn't matter.
Because Carmen didn't ask.
She orchestrated.
A hand grazing hers at the bar. Fingers threading through her hair in a hallway lit like confession. Lips against her pulse in the rain, a bite sharp enough to draw blood, but gentle enough to say: You'll let me.
And she did.
Over and over.
They didn't talk afterward.
Carmen sat in the windowsill, naked, smoking, rain tracing rivers down the glass behind her.
Vivienne stayed on the floor. Legs trembling. Thigh marked by the imprint of Carmen's teeth. A slow ache pulsing like memory in her hips.
And it hit her—
This wasn't love.
This was addiction.
It didn't swell inside her.
It devoured her.
Julian came in an hour later.
He didn't speak.
Didn't need to.
His eyes swept over them. Vivienne looked away. Carmen didn't.
Julian crouched beside Vivienne. Brushed damp hair from her cheek like a lover. Or an executioner.
"Do you feel stronger now?" he asked.
Vivienne nodded, barely.
He smiled. That soft, knowing kind that meant nothing good.
"Good. Because next time, when we take someone apart—"
He leaned closer. "You'll hold the blade."
That night, Carmen and Julian argued.
Quietly. Like predators who'd learned long ago that volume didn't equal power.
"You're giving her too much," Carmen hissed, eyes like knives. "She's not ready."
"You wanted her broken," Julian said. "I'm making sure she doesn't shatter."
"She's still a journalist."
Julian lit a match. Watched it flicker between his fingers.
"She'll either become one of us—"
He looked up. Straight into Carmen's eyes.
"—or we bury her beside the story."
And in the other room, Vivienne wrote.
Not a story.
Not a headline.
Just a single line, again and again, ink bleeding through the paper:
"She touched me and I forgot the sound of my name."