Whispers of Ink & Skin

                                       Chapter 17 -   The Whisper of the One Who Owns Her                                                The scream cut through the darkness like a knife. It wasn’t long. Nor dramatic. It was sharp. Dry. Instinctive. Then, hurried steps. A slammed door. Silence. Evangelina opened her eyes. Her heart was pounding, as if someone was hitting it from the inside. The ceiling was unfamiliar. The sheets, foreign. The scent in the air—intense, woody, masculine—wasn’t hers. She blinked. A dim lamp flickered from a corner. The walls were dark, the furniture elegant, sober, expensive. She was in a bed that wasn’t hers, wrapped in a silence far too intimate to be innocent. She tried to sit up, but her head ached as if she had been torn from anoth...

                                                                        Chapter 16                                                                      The Silent Blaze The door of apartment 1503 closed with a definitive whisper. The storm did not surrender. The windows trembled under the fury of the wind, and the echo of the thunder seemed to speak a language only the condemned could understand. Kim walked without saying a word. He took off his jacket slowly, as if each movement weighed more than his body. His shirt was still wet, clinging to his torso like a second skin. He crossed the hallway in silence, until his office. He opened it....