Julian wasn't patient anymore.
He was burning.
And the woman he'd once met, tall, enigmatic, with lips the color of bruised violets and a voice like velvet scraped over gravel, was feeding the fire.
Her name was Dahlia Cross.
A name that didn't exist in tabloids or movie credits. No interviews, no online footprint, but somehow, her scent lingered in old studio corridors, and her ghost walked the memories of several men Silas had once worked with.
Julian met her again in a dim-lit bar tucked behind the ruins of a forgotten theater in Westbridge. She was already waiting, black gloves on, sipping red wine like it was blood.
"Still beautiful," Julian said, voice clipped.
"And you're still desperate," she replied.
He didn't flinch. "I want the truth about him."
She leaned forward, the candlelight flickering in her pupils. "The truth? Silas Vale is a myth of his own making. But if you peel back enough layers, you'll find something rotten beneath."
"What did he do to you?"
Dahlia chuckled. "It's not what he did. It's what he was. What he is."
Julian's voice dropped. "Tell me."
She pulled out an envelope from her coat and slid it across the table. "Photos. Letters. Screenshots. The kind of truth that doesn't need narration."
He opened the envelope and felt the ground shift.
Silas in a hospital hallway, disheveled. Silas with bruised knuckles outside a therapist's office. A crumpled psychiatric report, partially blacked out. A journal page with the words: "She haunts me before she's even mine."
Julian looked up. "What is this?"
Dahlia's lips curled into a smirk. "It's what obsession looks like in its larval stage. And you're not the only man chasing Grace Laurent. He's just better at hiding it."
"And your connection to him?"
She looked at Julian for a long moment, eyes colder than truth.
"I once thought I could fix him. Now I just want to watch him break."
Back in his apartment, Julian studied the photos with fevered eyes. The journal page stuck to his hand longer than it should have. She haunts me before she's even mine.
That wasn't the writing of a stable man.
It was the writing of someone who'd already claimed Grace in his mind, before she ever said yes for the date. Before she ever looked his way.
Julian wasn't just fighting a rival now.
He was fighting a shadow.
And he was ready to drag that shadow into the light.