DARK OBSESSION

CHAPTER 1: THE CRACKED PACT

The night air on the top floor of The Black Cellar was always heavy, thick with the scent of expensive tobacco, aged whiskey, and threats neatly cloaked beneath bespoke suits. This was a private sanctuary accessible only to those with enough money, power, or sin to their name.

I sat on a dark brown leather sofa, swirling my crystal glass until the ice clinked softly inside. The amber liquid glinted under the dim glow of the chandelier. All around me, the five most dangerous men in this city were gathered.

Once, they were my brother Leo’s best friends. Once, back when Leo was still breathing, they were the "older brothers" who used to ruffle my hair, steal cookies from my plate, and laugh at my oversized school dresses. They were my protectors.

But Leo died two years ago. And tonight, there was no trace of a brotherly warmth left in this room.

"You're drinking too much, Feyre," a deep, raspy voice broke the clinking of the ice in my glass.

I looked up. Julian stood right in front of me. He leaned his broad shoulders, wrapped in an unbuttoned black shirt that revealed the dragon tattoo curling from his neck down to his chest. Once upon a time, Julian was the one who ruffled my hair the most whenever he came over.

Now? His gaze was dark. Wild. His deep brown eyes no longer rested on my face as a friend’s little sister, but trailed down my neckline, over my bare shoulders exposed by tonight's red satin dress, down to the curve of my cleavage. The way his eyes moved... he wasn't just looking. He was stripping me bare. Stripping away every layer of defense I fought so hard to maintain.

"I'm an adult now, Julian," I replied softly, meeting his gaze without flinching. There was a challenge in my voice that caught the corner of Julian's mouth into a faint, wicked smirk—a sinister smile that sent a shiver down my spine while simultaneously igniting a strange flutter deep in my stomach.

"An adult?" another voice hummed from the corner of the room.

Xavier, a French-descended man with dark, slightly wavy hair, stepped forward. He held a bottle of Bourbon in his left hand. His steps were like a predator cornering its prey.

"You're only twenty-two, Feyre," Xavier said, his voice smooth as silk yet sharp as a switchblade. "In our eyes, you're still Leo's little girl. Although... that red dress was clearly not designed for a little girl."

I felt a rush of heat flood my cheeks. The dress was indeed too tight, hugging every curve of my body perfectly. I had worn it on purpose tonight. I wanted to see their reaction. I wanted to prove that I was no longer a child who needed their protection from the outside world.

But I had forgotten one thing: offering myself up as bait before five wolves was the stupidest thing I had ever done.

In another corner of the room, the other three men—Damian, Mark, and Aaron—watched my every move. Damian, with his sharp jawline and a faint scar through his left eyebrow, took a slow drag from his cigarette. White smoke billowed from his lips, framing his cold, handsome face. Mark and Aaron leaned against the pool table, their fingers tapping the wooden cues in a slow, intimidating rhythm.

The atmosphere in the room shifted drastically. The walls felt like they were closing in. The oxygen grew thin.

The five of them shared one rule. A Pact—a secret treaty forged over my brother's grave two years ago. An absurd yet lethal pact I had accidentally overheard that night: Feyre belongs to Leo's memory. Not a single one of us is allowed to touch her. If any of us breaks this, the others will destroy him and leave.

A sacred boundary. A red line that could never be crossed.

For two years, that rule worked. They guarded me from a distance, ensuring no other man dared approach me, while keeping their own physical distance from me. But tonight, something in the air fractured. Something taut and ready to snap at any second.

"You guys make me feel like a fish in a bowl," I said, standing up from the sofa. I tried to keep my voice steady, even though my knees were trembling slightly. "I'm going to the restroom."

As I brushed past Julian, my arm accidentally grazed his hard chest. Julian didn't budge an inch to give me space. Instead, he stood even taller, pinning me tightly between him and the wooden table behind me.

His scent—a blend of sandalwood, smoke, and danger—instantly invaded my senses.

"Are you running away, Feyre?" Julian whispered, leaning his head down until his warm breath brushed my earlobe.

My heart hammered against my ribs like a sledgehammer. "I'm not running."

"Your flushed cheeks and heaving chest say otherwise," Damian chimed in from behind his cloud of cigarette smoke. He joined us, tightening the circle of intimidation around me. "You know, Leo would kill us if he knew you came here dressed like this."

"Leo is dead!" I snapped, my voice rising.

A sudden silence fell over the room. My words hung in the air, cold and sharp.

I looked at them one by one. Xavier tilting his head with a dangerous glint in his eye, Mark tightening his grip on the end of his pool cue, Aaron freezing his rhythmic tapping, Damian snuffing out his cigarette in a crystal ashtray, and Julian standing directly in front of me with eyes blazing with something dark and untamed.

"Leo isn't here anymore," I continued, my voice trembling with emotion—a mix of unhealed grief and suppressed desperation. "So stop acting like you're my guardians. You're not my brothers. You're nothing to me."

That was a huge mistake.

I hurried out of the private room. I swept down the dimly lit hallway leading toward the back of The Black Cellar. My heels clacked sharply against the old wooden floor, racing alongside my wild, out-of-control heartbeat.

Why did I provoke them? Why did I wear this dress on purpose?

The honest answer sent a chill down my spine: because I wanted that reaction. I was tired of being ignored. I was tired of being treated as a fragile relic left behind by my brother. But what terrified me most was that their dark gazes tonight—their ravenous, hungry looks—didn't scare me. They ignited something wild inside me instead. A masochistic need to be dragged into their darkness.

My steps slowed near the back hallway leading to the VIP restrooms. It was quiet here, far from the thumping music of the main dance floor below. A dim yellow wall sconce flickered softly, casting long shadows against the red brick walls.

Suddenly, the lights in the hallway went completely out.

Pitch darkness swallowed everything in an instant.

"Damn it," I muttered softly. I fumbled along the cold brick wall, trying to find a switch or a door handle.

Before my fingers could catch anything, a swift movement cut through the air around me. The heavy thud of shoe soles against the wooden floor set off alarm bells in my brain.

"Who's there?" my voice echoed in the narrow corridor, now laced with pure fear.

No answer. Only the sound of steady breathing that felt dangerously close.

I turned around to run back toward the lounge, but before I could take a single step, a large, rough, warm hand clamped around both of my wrists in a single grip. In a matter of seconds, my body was slammed backward against the cold brick wall with a hard thud.

"Ugh!" I gasped.

"Shh..." a voice whispered right in front of my face.

The rough hand holding my wrists pinned both of my arms above my head, locking them against the wall effortlessly. The grip was as tight as steel cuffs, yet not painful enough to bruise—it was merely asserting absolute dominance.

"Let go of me!" I cried out, trying to fight back by kicking my legs. But a solid knee shoved its way between my thighs, completely trapping my movement. My red satin dress hitched up slightly from the force, leaving my bare thigh skin pressing directly against the expensive, coarse fabric of his trousers.

The clash of hot and cold sent my breath catching in my throat.

The scent of sandalwood, tobacco, and leather engulfed my face. It was a combination I knew all too well.

"Julian...?" I whispered hesitantly, trying to pierce through the darkness to see the face before me.

His free hand reached up, his rough, calloused fingers tracing my jawline with a firm yet gentle touch, before his large thumb pressed roughly against my bottom lip. The pressure was firm enough to part my lips slightly.

"Those rules..." the voice whispering against my neck was deep, heavy, and dripping with a hunger that had been suppressed for far too long. But it wasn't Julian's voice.

It was Damian.

"Those rules are driving me insane, Feyre," Damian whispered. His lips brushed the sensitive skin of my neck, sending a jolt of electricity straight through my nerves. "We held back for two years. Two years of pretending to be good big brothers to you."

My heart pounded so hard I thought it would burst out of my chest. My body trembled, not just from fear, but from the wild sensation consuming my chest.

Before I could answer, I felt another breath of warm air on the right side of my neck. Someone else was standing beside me in the dark.

"Didn't you say we were nothing to you, hm?" Xavier's smooth voice purred from my right. His cold, practiced fingers began to slide down my shoulder, tracing the strap of my red dress, gently pulling it until it slipped off my shoulder. "You provoked us on purpose, Little Bird. You knew what you were doing tonight."

"Xavier... please..." I pleaded, my voice barely a ragged whisper. "Your rules... the Pact..."

"Screw the Pact," a third voice growled from the shadows. Julian. His footsteps drew nearer, and I could feel his commanding presence right behind Damian and Xavier. "If one of us touches you, the rest have to leave? That was the old rule. A rule for men who are willing to back down."

Damian tightened his grip on my wrists pinned above my head. His thumb continued to press into my trembling bottom lip.

"But the five of us reached a new agreement tonight," Damian whispered inches from my lips, so close our noses brushed. "We aren't leaving. We all want our piece."

Rough yet skilled touches began to explore my body in the pitch-black darkness. Damian's thumb stroking my lips, Xavier's fingers gliding over my bare shoulder, and Julian's looming presence blocking any escape—it all merged into a sensory overload that made my head spin and my thoughts haze over.

My conscience screamed at me to yell, kick, and run. This was wrong. They were my brother's best friends. They were dangerous men I was supposed to stay away from.

Yet the darkness inside me—the forbidden obsession I had hidden for so long behind the smile of a good girl—welcomed their touch with hunger. My body betrayed me; instead of fighting, my back arched toward their touch, letting a soft gasp slip past my throat.

"See?" Xavier chuckled darkly near my ear. "She isn't pulling away. She likes it."

"She craves it," Damian added. His lips finally captured mine—not in a soft kiss, but in a rough, possessive, and dominant claim. The taste of whiskey and danger transferred from his mouth to mine.

My world spun. The rules dissolved. The vow made over my brother's grave shattered into pieces on the cold wooden floor.

Yet, amid the chaos of forbidden desire and the hands stripping away my control, my darkest thoughts drifted somewhere else entirely. To another, far more forbidden figure. A man whose shadow haunted my wettest, most sinful dreams.

Victor.

My best friend’s father. An older, intensely dominant man with steel-gray eyes capable of weakening anyone's knees with a single cold glance. A man whose rough thumb I truly wanted to feel pressing against my lips just like this, a man whose hands I desperately wanted to let ruin my life completely.

If the touch of these five men in this dark corridor was fire, then the thought of Victor was an inferno I desperately wanted to douse myself in.

A firm grip on my waist pulled me back to the noisy reality. Damian broke the kiss, resting his forehead against mine. Our breaths hitched heavily in the cold night air.

"Tonight is just the beginning, Feyre," Damian whispered with a sweet thread of menace. "You belong to us now. There's no turning back."

Suddenly, the sharp clatter of hard-soled shoes echoed from the main hallway, followed by the buzz of fluorescent lights flickering back to life.

Zzzzt... Click!

Bright light flooded the corridor instantly.

In a fraction of a second, the grip on my wrists released. The hands on my shoulders and waist vanished as if they had never been there at all.

I blinked rapidly, blinded by the glare. When my vision cleared, the hallway was empty. Damian, Xavier, and Julian had vanished into the shadows of the emergency exit at the end of the hall, leaving me leaning against the brick wall, struggling to catch my racing breath.

The strap of my red dress hung limply off my shoulder. My lips felt hot and slightly swollen. My body was still trembling violently from the lingering rush of adrenaline and unfulfilled heat.

I fixed my strap with shaking hands, trying desperately to pull myself together before anyone saw me in this disheveled state. I took a deep breath, attempting to reclaim whatever sanity and dignity I had left.

I had to get out of here. I had to go home.

However, as I stepped out of The Black Cellar onto the quiet street under the falling drizzle, a black sedan with heavily tinted windows pulled up directly in front of me.

The rear door glided open automatically.

Inside the dark cabin sat a man with his legs crossed. His dark gray suit was immaculate, without a single wrinkle. His hair, lightly silvered at the temples, was neatly styled around a handsome face that was cold, stern, and untouched by time.

His sharp gray eyes cut through the night, staring directly at my rumpled dress and swollen lips.

It was Victor.

My best friend's father. The man who had consumed my wild thoughts just ten minutes ago.

"Get in, Feyre," Victor's voice was low, commanding, and left no room for argument. "Or do you want me to drag you in off this sidewalk?"

My heart stopped dead in its tracks. I locked eyes with those steel-gray orbs, and there, beneath his lethal composure, I saw a storm of obsession far darker than anything I had just experienced in that hallway.