Obsessed

Chapter Eleven – Selena

( Selena pov )

That morning, the air inside Valen Tower felt wrong.

Not heavy. Not threatening.

Just… too still.

It was the kind of stillness that followed a held breath, as if the building itself had paused overnight and forgotten how to exhale. The marble floors gleamed as they always did, immaculate and untouched. The lilies in the lobby stood tall and white, their petals flawless, their scent faint and disciplined. Light poured through the glass ceiling in clean, deliberate lines.

Everything looked exactly the same.

And yet, something beneath it all pulsed quietly invisible, patient, alive.

I felt it the moment I stepped through the revolving doors.

My heels sounded too loud against the floor. The soft music threading through the space seemed distant, muffled, as though I were hearing it underwater. Even the receptionist’s smile felt thinner, stretched a fraction too tight.

“Good morning, Miss Ward,” she said.

I returned the greeting, but my voice felt foreign in my own ears.

The elevator ride up was silent. No one joined me. The mirrored walls reflected my image back at me. composed, professional, calm but my reflection didn’t quite convince me. My eyes looked sharper. More alert. As if some instinct had woken before I had.

By the time I reached my floor, the feeling had settled deep in my chest.

Something had already happened.

The hallway outside my office was empty. Too empty. No quiet conversations drifting from behind glass walls. No footsteps echoing faintly. Even the air felt colder here, carrying that same sterile cleanliness that Valen Group perfected filtered, purified, stripped of excess.

I slid my keycard through the lock.

The door opened smoothly.

Nothing appeared disturbed at first glance. The desk sat exactly where I’d left it. The chair was tucked in neatly. The vase of white roses still stood by the window, their petals just beginning to curl at the edges.

Then I saw the drawer.

The bottom one. The one I always locked.

It wasn’t open wide just enough to notice. A narrow gap, no more than an inch, but unmistakable.

My stomach tightened.

I stood there longer than necessary, my hand hovering uselessly at my side. A thousand rational explanations rushed forward, desperate to be believed. Maybe I’d forgotten to lock it. Maybe cleaning staff had accessed it for inventory reasons. Maybe

When I finally stepped closer and touched the handle, the cold startled me.

The metal wasn’t just cool.

It was cold, as if it had been exposed to winter air far longer than it should have been. A shiver ran up my arm, sharp and involuntary, settling between my shoulders.

I pulled the drawer open.

Empty.

My breath caught.

Every sketch was gone.

Not just the ones I’d submitted but everything. Loose sheets. Half-formed ideas. Margins filled with notes I’d never intended anyone else to read. The vulnerable lines. The questions. The private pieces I hadn’t shown a single soul.

All of it erased.

In their place sat a single black envelope.

It rested perfectly centered on my desk, aligned with an almost ceremonial precision. No fingerprints. No creases. No logo. No name.

It wasn’t hiding.

It was waiting.

I closed my eyes briefly and forced myself to breathe.

This was Valen Group. Nothing here was accidental. Nothing was careless. Panic wouldn’t help me. Fear would only give this moment more power than it deserved.

Still, my fingers trembled as I lifted the envelope.

It was heavier than expected. Thick paper. Smooth. Expensive.

I slid a finger beneath the flap and opened it.

Inside lay one sheet.

I recognized it immediately.

My drawing.

The mirror.

The unfinished reflection.

Except it wasn’t unfinished anymore.

My heart began to race.

Someone had completed it.

The added lines were confident, deliberately darker than mine, sharper. A man’s silhouette emerged from the fractured glass behind the figure I’d drawn. He wasn’t reaching out. He wasn’t stepping forward.

He was watching.

His face remained obscured, swallowed by shadow, but his presence dominated the page. It shifted the balance of the entire image, turning something introspective into something intimate. Possessive.

My throat tightened.

Beneath the drawing, written in elegant, controlled handwriting, were five words:

You see more than you admit.

The ink had bled slightly into the paper, as if pressed down with purpose or impatience.

For a moment, the office seemed to shrink.

The hum of the building faded. The city beyond the glass disappeared. All I could hear was the sound of my own heartbeat, loud and insistent, echoing in the silence.

This wasn’t vandalism.

It was a conversation.

A slow sound drifted down the hallway outside footsteps.

Measured. Unhurried.

I turned sharply toward the door.

Nothing.

The hallway remained empty, glass walls reflecting only light and shadow. No movement. No voices.

But the feeling lingered.

That unmistakable sensation of being observed.

Not watched casually claimed by attention.

My skin prickled, awareness spreading across me like static. I imagined eyes tracing the line of my spine, memorizing the way I stood, the way my breath faltered when fear tried to surface.

I set the paper down carefully, flattening it against the desk as though that might anchor me.

Whoever had done this hadn’t broken in.

They hadn’t rushed.

They belonged here.

The realization sank slowly, chilling me more than the intrusion itself. This wasn’t an external threat. It was embedded in the structure of the place in the access, the authority, the silence that protected it.

Every second inside this office suddenly felt borrowed.

The walls seemed closer now. The glass is less transparent, more reflective. I wondered how many surfaces hid my eyes. How many moments I’d already seen without knowing it.

I considered leaving. Reporting it. Demanding answers.

But my body didn’t move.

Instead, my gaze kept returning to the drawing. To the shadowed figure. To the handwriting that felt unsettlingly intimate.

It felt… familiar.

As if I’d known this presence long before today.

By late afternoon, the light outside shifted, turning the city gold. Reflections multiplied in the glass walls, layering images upon images. For a fleeting second, I thought I saw something move behind me, a tall shape, still and deliberate, standing just beyond my reflection.

I spun around.

Nothing.

The air in the room grew colder.

When I finally gathered the courage to go downstairs, the receptionist looked up too quickly when I asked if anyone had accessed my office.

“Everything’s as it should be, Miss Ward,” she said.

Her smile never reached her eyes.

They warned me instead.

Don’t ask.

When I returned to my office later, the envelope was gone.

No sign it had ever been there.

Only the faint scent of roses lingered in the air, soft, sweet, and just a little wrong.

That night, long after I left Valen Tower and the city swallowed me whole, sleep didn’t come easily.

And when it finally did, I dreamed of mirrors.

Endless glass. Endless reflections.

And every time I turned to look at my own, he was already there.

Watching.