Obsessed

Chapter Thirteen – Selena

( Selena pov )

Sleep became a rumor that week.

Something people talked about in passing, vaguely, as if it were a place they used to visit but couldn’t quite remember how to reach anymore. I lay in bed night after night staring at the ceiling, counting the faint shadows cast by passing headlights, waiting for exhaustion to drag me under.

It rarely did.

And when it did, it never lasted.

Every time I closed my eyes, the same image surfaced: the sketch, the mirrored glass, the shadowed figure watching from behind. The handwriting followed soon after, curling through my thoughts like smoke I couldn’t wave away.

You see more than you admit.

The words had carved themselves into my mind, settling into a steady rhythm that pulsed beneath everything I did. I heard them while brushing my teeth. While riding the elevator. While pretending to listen during meetings that blurred together in polite, meaningless dialogue.

By midweek, I stopped pretending it didn’t matter.

There was something deliberate about what had happened, not just the intrusion, but the precision of it. Valen Group’s security systems were legendary. Access was layered, segmented, obsessively monitored. Even my own credentials limited what I could see, where I could go.

For that message to appear inside my locked drawer, someone powerful had to be involved.

Someone with reach.

Someone who knew where I sat, when I arrived, what I worked on.

Someone who wanted me to notice.

That realization followed me everywhere.

The tower no longer felt neutral. Its beauty, the polished marble, the quiet elegance, the perfectly filtered air began to feel performative, like a mask worn too carefully. Every reflective surface seemed to linger on my image just a fraction longer than before.

Watching.

I spent my lunch hours buried in work, but my focus drifted more often than I liked. Lines blurred on the screen. Numbers lost their meaning. My thoughts circled back to the same question over and over again.

Why me?

By Thursday, curiosity outweighed fear.

I told myself I was just being cautious. Responsible. That understanding of the system would help me protect myself. It was easy to justify when framed as professionalism.

So I began tracing patterns.

Nothing overt. Nothing reckless. I ran diagnostics disguised as routine checks, examining network traffic and internal permissions that technically fell within my role. I moved carefully, deliberately, aware that every keystroke might leave a trace.

Valen Group didn’t punish mistakes.

It eliminated them.

Still, the deeper I looked, the more I sensed an intelligence beneath the surface of a system that wasn’t just reactive, but aware. As if it knew when it was being observed.

When my screen flickered, I froze.

Just once.

A faint disruption, so subtle it could have been dismissed as a power fluctuation. But instinct screamed that it wasn’t.

My fingers hovered above the keyboard.

The room around me carried on as usual. Quiet laughter drifted from a nearby desk. Someone scrolled through their phone. Coffee cups clinked softly against saucers.

Normalcy pressed in from all sides.

Then the line appeared.

Still watching?

My breath caught sharply.

The message hovered for less than a second before vanishing, leaving the screen pristine, no trace, no log, no evidence it had ever existed.

My pulse slammed against my ribs, loud enough that I was certain someone else must hear it. I glanced around, but no one was looking at me. No one had noticed anything unusual.

They were still laughing.

Still scrolling.

Still unaware.

Whoever was behind this wasn’t guessing.

They were inside the system.

And worse they were inside my rhythm.

I pushed back from my desk and forced myself to breathe evenly. Panic would only make me sloppy. Sloppy people didn’t last long here.

That night, I didn’t go straight home.

The decision formed quietly, without drama. I simply found myself stepping into the executive elevator, my heart pounding as the doors slid shut. The ascent was smooth, silent, too fast.

When the elevator stopped at the top floor, my badge denied access with a soft, indifferent beep.

I didn’t move.

I stood there staring at the glass doors etched with Valen Group International’s symbol, my reflection staring back at me small, human, out of place in a world built on dominance and restraint.

Behind those doors lived the people who controlled everything.

The unseen architects.

The watchers.

I imagined cold offices filled with glass and shadow, men and women who spoke softly because they never needed to raise their voices. People who moved pieces on a board without ever touching them directly.

And yet, beneath that image, something else stirred.

Awareness.

The air felt different up here. Charged. Alive in a way I couldn’t explain. A low hum vibrated faintly through the floor, the sound of distant machinery but it felt too steady, too intentional.

Like breathing.

I turned sharply, expecting to see someone standing behind me.

No one was there.

But something lay on the floor near the elevator doors.

A card.

Black. Gold-edged. Perfectly placed.

I crouched slowly, fingers trembling as I picked it up.

There was no name.

No title.

Just a single embossed symbol pressed into the surface.

V.

My stomach twisted.

This wasn’t corporate branding.

This was a signature.

Somewhere above me, a light flicked on one solitary window glowing against the darkened glass of the executive tower.

I looked up.

For a heartbeat, I thought I saw a figure there.

Tall. Still. Watching.

The world seemed to quiet around me, as if the city itself had paused to listen. Fear curled tight in my chest, sharp and cold.

But beneath it, something else rose.

Curiosity.

Dangerous. Irrational. Impossible to deny.

Because whoever he was, whoever had written those words, who had finished my sketch, who had watched me without being seen already knew the truth.

I wouldn’t walk away.

And that knowledge terrified me more than anything else.