Page 111 of The Guru: Shadow

“It was guiding you, too.”

“Numbers don’t guide.”

So rational, love.

“But you followed the numbers, too. And look where they led you.”

“To you.”

“Yes,” he breathed out.

Exactly as you were supposed to be. His master plan finally playing out in front of him.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Clever, clever girl to not let me off the hook.

“No, I did not.”

“Since when did you go after Gamma?”

“Since August 8th, 2011.”

“The day I killed my father,” she whispered.

He watched her eyes refocus while she connected all the dots. He had given her the last missing piece to connect everything. It was the piece that gave her access to his kingdom. For reasons he could not name, it made his hands sweaty and let the hair on his arms stand up.

“You did it for me,” she said with realization.

“Yes.”

She closed her eyes for a moment and leaned her head back.

“But why me?”

There it was, finally, the moment he’d waited for more than a decade.

“Because I am obsessed with you.”

Emma

Because I am obsessedwith you.

It was the weirdest feeling she ever had in her life.

It was arousal and, yet fear.

It was curiosity and, yet cautiousness.

It was longing and, yet aversion.

There was this man, successful beyond anything, violent, without much of a moral compass, who did very bad things. A textbook-dark empath walking this planet with his psychopathic and narcissistic tendencies, he was one, if not all of the dark triad in one. And she was safe to say, he was, in his own weird way, completely and absolutely in love with her. Not that he would ever use those words, because it wasn’t something he understood, but on an obsessive, possessive, consuming level, he lived for her.

“Let go of your righteousness,ma belle,” he whispered full of longing, while he brushed back some of her hair with his hand.

She could not. It was not right.

“Your righteousness protects you from going over the edge, from losing control, but it also keeps you from truly being yourself. It keeps you caged and in pain. It is time to allow yourself to be free. Liberate yourself,ma belle.”