Page 42 of Black Castle

She’s obsessed with him.

Finally, her phone suddenly chimes with a message. And her heart races.

It’s him.

Vivienne wants to frown at his reply, which, she might add, is quite irrelevant to the topic she wants to address. But a reply is a reply. This means he isn’t dead or sick or kidnapped.

Vivienne’s cheeks warm, imagining him saying those last two words in his deep, husky voice. He’s so polite, so self-aware and mature. Well, Ian was mature too. But quite in a different way. Ian was…stable, sentimental and understood basic human emotions. But Lucan isn’t. He’s volatile, unpredictable, and with a very low emotional quotient. Yet he always tries his best. Apologizing, admitting he’s wrong—those aren’t habits of his. Yet he does them even though he doesn’t understand why he has to do them. That alone is charming.

Vivienne’s fingers hover over the message bar, her teeth biting into her lower lip nervously. The words she wants to type churn at the back of her mind. But she doesn’t know if she should type them.

A shaky sigh breaks out of her lips as she types the words in one breath then sends. The reply comes almost immediately.

Her heart sinks.

It has narrowly been four weeks since she last saw him. Their bond shouldn’t feel this strong—not when it’s built on texts, calls and hours of conversation. But whatever shifted the ground beneath them during their coffee date, whatever made her think of him, a stranger, for days afterward, has only deepened.

She’s more than just attached now. Maybe logically too quickly, but what can she do? She just can’t help it. He’s brilliant, always managing to turn even the silliest conversations into something meaningful. Every word holds a story—one he understands, one Vivienne never knew even existed.

She always knew how easily her heart could be stolen—probably why she’s been heartbroken so often. But she never knew she could actually care this much through a fucking screen. But after not hearing from him for 24 hrs, she panicked. She thought it was over, something that has barely even started.

And now, she thinks the calls and texts no longer feel enough. She needs to see him. She needs to reassure herself that he’s still here for a while.

And the yearning keeps growing every second that passes.

The text delivers, a weight settling in her chest.

A hopeful smile creeps up her lips.

It takes quite a while for him to send a reply. While she wonders if she should just tell him she misses him and wants to see him, she completely forgets that he doesn’t understand sarcasm and might have taken her last message seriously.

“Shit,” she curses on realization. But before she can send a quick text to clear the evident misunderstanding, his reply drops.

Vivienne rolls her eyes.

She hears a heavy sigh nearby after sending the text. Her gaze drifts across to Kenji, who is lying on his back on the artificial grass, one arm draped over his face to shield the sun’s reflection, the other thrown across his midsection.

He looks way too comfortable.

“You okay, dude?” she asks him. At the same time, a chime announces a new message on her phone.

“Don’t mind me,” Kenji murmurs, eyes still closed. “Just do your thing.”

Her eyes linger on him for a few seconds until she hears the second chime from her phone.

Her brows furrow at the first reply, and then her gaze drops to the one that follows right after it.

His odd question sends a weird chill down her spine, plastering miniature bumps on her skin.

It’s a fair question. Does she know him?

But she’s sure she knows him. His name is Lucan Ardalion Raskovic. He’s Russian and Japanese. He graduated high school at the age of twelve—she still can’t wrap her head around that aspect. He can multiply large numbers in seconds by using abacus imagery in his head.

In his four years undergraduate degree, he did pre-med, focusing on Anatomy and Physiology as his main field. After his undergraduate degree at age eighteen, he proceeded to continue his four years in medical school. But he pulled out after two years and enrolled in the Russian army. He dedicated four years to the force, and with the political connections of his late adopted father, he managed to become a marshal when originally, that title could’ve only been earned after 20-25 years of service. He’s now the youngest soldier to hold the five-star rank of a marshal.

She believes that if she knows this much about him, doesn’t that classify as knowing him?

“And he leaves ellipses,” Vivienne sighs exasperatedly, throwing her hands in the air.

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