Beneath His Empire

Siena Vale didn’t cry when Blaine dumped her.

She stared at the message instead, letting the words sink in like acid on skin.

“You’re too much, Siena. Too intense and too quiet for me. This isn't working out. Happy Early Birthday, I guess”.

A breakup by text, classic Blaine.

She deleted the message before she could read it twice, but the words stayed, echoing in her head. Tightening in her chest as she shoved her phone into the pocket of her hoodie and walked out into the biting cold.

The sky was the color of a bruise, a dull gray with streaks of orange from the setting sun. November always smelled like wet leaves and endings.

She cut through the alley behind the gas station, past the chain-link fence and the old car with no tires rusting there since summer. Her boots scuffed the pavement, and her breath came out in faint clouds.

It wasn’t that she loved Blaine, she didn't even know what she saw in him anyway. He was just something to hold onto, maybe, a distraction from the ache that never left. But still, it stung. It made her feel disposable, and she hated feeling disposable.

Hated it.

As she walked, Siena pulled her hoodie tighter and wrapped her arms around herself. Just two more days and she would turn eighteen and get out of the system. She could file for an early release from her foster placement, maybe even apply to that pastry apprenticeship downtown. She’d disappear from this town like smoke.

The wind picked up as she turned onto her street. Goosebumps rose on her arms. Something made her glance over her shoulder.

There was nothing there.

No footsteps. No one following her.

Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched.

It wasn’t the first time.

Her house looked the same as always, half-alive, half-asleep. The porch light flickered, and one of the windows was covered with a cardboard instead of glass. Her foster dad’s truck was parked crooked in the driveway. Inside, she could already hear the TV blaring and his voice booming from the couch, as usual, he was half-drunk and yelling at the football game.

She didn’t go inside right away, there was a box on the porch.

Matte black and tied with a ribbon, her name written on a small card in silver ink, in a handwriting that was almost too neat.

She looked up and down the street but there was no delivery truck, no neighbor in sight, no explanation.

The card just said:

Siena

That was it.

Her fingers hovered over the box for a second, curiosity always got the better of her. She lifted the lid.

Inside, a choker. Black silk, smooth, elegant. No tag, no price. It smelled like vanilla, sandalwood, and amber.

Her name was embroidered across the center.

She blinked. Once. Twice.

What the hell?

She glanced around again, and there was no one in sight but she still had that feeling. That tingly, quiet panic rose like water in her lungs, but she took the box inside anyway.

Her bedroom was the smallest in the house, peeling wallpaper, a bed with a crooked frame, books stacked in corners, a mirror propped on her dresser, chipped in the bottom corner. Her space, her cage.

She locked the door behind her and sat on the edge of the bed with the box in her lap.

She turned the choker over in her hands. It felt expensive, too expensive. Not a cheap costume accessory, something made by hand, and the perfumes made her feel all tingly inside.

Who would send her something like this?

It didn’t make sense, still.

She walked over to the mirror, lifted her hair, and fastened the choker around her neck.

It fit perfectly, like it had been measured for her.

She stared at herself, the girl in the mirror looked the same, but not. A little older. A little haunted. A little more like someone pretending she wasn’t unraveling.

She touched the choker with the tip of her fingers, unsure why she suddenly felt colder, the air in her room had changed.

There was a flicker, she turned sharply.

The light above her desk blinked, then steadied, then blinked again.

“Okay,” she muttered, “Stop being weird.”

Her skin was prickling now, that familiar feeling, like something was behind her, just out of sight crept up her spine. She looked at the window, the blinds were drawn, and the night was still, silent.

Something suddenly flickered across the glass, not a reflection, a movement. She stepped closer, heart pounding.

Nothing.

Her phone buzzed on the nightstand.

“You’re almost ready”.

She dropped the phone as if it were suddenly a hundred degrees. Her breath hitched in her chest as she backed away from the mirror.

And from somewhere outside—from the shadows behind her house, or maybe just inside her mind—someone whispered her name.

“Siena.”