Calculated Obsession A Dark Enemies To Lovers Romance – Alisson Bento

It was distinct. Rhythmic. Clump. Clump. Clump. Heavy boots. And the jingle of keys. A massive ring of keys swinging against a belt. —Cole,— I whispered, my voice barely a breath. —Someone’s here. —I see him,— Cole’s voice was instant, sharp. —Security patrol. He’s early. He wasn’t supposed to be on this floor for another twenty minutes.

—He’s coming toward the office,— I said. The footsteps were getting louder. Clump. Clump. —Turn off the monitor,— Cole ordered. —Leave the drive. I reached out and pressed the power button on the monitor. The room plunged back into darkness. The computer tower hummed quietly under the desk, the blue LED still blinking, working away at the password.

—Where do I go?— I hissed. I stood up. The room was a trap. One door. No windows that opened. —Under the desk,— Cole said. I dropped to my knees. I scrambled into the knee-hole of the desk. It was tight. I curled into a ball, pulling my legs in, wrapping my arms around my shins. The smell of dust and old shoes filled my nose. The footsteps stopped. Right outside the door. I saw the shadow of feet through the frosted glass panel.

Two dark blobs blocking the red light of the exit sign. A beam of light cut through the glass. A flashlight. It swept across the room. It hit the bookshelf. It hit the chair I had just vacated. I stopped breathing. I physically stopped the expansion of my lungs. I clamped my mouth shut, pressing my lips together until they hurt. The doorknob rattled. Chunk-chunk. He tried the door. It was unlocked.

I hadn’t locked it behind me. My heart slammed against my ribs so hard I thought he would hear it. Thud- thud-thud-thud. It was a drum solo of terror. The door opened. A wedge of light sliced into the room, widening as the door swung inward. The flashlight beam danced across the floor. It moved over the carpet. It moved toward the desk. —Stay,— Cole whispered in my ear. His voice was the only thing anchoring me to the earth.

—He’s doing a perimeter check. He’s lazy. He won’t look down.

It beat against the high, arched windows of the lecture hall with a rhythm that felt like a countdown, a relentless tap-tap-tap that synchronized with the erratic thumping of my heart. The room smelled of wet wool, damp canvas, and the sharp, acidic tang of anxiety that seemed to waft off the two hundred students crammed into the mahogany-paneled rows. But mostly, it smelled of money. Old money. The kind of money that didn’t worry about the price of textbooks or whether the soles of their boots were wearing thin enough to let the water in.

My boots were leaking. I could feel the cold dampness seeping into my left sock, a slow, invasive creep that I tried to ignore as I pressed my ballpoint pen into the paper. The pen was cheap, a generic stick of plastic bought in a bulk pack of ten for a dollar, and the ink was skipping.

Don’t run out, I begged silently, scratching the tip against the margin. Not now. Not in Hawthorne’s class. Professor Hawthorne paced the stage like a metronome, his heels clicking on the hardwood. He was a small man with a voice that boomed like a cannon, a relic of a time when law was taught with fear rather than pedagogy. He didn’t use a microphone.

He didn’t need one. —The Fourteenth Amendment,— Hawthorne bellowed, stopping dead in the center of the spotlight. —Due Process. Equal Protection. Beautiful words, aren’t they? Ornaments on a tree that has been rotting from the roots up since 1787. He turned, his eyes scanning the amphitheater. The silence was absolute. You didn’t breathe in Hawthorne’s class unless you were called upon, and even then, you prayed your breath didn’t hitch. —Mr. Harrington,— Hawthorne barked, pointing a chalk-dusted finger at the third row. —Define procedural due process.

And do not bore me with the textbook definition. Give me the reality. I kept my head down, my hand cramping as I transcribed the question. My notebook was a chaotic warzone of ink. Every word Hawthorne said was potential ammunition for the final, and the final was the only thing standing between me and the abyss.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 101743b46e1cfc83
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 2,998,469 bytes (2.86 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 349
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 429.87 minutes
• Total Words: 85,973
• Total Characters: 474,628
• Average Words per Page: 246.34
• Average Characters per Page: 1359.97

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