Page 63 of Fallen Princess: Shadow Stalker

“That night, it wasn’t just the scandal and your betrayal that caused me to flee. It wasn’t my career that hit a downward spiral either. For almost a year, I had come under the interest of a stalker. At first, we thought it was an overactive fan, maybe even several. It started when we began touring the new album. It was a misplaced item here, a cryptic note there. Initially, I dismissed these anomalies as the quirks of my chaotic life. Then, the game was escalated with obscure emails and general photographs taken of me from afar. Werealized it was far more sinister than games you might have played with me.”

I’m not lying. This is how it started. I should have been more aware, but how the fuck would I have guessed how far it would have escalated to being drugged, kidnapped, and so much more.

“Who’s we?”

“And why didn’t you tell us?”

“Oliver Jones,” I reply. “I informed him that I started to feel unsafe. Catalina and I always felt as if someone was following us whenever she drove me somewhere, like this unwanted dark shadow stalking us. Then, unusual gifts started coming through my mailbox. I told Oliver about what was going on.”

I know they won’t want to hear this next bit.

“Initially, the three of us thought it was one or all of you trying to get me to quit the band.”

“We never wanted you to quit, Eden,” Hazes says quietly, contemplating everything I’ve just admitted.

“But none of you ever made me feel part of it.”

“That lasted about a few weeks,” Jagger says and then looks at Haze and Callum, “Maybe a few months, but we all realized the chemistry we had was something special.”

“And we had always fancied you,” Haze adds, “Some more than others, for years,” he looks in Asher’s direction.

I know Ash was silently infatuated with me for years, and I wanted him to make a move on his feelings for so long too. I had crushed on all of them from our days onTone Wars.

“How come Oliver never told us anything?”

“Because I begged him not to. I wanted to play so badly with you. I came from an all-girl pop group where we weren’t allowed to play instruments, and instead, we danced and shook our bodies like we were on freaking stripper poles without the actual poles. I was happy to be in a proper band. Then, a few months later, we happened, and I knew you weren’t my stalker.”

“Did you inform the police?”

“I wanted to, but Oliver insisted he would take care of it. He didn’t want any negative attention towards the band. He was the one who found the house in Bel Air, and he assured me it was secure with a safe room and a security system, which he had updated just before I moved in. I didn’t have much choice in where I wanted to live or the kind of house. It was like,here’s a house, it’s safe.”

“Son of a fucking bitch,” Callum continues to curse as he paces the room.

“And when you realized we weren’t the stalker, why couldn’t you tell us? I don’t get it, Eden, we were your boyfriends. We could have protected you, keep you safe.”

I watch each of them. Even Callum stops to stare at me. All four pairs of eyes are waiting patiently for an answer.

“Because Oliver believed you would have stopped all the tours and wrapped me up in cotton wool.”

“We would have. It’s called protecting what was ours.”

“And I agreed with him,” I say, trying to ignore what Haze just said because those words strike a deep cord with me. “We needed to focus on our jobs without distraction.”

“Except you didn’t.”

“When I moved to Bel Air, it stopped. Likehelost me or something. It was weird.”

“So, for my understanding, Oliver knew about us.”

“I never told him; he never asked. I believed he assumed something was off when you stopped female groupies backstage and traveling with us on the tours.”

“Eden, all this doesn’t add up,” Jagger hasn’t warmed up to anything I’ve just declared. “If the stalker disappeared when you moved to Bel Air. And it wasn’t just the media craze or our trip to England. What else made you flee like you did?”

Dammit. I need to give the same watered-down version I told Brittney because they cannot know anything.

“That night, I was alone in the house. I was always a stickler for security, and it was all on. I had my laptop in the kitchen with me, the cameras were working, and thenheappeared.Hewas in my home. On the screen, I saw him entering my bedroom.”

I pause momentarily and shut my eyes because I don’t want any of them to bear witness to the pain I still suffer. My stalker and his men still live deep within the dark shadows of my mind. He invaded it years ago and never left.

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