Chapter 5: Known Stranger

Danielle POV

I left the diary hidden in my room and went back downstairs, hungry for whatever secrets that book was still holding back.

The moment I reached the hall, I saw him. Jacob. For one unguarded second, my body forgot everything that happened before I left

Then it came back, cold and sharp: Keep your friends close. Keep your enemies closer

So I walked toward him myself — slow, deliberate, every step calculated to catch the hunger already in his eyes. His gaze dropped and dragged over me, and I watched it land before I even reached him. I bit my lip, just enough.

He met me halfway and pulled me into a dance without asking. He didn't need to anymore.

His eyes held mine, and the low sound rolling out of his chest wasn't a growl born of anger. I knew that sound. It was the one Jacob made when he wanted something and expected to get it.

I let my hand rest at the back of his neck — until I caught Jackson watching from across the room. I pulled back just enough to be safe.

"I can see you missed me already, you naughty wolf," Jacob murmured, unbothered by the danger of being seen.

His hand settled at my waist, possessive, like the body I wore had always belonged to him. We drew stares as the music swelled, slow and indecently romantic.

"Jackson is watching," I said quietly.

His grip only gentled — somehow worse than if it had tightened. This was the same Alpha whose claws had torn into my stomach the night I died. Now he held me like I was something precious. The whiplash of it made my skin crawl.

Rage climbed my spine, but I swallowed it.

Slow. Deadly. Let him hang himself first.

"What about that helpless, fat Luna of yours?" I asked, keeping my voice light.

"Oh, she crossed a line." His mouth curved. "So I made sure she never crossed it again."

The music kept playing. My feet kept moving. Something inside me went very still.

He's talking about killing me. And he doesn't even know it.

"Why marry her, then?" I pushed. "You never even liked her."

The warmth drained from his face. What replaced it wasn't anger — it was colder. "Just because I let you into my bed doesn't give you the right to question my family business. Do your part of the deal. I'll do mine — I own you. Are we clear?"

I should have backed down. The old me would have. She was dead now, and I had nothing left to protect. "And if I decide not to?"

His smile came back, slower, more dangerous. "You really don't want to find out what happens when an Alpha's order gets broken."

The air between us thickened, his arms still moving me through steps that suddenly felt like a leash.

Lucy's voice cut through just in time. "Hey, Danielle — I'm so glad you're here." That same smile that had fooled me for seven years.

Not again.

I smiled back, sweet and empty, and let her walk away thinking she'd won something.

Jacob leaned in as the song wound down, his mouth close enough that his cologne became the only thing I could smell. "Tomorrow. Six o'clock. Our usual place. Don't be late."

Then he was gone, leaving me to swallow down fear I refused to let show.

🩶🩶🩶🩶

I woke up before dawn and slid out from beside Jackson without a sound. In the sitting room, I sat in the dark, trying to scrub the ballroom out of my head.

Then I remembered the diary.

My hands shook as I keyed in the password. Whatever was locked inside had already gotten one girl nearly killed for it.

The lock clicked open.

The first pages painted a woman I hadn't expected — fierce, sweet, careful in a way that read like armor. Danielle wore composure like a second skin, but underneath it was someone constantly bracing for the next blow.

When David Carmen — Jackson's father — died, he'd left the entire Carmen fortune to her, not his wife, not his son nor any of Jackson's mistresses. The next pages were full of the fallout: sabotage, smear campaigns, and finally, in her own careful handwriting, the murder of her parents. Still, she hadn't folded.

Neither will I.

I kept turning pages, until one stopped me cold.

Danielle had written, in vivid detail, about a night with the most beautiful man she'd ever touched.

It wasn't Jackson. It wasn't Bruce.

It was Jacob.

My stomach turned to ice. Jacob had been sleeping with Danielle — the entire time he wore Rachel's ring on his other hand. Not just Lucy.

Tears blurred the ink before I could stop them. I flipped again, and one line stopped my breath entirely:

"I know what Jackson did, what Felicia did. What all of them did. If anything happens to me, I already know what to do."

The words sat there like a warning meant exactly for this moment.

"Felicia", I whispered as my thoughts went towards the woman who said they had been waiting for me. She had the same face as the picture of the lady Danielle's diary.

I turned the page, desperate for more.

It was torn out. Not lost. Removed — a clean, deliberate rip, like someone hadn't wanted whatever came next to survive.

My mind went straight to the "accident" that had put Danielle in a coma for two years. No one had ever said it like they believed it was one.

What if it wasn't?

For the first time since I woke up in this body, the fire in my chest wasn't only about my own revenge anymore. Danielle had been building a war of her own — and someone had cut her off before she could finish it.

I closed the diary and held it against my chest.

Vengeance for Rachel would have to wait

First, I needed to find Rachel's father, my ex father — and start pulling the thread that led back to whoever had really put Danielle in that coma.