The calm after Karlo's first visit was a lie. A thin, fragile veneer over a churning sea.
For three days, the weather held in a state of pristine, suspended animation. The sky was a high, endless blue, the sea a placid sheet of cobalt silk. The violent bura felt like a fever dream. But in my bookshop, in the quiet spaces between customers, the air still hummed with the memory of his presence. The space where the Boccaccio had been on the back room shelf gaped like a missing tooth, a permanent reminder of the transaction that had felt like so much more than a sale.
I caught myself staring at that empty spot, my fingers tingling with the phantom sensation of his touch on my hair. His words looped in my mind: "The architecture of fear. And desire." What did that mean? Who was he? A simple online search for "Karlo" and "writer" yielded nothing. A recluse, then. A man who bought rare, erotic classics and spoke in riddles that felt both intrusive and hypnotically intimate.
I tried to dismiss him as a weird, wealthy tourist, a fluke. But my body refused to obey. My sleep was fitful, filled with fragmented, vivid dreams of dark eyes and the smell of cedar and matches. I'd wake with a start, the echo of the bura's scream in my ears, only to find the night silent.
On the fourth morning, the familiar yellow van of the local courier service pulled up in the alley. Goran, the driver, a man with a perpetual sunburn and a kind smile, hefted a heavy, flat parcel wrapped in plain brown paper onto the counter.
"For you, Lea. Looks important. Feels like books."
"Thanks, Goran." I eyed the parcel. It was about the size of a large folio, an inch thick, meticulously wrapped. There was no visible return address, just my name and the shop's address typed neatly on a white label. The postmark was local. Zadar.
My heart did a clumsy, heavy thump against my ribs. I knew, with a certainty that bypassed logic, who it was from.
After Goran left, I simply stared at it. The afternoon sun slanted across the paper, picking out the fine texture of the fibers. It sat there, inert, yet it seemed to radiate a kind of potential energy. It was a door. I could leave it unopened, return to sender, pretend the last few days were an anomaly. I could preserve the fragile, normal life I had built.
Or I could open it.
My fingers, cold and slightly trembling, reached for the package. I slit the tape with a letter opener, the sound obscenely loud in the quiet shop. The brown paper fell away to reveal a simple, sturdy cardboard portfolio. No note. No card. Just the portfolio.
I took a deep, steadying breath, flipped the cover open.
Inside were perhaps fifty sheets of high-quality, cream-colored paper. They were typewritten. Not printed from a computer, but from an old-fashioned manual typewriter. I could see the slight imperfections in the characters, the faint bite of the keys into the paper. The font was clean, classic. And the title, centered at the top of the first page, made the breath catch in my throat:
THE LAST BURA – Chapter 7
Beneath it, an epigram:
"The wind does not merely blow; it interrogates. It asks the cliff why it stands, the tree why it bends, the heart why it beats in the dark. And it waits for an answer." - K.V.
K.V. Karlo Vidakovic? Was that his last name? The heir to the cliff house?
I began to read.
The bura had scoured the village clean, leaving behind a world of sharp edges and brittle light. In her shop of silent stories, Anja felt the aftermath in her bones. The silence was different now. It was not an absence of sound, but a presence. The presence of him.
She moved through the canyon of books, her fingers, pale as parchment, tracing spines without seeing them. Her mind was a reel of his image: the dark fall of hair over a brow furrowed with impossible thoughts, the eyes that were not windows but deep, still pools reflecting a sky she didn't know. He had paid for the book, but he had taken something else. A thread of her peace. A shard of her solitude.
She told herself he was just a customer. A strange, intense man with too much money and a poet's unsettling tongue. But the shop air, once scented with dust and slow decay, now seemed to hold a trace of him—oak moss and the cold, mineral scent of a storm just passed.
My skin prickled. Anja. A Slavic name close to my own. A bookseller. The description was not generic. 'Pale as parchment'—my complexion. 'Fingers tracing spines'—a habit I had. He had observed me, not just glanced at me. He had studied me, absorbed the details of my mannerisms, my environment, and was now weaving them into prose.
I read on, a voyeur into a fictionalized version of my own life. The prose was immersive, lyrical, but with a dark, psychological undertow. It described Anja's restless nights, her fixation on the light now burning in the old house on the ridge. It was all there—my loneliness, my intellectual curiosity, my simmering, unacknowledged hunger for something beyond the quiet pages of my existence. He had seen it. He had named it.
Then, the scene shifted.
Three days of false peace. Then, on the fourth, a knock at the back door, the one that led to the alley where the garbage bins stood. A decisive rap, not questioning.
Anja knew, before she moved, before she turned the lock. The knowledge was a stone in her stomach, cold and solid.
She opened the door.
He filled the frame, the afternoon sun behind him casting his face into shadow, etching his form in a halo of blinding light. He held no book this time. His hands were empty.
"You read it," he said. Not a question. His voice was the low rumble that precedes an avalanche.
"The Boccaccio? It's beautiful. Thank you." Her own voice sounded thin, reedy.
A slow shake of his head. The light shifted, and she saw his mouth, that severe line now softened by the faintest, most dangerous curve. "Not that. The silence. The one I left behind. You've been reading that for three days."
He stepped inside, forcing her to retreat. The back room shrank, the towering stacks of books seeming to lean in, complicit. He closed the door. The click of the lock was the loudest sound in the world.
"What do you want?" Her back was against her repair desk, the edge biting into her thighs.
He advanced, not quickly, but with an inexorable certainty. "A consultation. On authenticity."
"I sell books, I don't—"
"You live in them." He was before her now, close enough for her to see the flecks of charcoal grey in his irises, close enough to feel the heat radiating from him, cutting through the room's perpetual chill. "The scene I'm writing. It lacks… verisimilitude."
He reached out, not for her face this time, but for the loose knot of hair at her nape. With a gentle, firm pull, he unraveled it. Her hair, long and wavy and the colour of sun-bleached oak, tumbled over her shoulders. A gasp caught in her throat, part shock, part something else that coiled, hot and shameful, low in her belly.
"My character," he murmured, his voice dropping to a hypnotic whisper as his fingers combed through the freed waves, "is cornered. Not by a monster, but by an idea. The idea of her own repressed want. It manifests as a man. A stranger who understands the texture of her solitude because he wears his own like a coat of arms."
His other hand came up, his thumb stroking the frantic pulse at the side of her neck. "She is against her desk. The worn wood, the smell of glue and old paper. It is her world. He is invading it. Translating her fear into a different language."
As he spoke, he guided her, his hands on her shoulders, turning her around. She was pliant, mesmerized by the narrative, by the low, intimate cadence of his voice weaving a spell in the dusty air. He bent her forward, gently, until her palms were flat on the cluttered surface of her desk. A stack of old Slovenian poetry chapbooks dug into her stomach.
"He knows," Karlo's voice continued, now close to her ear, his breath stirring the hair at her temple, "that the mind can rationalize anything. But the body… the body keeps a truer record. The body speaks in shivers. In heat."
His hand fisted in her hair, not roughly, but with a possessive authority that made her knees buckle. He used the grip to arch her neck, exposing the long line of it. She was trapped, bent over the artifacts of her quiet life, her breath coming in short, sharp pants that fogged the polished wood.
"And here," he whispered, his lips now a hair's breadth from the skin of her neck, "the body confesses."
His mouth touched her. Not a kiss. A claim. A hot, open-mouthed press against the frantic beat of her artery. His tongue traced the tendon. His teeth grazed the sensitive skin. A sound escaped her—a broken, shuddering moan that seemed to come from someone else.
The manuscript described the sensation in devastating, lyrical detail: the shocking warmth of his mouth on her cool skin, the scrape of his stubble, the dizzying contrast between the hard edge of the desk against her belly and the soft, devastating invasion of his kiss. It described the flood of shameful, electric pleasure that obliterated thought, that reduced her to a vessel of pure, trembling sensation. It described the way her fingers curled, clawing at the wooden desk, knocking a pot of brushes to the floor. It described the precise moment her resistance, which had been more theoretical than actual, melted away, and she pushed back against him, a silent, physical plea for more.
In the story, the scene ended abruptly. The stranger, having proven his point about the architecture of desire, released her. He left her slumped over the desk, her body humming, her mind shattered, the scent of him and her own arousal clinging to the air. He left without another word, the back door closing softly behind him. Anja was left alone in the wreckage of her own composure.
I finished the last sentence. The final word, "echo," seemed to vibrate on the page.
I was standing in the exact center of my shop. I had somehow risen from my stool. My face was on fire. My core was a liquid pool of heat and aching tension. My neck, where he had described kissing Anja, throbbed with a phantom sensation so vivid I had to lift a hand to touch it, half-expecting to find a mark.
This wasn't just observation. This wasn't just a story loosely inspired by a meeting. This was a blueprint. A fantasy. Explicit, detailed, and unnervingly, devastatingly accurate in its emotional mapping. He had taken the flicker of attraction, the charge of our encounter, and amplified it into a full-blown, predatory seduction. And he had written it for me.
A hot wave of violation crashed over me, followed immediately by a surge of anger. How dare he? This was an intrusion of a monstrous kind. It was psychological trespassing. It was… harassment.
But beneath the anger, humming like a live wire, was the undeniable, paralyzing thrill of it. The prose was beautiful, even in its explicitness. It was a dark love letter to a version of me he had imagined—a version that was bolder, more sensual, more alive in her fear and desire than I permitted myself to be. He had seen the hidden part, the part that was bored by the quiet, that craved a story she was inside of, not just one she sold. And he had written it into existence.
My hands were shaking so badly the pages rattled. I dropped the portfolio onto the counter as if it were radioactive.
What was his game? Was this the act of a lonely, eccentric writer testing boundaries? Was it a twisted form of courtship? Or was it something darker, a form of psychological manipulation, a way to exert control from a distance?
The rational part of me screamed to bundle the pages back up, drive to the cliff house, and throw them in his arrogant, handsome face. To call the police. To get a restraining order.
The other part of me—the part that had dreamed of his touch, the part that had just been viscerally, physically awakened by his words—whispered a treacherous question: What if I acted it out?
The thought was so shocking, so utterly foreign to my careful, controlled self, that I actually laughed out loud, a sharp, brittle sound in the empty shop. It was insane. It was dangerous.
Yet, the image wouldn't leave. Bent over the desk. His hand in my hair. His mouth on my neck. The manuscript had not just described a scene; it had implanted it. It was now my fantasy too.
I spent the rest of the day in a daze. Customers came and went; I rang up sales, gave recommendations, smiled. It was all autopilot. Inside, I was a battlefield. Shame warred with curiosity. Outrage dueled with a desperate, gnawing need to see him again, to confront the author of this delicious, terrifying provocation.
As twilight bled into indigo, I made a decision. I would not go to him. I would not give him the satisfaction. I would be the ice to his fire, the silence to his storm. I would ignore it. I placed the manuscript in the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet, under a stack of old invoices. I would lock it away, forget it.
But that night, in the darkness of my apartment, forgetting was impossible. I lay in bed, and my mind replayed the typed words with perfect clarity. My skin remembered sensations it had never actually felt. I tossed and turned, the sheets tangling around my legs. I was angry, yes. But I was also, undeniably, unbearably aroused. The two emotions fused into a single, restless energy.
Finally, near midnight, I gave up. I rose, pulled on a robe, and crept downstairs. The shop was a cavern of shadows. Without turning on the lights, I went to the filing cabinet, retrieved the portfolio, and took it back to my apartment.
I didn't reread the intense scene. I turned to the first page, to the beginning of Chapter 7, and I started from the top. I read slowly, carefully, not just as the subject, but as a reader, a critic. The writing was extraordinary. It was dense, atmospheric, psychologically astute. The horror he was crafting wasn't about gore; it was about the erosion of self, the way isolation and obsession could warp reality. The character of the writer in the story—a stand-in for Karlo himself—was a chilling, magnetic figure: a man who believed he could channel the bura's chaotic power into narrative, who saw human emotion as mere clay.
I read until my eyes burned. When I finally slept, my dreams were not of fear, but of typing. Of my own fingers hitting the keys of a heavy, old machine, trying to write my way out of the story he had put me in, only to find my words seamlessly becoming his.
The next morning, a new, grim determination settled over me. He thought he could script me? He thought he could deduce my desires from a single meeting and use them as a puppet strings? I was not Anja. I was Lea. And I had a will of my own.
For two days, I maintained my silence. I tended my shop. I met a friend for coffee on the Riva and talked of trivial things. I tried to read a novel, but every sentence felt flat compared to the electrically charged prose hidden in my filing cabinet. The cliff house was a constant, silent presence in my peripheral vision. I avoided looking at it.
On the third day, another parcel arrived.
This one was smaller, sleeker. A black cardboard envelope. Goran handed it over with a wink. "Secret admirer, Lea?"
My blood turned to ice water. "Just a publisher," I mumbled.
Alone, I opened it. Inside was a single sheet of the same cream paper. Not a chapter. Just a paragraph.
The critique is the most intimate form of engagement. Silence is an answer, but it is a coward's answer. It says you are affected, but you lack the courage to articulate how. You have read my work. I can feel it in the changed quality of the silence between us. The ball is in your court, Lea. Do you have the courage to play? Or will you just be read?
Beneath it, an address. Not the cliff house. A location in the old city: The Arsenals, Door #3, 8 PM.
It was a challenge. A gauntlet thrown down with infuriating confidence.
All my resolve to ignore him shattered. He was right. Silence was a coward's answer. And it gave him all the power. He was writing the narrative, and I was just a character reacting. To break that, I had to act. To engage. To become a co-author of this strange, dangerous interaction.
Fear fluttered in my chest, a frantic bird. But beneath it was a solid, thrilling core of defiance. And curiosity. Who was this man in the light of day, away from the sanctum of his cliff house? What did he want?
I spent the afternoon in a frenzy of conflicting impulses. I changed my outfit five times—from severe trousers and a sweater (too defensive) to a simple dress (too eager) before settling on dark jeans, boots, and a deep emerald silk blouse the colour of my eyes. Armor and a flag, both.
As eight o'clock approached, the familiar anxiety was entirely eclipsed by a sharp, clear focus. I was walking into his scene. But I would not play my part as written. I would rewrite it.
The Arsenals were the old Venetian naval warehouses, long, majestic stone buildings that now housed art galleries, cafes, and event spaces. Door #3 was a heavy, arched wooden door set down a narrow, dimly lit side alley. A single, modern buzzer panel looked incongruous beside it.
I pressed the buzzer. No voice answered, but the lock released with a loud, electric clunk.
I pushed the door open and stepped into darkness. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust. I was in a vast, cavernous space. The air was cool and smelled of stone, damp, and turpentine. Slivers of moonlight from high, narrow windows cut through the blackness, illuminating floating motes of dust. As my vision cleared, I saw canvases—large, abstract, violent swathes of colour—leaning against the walls. This was a studio.
At the far end of the space, under a single, bright halogen work lamp, he sat at a drafting table.
Karlo.
He didn't look up as I walked towards him, my boots echoing on the stone flags. He was writing, longhand, in a large, leather-bound journal. The scrape of his pen was the only sound.
I stopped a few feet from the pool of light. He finished a sentence, placed the pen deliberately in the crease of the journal, and finally lifted his head.
The harsh overhead light carved his features into a dramatic mask of shadow and sharp angles. His eyes were black pools.
"You came," he said. No surprise. No greeting.
"You left me little choice," I replied, my voice steadier than I felt. "Your note was… provocative."
"It was honest." He leaned back, studying me. The gaze was clinical, appreciative. "The green suits you. It matches the challenge in your eyes. You're angry."
"You sent me a piece of pornography featuring a character with my likeness. What did you expect?"
A faint smile. "I sent you a piece of psychological realism. And 'pornography' is a subjective term. It's only pornographic if the primary intent is arousal. My intent was understanding."
"Understanding what?"
"You." He said it simply, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "The tension in the line of your shoulder when you're concentrating. The way you bite the inside of your lip when you're deciding what to say. The specific, verdant shade of your irises when you're intrigued. These are data points. A writer collects them."
"So I'm research?" I crossed my arms, a defensive gesture I immediately hated.
"You're a mystery. One that walked into my shop and upended a perfectly good streak of misanthropy." He gestured to a second stool near his table. "Sit. Please."
I remained standing. "Why the manuscript, Karlo? Why not just… call?"
"Words on a page have weight. Permanence. They can be revisited, reinterpreted. A phone call is ether. This," he tapped the portfolio I hadn't realized I was clutching, "is a document. It's a beginning."
"Of what?"
"Of a conversation. A collaboration, perhaps." He stood up, moving out from behind the table. He was taller than I remembered, his presence more physically imposing in the vast, dark space. "You felt something when you read it. Don't deny it. The body, as I wrote, keeps a truer record."
He was close now. The smell of him—cedar, ink, that dark match-smoke scent—wrapped around me. My heart hammered against my ribs. This was the moment. This was where, in his manuscript, Anja was bent over the desk.
I held my ground. "I felt many things. Violated was chief among them."
"But not only." It wasn't a question.
"You're very sure of yourself."
"I'm sure of human nature. Of the attraction to the abyss. Of the delicious terror of being truly seen, even—especially—the parts we hide." His eyes searched my face. "You hide a great deal, Lea. Behind your books. Behind your polite smiles. It's a magnificent fortress. I find myself wanting to lay siege to it."
His words were another form of the manuscript—direct, poetic, disarming. They bypassed my intellect and spoke to the raw, hidden core he had somehow pinpointed.
"And if I don't want to be sieged?"
"Then you walk out that door." He didn't move to stop me. His gaze was open, challenging. "The story ends there. A fascinating, unresolved vignette. But I don't think you will."
"Why?"
"Because you're here. And because you brought the manuscript back." He nodded to the portfolio. "You could have burned it. You didn't. You brought it as a talisman. Or a weapon."
He had me. He saw through every layer. The realization was both terrifying and exhilarating.
"What do you want from me?" The question was a whisper, stripped of pretense.
"Honesty," he said. "In all its forms. Your intellectual reaction to my work. Your emotional reaction to it. Your… physical reaction to the scenarios it proposes." He reached out, slowly, giving me every chance to retreat. His fingers brushed the back of my hand where it gripped the portfolio. A jolt of pure, undiluted sensation shot up my arm. "The manuscript was a hypothesis. I want to test it. With you."
The implication hung in the cool, dusty air. Act it out. Make it real.
Every sane instinct screamed to run. This was madness. This was a path with no clear map, leading into the dark woods of a stranger's obsession.
But I had been living in a world of clear maps, of safe, well-lit paths. And I had never felt more alive than I had in the past five minutes, or while reading his devastating, beautiful pages.
I looked at his hand on mine. I looked up into his dark, waiting eyes. I thought of the phantom kiss on my neck, the heat that had flooded me from mere words.
I took a shaky breath. The silence stretched, taut as a wire.
Then, I let the portfolio fall from my hands. It hit the stone floor with a soft, final thump.
It was an answer.