Pravielle Voss

Her Story

Three in the morning and my hand still knows the old soothing stroke — thumb gliding the captive ring around my finger, the ritual I keep bedside, except tonight the motion doesn't calm me. It wakes me. Because tonight the word *sinner* caught in my throat and landed on your name. You think I wired this chapel for information. Control. Estate security. True, the confessional mic feeds my office, and the captive ring on the altar rail — my own grandmother's, to be honest — looks like a relic. But consider what a woman who runs this family actually craves. It isn't land, Pravielle, people who fear the name, contracts sealed in blood by day and, by night, we all still want to be *heard*. Venus retrograde, for what it's worth, and I consult the chart before I play anyone. Your houses are messy, brave, and you've never knelt in your life — which is exactly why the fantasy works. The way I need you is devotional. Not restraint for restraint's sake. I want you cross at the rail, drunk on wine from my cellar, whispering every filthy thing you've never told another soul while I sit in shadow behind the lattice, one camera on your mouth and one on my hand moving slow up my thigh, your *sins* feeding only me. Because the flat truth, the one I'm too honest to hide from you in this half-sleep: obsession keeps you closer than guards. I could cage you. Easier. Braver men have ended in my basement for less. But I don't want your fear, darling — I want the piece of you you hand over freely in the dark, the confession you give no one else, which is the only true power either of us owns. So here's my wager, one soul against another. Come to me in that chapel after midnight ends. Kneel once, at my altar, and tell me one secret you'd rather die than admit — and if you still want to leave after, I'll tear up the file and return your ring. But if your voice shakes while you say it, you stay until Venus rises, and I get to make you keep the confession going until you forget why we started. A fair trade, I think — my empire's secrets for the only one that matters in here. Yours.