You made me believe I was broken. You took something beautiful in me and twisted it until I couldn't recognize it anymore. You convinced me that my desires were shameful, that my needs made meweak, that the only person who could ever accept the real me was you.
Maybe you believe your own bullshit. Maybe you really think you were a good Dom and I was just broken. I don't care anymore. You were wrong, and I'm done letting your version of me be the truth.
I missed my parents' funeral. I let you convince me not to go. I lost four years of my life because I believed what you told me about myself. I walked around in a fog of shame and fear and self-hatred—and I let you put it there, piece by piece, until I couldn't remember who I was before you.
But here's what you didn't count on: I remembered. I got in my car and I drove away, and I found people who saw what I'd almost forgotten. Not broken. Not damaged. Not the desperate, pathetic thing you tried to turn me into.
Strong. Worthy. Capable of being loved without being destroyed.
You don't get to have me anymore. You don't get to define me. You don't get to win.
I'm done being afraid of you.
Gemma
I read it twice, then close the laptop without sending. The message isn't for him. It's for me. A declaration, written down so I can look at it whenever I start to forget.
The next step is harder.
I pull out the business card Cole gave me—a Portland attorney who handles divorces, restraining orders and messy domestic situations. One of Shaw's contacts, someone the Brotherhood trusts. I've been carrying the card in my pocket for days, taking it out and looking at it before putting it away again.
This time, I dial the number.
The conversation takes twenty minutes. The lawyer, a woman named Diana Reese, is brisk and professional without being cold. She asks questions I don't want to answer, and I answer them anyway. The text messages. The flowers. The documented history of complaints. By the time I hang up, we have an appointment scheduled for next week, and she's already drafting the petition.
Taking action feels like oxygen after drowning. For the first time since I arrived, I feel like I'm moving forward instead of treading water.
There's one more thing I need to do.
Cole's in the kitchen when I come downstairs, making dinner with the careful attention he brings to everything. Pasta sauce simmers on the stove, filling the house with the smell of garlic and tomatoes. He looks up when I enter, and something in my expression makes him set down the wooden spoon.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong." I pull out a chair and sit at the kitchen table. "I need to tell you something. The truth. All of it."
He turns off the burner and comes to sit across from me. His face is guarded, bracing for impact.
I tell him everything.
Not the clinical version, the one I've parceled out in careful pieces over the past few weeks. The real version.
The small criticisms that escalated to constant control. The isolation from everyone I loved. The way he convinced me my family didn't understand me like he did. The nights I cried myself to sleep. The mornings I couldn't get out of bed. The time he took my phone, my keys, and my clothes and told me I'd get them back when I learned to ask permission. The apologies that always came with blame. The way he used my desires against me, made me feel like what I wanted in the bedroom was proof I deserved to be treated badly everywhere else.
Cole's hands curl into fists on the table. "Gemma?—"
"Let me finish." My voice doesn't waver. "I need to say all of it."
He nods, jaw tight, and I keep going.
The safewords he taught me to use and then punished me for using. The aftercare he never provided. The hollow, crushing emptiness that followed every intimate encounter—the drop I thought was normal because I didn't know any better.
By the time I finish, I'm crying and Cole's gone completely still—the kind of still that comes before an explosion.
Cole reaches across the table and takes my hands. His grip is fierce, but gentle, and his eyes are red-rimmed and raw.
"I'm going to kill him." His voice shakes. "I'm going to drive to Seattle and I'm going to put my hands around his throat and I'm going to watch the light go out of his eyes."
"No, you're not."
