Hayden Herron
Istorm through the doors to the kitchen from the stables. My hands are fists. I don't know what I'm doing until I'm already inside, wrenching open the cabinet, and grabbing the first glass I see. And then I throw it across the room with a crash.
Shards explode against the far wall. I’m acting like a child. I’ve killed men for simpler outbursts.
If my father were alive, he would be disgusted to see me like this.
My chest heaves as I brace both hands against the counter, head down, eyes shut. What the fuck is wrong with me?
It’s her.
It used to be enough to scare her, to own the room just by stepping into it. I told myself it was power. That she needed to learn, that control mattered more than comfort. That love didn’t require kindness, only obedience.
But now?
Now I feel it like rot in my gut.
The way she looked at me at the stables was as if I were something truly dangerous.
And I am. It used to thrill me. Now it turns my stomach.
Every time I blink, I see the horrified expression on her face. Normally, it's her fear, the fear that is overcome by lust, that I crave. But there wasn't lust accompanying the fear this time; there was only betrayal.
I chose to threaten Lilibet because, in the past, I had only craved seeing a look of terror on her delicate features. I like to see how far I can push her until she breaks. Not the fear that makes her want to shield herself from me. I’m not a man who will bend; I’ll never ask her for permission. I’ll take until she has nothing left to give. And I want to watch her unravel while it happens.
Except I want to make her feel good while I do it. I’ve reached a horrible middle ground where I only crave her pain if the end goal is her pleasure. I don’t fantasize any longer about finishing her off. About wrapping my hands around her throat just to watch the light snuffed out of her eyes.
I’m overcome with the want to end her for the insufferable curiosity she fills me with.
The desire to steal her panties, drink from her bedside water glass, and use her toothbrush while she was in class.
I used to think that ending her would be the solution to the horrific desire I felt to watch her. To be near her daily.
She was perfectly imperfect from the second I laid eyes on her. And I knew right then, I was going to ruin her. I wanted to drag her by the hair out of that over-decorated suite at her boarding school and make sure she never forgot who she belonged to.
She wasn’t mine yet, but I waited. I stalked her in silence, every weekend she came back from boarding school to herfamily's estate. I watched from her balcony, her closet, and even her bedroom chair when she finally went to sleep. Took what I wanted when no one was looking, lip balm, a pair of tights, even her toothbrush. I survived on scraps like an animal during Thanksgiving breaks, winter holidays—any excuse the school gave to send me home. I was there.
Then she finally enrolled at Eulogia, and it was over for me. I was done pretending. Her scent was everywhere. Her hair on the furniture. Her underwear in the laundry chute. I had access to it all, and I still couldn’t get enough.
She had that bratty, well-bred thing about her, where she is always dressed to perfection. A screwed up pursed lip look on her face made her look like no one could touch her.
From the moment I saw her at the family mixer my freshman year when she came to send her brothers off, I knew. I knew I needed to break her.
I needed to break her down until underneath the pearls and silk, all that was left was skin and blood.
When I first got the assignment, I should’ve been paranoid. But I’m not built to fear. They couldn’t have known, not about her. Not about what I’d already done, what I was still doing.
If anything, it confirmed what I already believed: I was untouchable. My obsession was safe, locked tight behind the face I show the world. So I held it even closer. Protected it. Worshipped it.
They sent me to watch her family. But all I watched was her.
But she wasn’t part of the assignment. Her mother was, until eventually Martine herself got dragged down into the mess. It’s a deep wave of deceit, lies, and mistakes made before she was born.
I grew close to the twins, but everything shifted when the assignment developed more midway through my sophomore year.
Before I knew it, I had a key to her place, and my obsession grew to new depths. I was even surprised, myself, when I began following my obsessive compulsions, reading her diaries and smelling her hairbrush.
Every page was a window into that chaotic little mind. Seeing reflections of my own barely restrained monster was terrifying.
