He didn’t care. He was methodical. Punishment, not rage.
“You think they care you bleed like this?” he muttered.
His fist slammed into my thigh.
“I told you,” I sobbed. “I’d give it to you—I told you?—”
He grabbed my ankle and dragged me across the pavement. Skin tore under my knees. My head snapped sideways, vision blurring.
“You should’ve stayed gone,” he said. “Should’ve died with her.”
Camille’s name flared behind my ribs.
I saw her. Lipstick smeared on a coffee cup. Laughter from a rooftop. Her voice whispering, You’re mine.
And then?—
Pain ripped through my jaw as his boot connected again. My head snapped backwards. White was all I saw.
The world swayed. I screamed something. Maybe his name. Maybe hers. I kicked. My foot connected—barely.
He roared and grabbed me by the hair, forcing my head back until my neck screamed.
“You don’t get to make demands.” He slammed my back against the ground. Leaned close. “You get to bleed.”
My phone buzzed in my hoodie pocket. A second of hope bloomed—sharp and stupid. The man paused. Pulled it out with a sneer.
The screen lit up.
Wolfe.
He tilted it toward me.
“Is this who you were waiting for?” he asked. “Your fucking knight?”
I said nothing.
Couldn’t.
He pressed his thumb to the message. Read it silently. Then smashed the phone against the alley wall.
Once.
Twice.
Until it split open, plastic and glass exploding across the pavement.
“That’s how much he cares.”
Then came the next kick. It landed in the meat of my thigh, and I folded. He followed with another—to the back of my shoulder, then my ribs. I screamed, but it came out as a wheeze.
I tried to curl. He stomped on my hand. I felt the bones shift. Something roared white and hot. I begged without sound. Not for my life. Not for mercy. Just for it to end. My mouth filled with copper. I swallowed it.
Pain bloomed in bright pulses. My body was no longer mine—it belonged to the concrete, to gravity, to him. To regret. And he made sure I did. Fist. Elbow. Knee. A shadow stood frozen, just feet away.
Callum.
He didn’t move. Didn’t help. Didn’t look.
