Noah.
I smile.
A slow, murderous thing.
“Let him touch you,” I whisper. “Let him try to keep you.” My eyes harden. “I’ll take you right out of his arms.”
I shift in the seat, leaning back, pulse steady now—not calmer.
More focused.
He thinks she’s his.
He thinks she’s safe.
He thinks he gets to kiss her, touch her, lie beside her.
He doesn’t know shit.
He doesn’t know she doesn’t see him at all.
He doesn’t know her mind belonged to me long before her body did.
He doesn’t know I’m outside.
Waiting.
Watching.
Claiming.
“Sleep tight, Scarlett,” I whisper, eyes fixed on the glowing bedroom window. “Because when I come for you…” I smile. “…you’re never going back to him.”
It’s laughable how easy it is.
For all Noah’s polished confidence, for all the alarms he flaunts, for all the money poured into this perfect little fortress—He forgot the oldest rule.
Locks don’t stop people like me.
They never did.
The side door clicks open under my hand, a quiet metallic sigh that feels like the house is greeting me.
Welcoming me home.
I step inside.
The air smells wrong—too clean, too empty, too his.
Sterile lemon polish. Expensive cologne. A faint trace of her perfume trying to survive in the mix.
I shut the door behind me without sound.
Four years in a cell sharpens your instincts until silence becomes an art form. I move through the kitchen, through the hallway, past the staircase where her handprint still ghosts the banister from earlier when she came home shaking—And up.
Every step is deliberate.
Measured.
