My brave, stubborn Eve. Always trying to be strong. Always trying to handle everything alone.
I understand that impulse better than she knows. We're both survivors—her of grief, me of something darker. My parents died when I was nineteen, three years after Alex. A classic case of domestic murder-suicide, the police said. My father had been drinking as usual.
The symmetry isn't lost on me. We're both orphans now, shaped by loss.
Though her parents died loving her, mourning her brother. Mine died the way they lived—in violence and recrimination. My father's fists. My mother's silence when I showed her what he’d done to me. The house that was never a home until Alex started bringing me there.
The Sinclair house. Where dinner was warm, and laughter was genuine, and no one flinched when a door slammed.
That's what Alex gave me. A glimpse of what family could be. And when I took him from this world, I took that sanctuary from both of us.
For five years, I've watched her, and somewhere along the way, observation became obsession. The guilt that brought me here has transformed into something darker. Hungrier.
I've seen her cry when she thought no one was looking. Seen her laugh at terrible movies. Seen her dance alone in her kitchen at midnight, free and unselfconscious and utterly herself.
I know her better than anyone alive. Better than Lucy, who thinks she's Eve's best friend. Better than her parents did before they died, consumed by their own grief over Alex. Better than Alex knew her, even, because I see the woman she became after losing him.
I see all of her. The strength and the vulnerability. The ambition and the loneliness. The carefully constructed armor and the soft heart it protects.
I've spent sixteen years building my empire, amassing wealth and power beyond most people's comprehension. All of it was just... motion. Activity to fill the void Alex left behind. Activity to fill the silence that replaced my father's rage and my mother's quiet weeping.
Maybe they found peace together in the end. The gunshots that took them were quick. Cleaner than the slow destruction of living in that house would have been.
I didn't mourn them. Couldn't mourn them. They were already ghosts long before they died.
But Alex—Alex was real. Alex was light and laughter, and the brother I wished I'd been born to instead. His house was my refuge. His younger sister was my secret obsession. His parents were the kind who asked about homework and remembered birthdays.
And I destroyed all of that in one drunk, reckless moment.
On the screen, I watch her get ready for bed—an intimate ritual I've witnessed hundreds of times but never tire of. The way she braids her hair loosely to one side. The careful application of moisturizer. The yoga stretches she does to ease tension in her shoulders. The ass that bends and makes my cock hard.
She's trying to maintain her routine, to impose order on a situation that's spiraling beyond her control.
I did the same thing once. After the accident. After waking from the coma to learn that Alex was gone and his family wanted me dead, too. I tried to impose order. Routine. Control.
It didn't work then either. The guilt ate through everything like acid.
Until I found my purpose. Until I realized that I could honor Alex by protecting what he left behind.
Finally, she climbs into bed, but she doesn't turn off the light. Instead, she lies there staring at the ceiling, her mind clearly racing.
She's afraid. I can see it in the tension of her body, the way her hands clench the sheets.
And I hate it. Hate that I'm the cause of her fear, even as I know it's necessary. She needs to understand that her carefullycontrolled world is an illusion before she can accept the reality I'm offering.
I've watched her routine hundreds of times, memorizing each gesture, each habit. But tonight feels different. Tonight, I won't just be watching from afar.
Tonight, I'm going to touch her.
The thought sends heat coursing through my veins. I've been so careful, so controlled for five years. Watching but never approaching. Orchestrating but never revealing myself. But the messages I've been leaving have changed something fundamental between us.
She knows I exist now. She's thinking about me, wondering who I am, trying to solve the puzzle I've become. And that knowledge—that she's finally aware of my presence—has broken something inside my careful control.
I need to be near her. Need to breathe the same air. Need to see her without the barrier of cameras and screens.
Just this once.
I stand and move through my immaculately clean penthouse to the private elevator, my heart rate elevated for the first time in years.
