It's a kindness I wasn't expecting. But then, he's full of contradictions—the monster who worships, the captor who sets me free creatively.
I'm sorting through a box of old books when I find it. A leather photo album wedged between college textbooks I haven't opened in years. The cover is worn, the binding cracked.
Alex's handwriting is on the first page: "Junior Year Adventures."
My breath catches. My hands start shaking. I haven't seen this album since before the accident. I thought it had been lost, donated, thrown away in the chaos of grief and moving.
I flip through the pages slowly, my vision blurring with tears. Alex at seventeen, all lanky limbs and easy smiles. My parents, younger and happier. Our old house with its sprawling backyard.
Then I turn a page and freeze.
Alex has his arm slung around another boy—tall, dark-haired, grinning at the camera with unguarded joy. They're at what looks like a school event, both in suits that don't quite fit, their ties slightly askew.
The caption beneath reads: " Nate and I, Homecoming 2008."
Nate.
Nathan.
I stare at the photo, my chest tightening with emotion. The boy in the picture is so different from the man I know. His face is open, vulnerable, unscarred by whatever turned him into the controlled, dangerous man who now owns my world.
There's no darkness in his eyes. No weight. Just pure, uncomplicated joy.
My fingers trace the edge of the photo, and suddenly I'm thirteen again, sitting on our back porch with my sketchbook.
"That's really good."
I'd jerked my head up to find Nate standing there, hands in his pockets, looking at my drawing over my shoulder. Most of Alex's friends ignored me—the chunky little sister with paint on her fingers. But Nate always seemed to see me.
"It's just a sketch," I'd mumbled, trying to close the book.
"No, seriously. You've got something there—the way you do shadows. It's like you understand that darkness isn't justthe absence of light. It has weight, you know?" He'd crouched down beside me, genuinely interested. "What are you trying to capture?"
I'd been drawing a bird with a broken wing, trying to show pain and beauty at the same time. No one had ever asked me what I was trying to say with my art. They just patted my head and called it "nice."
"Something broken," I'd whispered.
He'd been quiet for a long moment, then: "Broken things can still be beautiful. Sometimes more beautiful because of what they survived."
Then Alex had called him back inside, and the moment ended. But I never forgot it—the way he'd looked at my art like it mattered. The way he'd looked at me like I mattered.
I close my eyes against the tears. He saw me even then. Saw the parts of myself I tried to hide. Maybe that's why his obsession feels less like a violation and more like... continuation. Like he's been seeing me my whole life, and I'm only just now catching up.
I flip through more pages with trembling hands. More photos of them together. At football games. In someone's garage, working on a car. On a beach trip, both sunburned and laughing.
They were best friends. Real friends. The kind of friends who share everything, who are inseparable.
Brothers.
Tears stream down my face as I close the album.
I need to understand how the smiling boy in these photos became the man who destroyed my life to remake it.
***
Nathan is in the penthouse library when I find him, reading a business report with that focused intensity he brings to everything. He looks up as I enter, and his expression shifts to pleasure.
"You're back early," he says, setting down the report. "I thought you'd be packing all afternoon."
