The penthouse is quiet. I'm used to silence. I've spent years cultivating it, learning to move through the world like a ghost. But now the silence feels oppressive, empty.
Because she's not in it.
I pour myself two fingers of vodka and settle into the chair facing the bedroom door. If she tries to run, I'll hear her. If she needs me, I'll be here.
I pull up the file on my phone, the one I've been building on Ava and her family for the past three weeks. Photos of her walking to work. Her class schedule. Her pathetic bank balance. Everything about her life laid bare.
She walked into my suite like a prisoner entering her cell.
Only she's not a prisoner. Not really.
She's something far more dangerous.
She's a choice.
I've killed men for less than what her father did. I've destroyed entire families, burned down empires, erased people from existence without a second thought. I'm very good at what I do because I don't question orders. Don't feel guilt. Don't allow emotion to cloud my judgment.
Until her.
I down the vodka and pour another, then another. The alcohol does nothing to dull the edge of need riding me. I want to go into that bedroom. Want to strip off her clothes and claim every inch of her skin. Want to fuck her until she screams my name, until she understands on a cellular level that she's mine.
But tonight, she needs rest. Needs to process. Needs to come to terms with her new reality.
Tomorrow, though. Tomorrow, I'll show her exactly what it means to belong to me.
Hours pass. The Strip below pulses with life. Drunk tourists, desperate gamblers, people chasing impossible dreams with money they don't have. From up here, it all looks so small. So meaningless.
Nothing matters except the girl sleeping in my bed.
Around three AM, I hear it. A soft whimper from the bedroom. Then another. A nightmare.
I'm through the door and flicking on the bedside lamp before I think about it.
She's tangled in the sheets, tossing and turning, her face scrunched in distress. "No," she mumbles. "Please, no...the children!"
Her father's victims. She's dreaming about them.
I sit on the edge of the bed and touch her shoulder gently. "Ava. Wake up."
She jerks awake with a gasp, eyes wild and unfocused in the darkness. For a moment she doesn't know where she is, and I see panic flare in her expression.
"Easy," I murmur. "You're safe. You're with me."
Recognition dawns, and with it, tears. She launches herself at me, wrapping her arms around my neck and sobbing into my shoulder.
I freeze. No one willingly touches me. Not ever. I'm the Devil. Untouchable, unreachable, cold and hard.
Her tears soak through my shirt, her body shaking against mine, and I find my arms coming up to hold her. To cradle her against my chest like something precious.
"I'm sorry," she gasps between sobs. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
"Shh. You have nothing to apologize for."
"I can't stop seeing them. The children. They have no faces but I know it’s them. I keep thinking about how scared they must have been, and it's my fault because if my father hadn't—"
"Stop." I pull back enough to cup her face, forcing her to look at me. "This is not your fault. You didn't make his choices. You don't carry his sins."
"But I'm his daughter."
