“He’s been arrested for theft, extortion, and revenge porn, and our lawyers are in the process of starting a civil suit for breaching the NDA he signed, emotional damages, and defamation, along with anything else we can think of.”
“And that’s enough?” I ask.
Sebastian’s chuckle sounds more like the psycho I know and love. “James didn’t feel that it was.”
“You told him?”
“I did. He immediately resigned,” Sebastian says.
“I thought you said he didn’t know what Tom was up to?”
“He didn’t, which is why I refused to accept his resignation. After I showed him proof of Tom’s betrayal and advised him that the police were on the way, I asked him to go and fetch his nephew. James beat him bloody. When he shoved him toward the police officers, Tom’s face was a mess, his wrists were bound with zip ties, and James’s knuckles were raw and covered in blood.”
“He beat him up?” I question, shocked.
He nods. “He did. Then after the cops took him away, he asked what else we were doing to make him pay.”
“Oh my god,” I gasp.
“He not so subtly told us he’d seen a lot over the years while he’d been protecting you. Then he mentioned that Tom has a mortgage and debts, that he’d wanted to start a business, and that he had a girl somewhere, but that he didn’t know who she was.”
“James wants to be in the psycho club,” I say, a shocked giggle slipping from my lips.
“I think he might already have been a member even before he met us,” Sebastian says.
“So, Tom is fucked. What the police and the lawyers don’t ruin, we will,” I say, not bothering to pose it like a question.
“Yes,” he agrees.
“But what about Courtney?”
“I think you’re right. Handing her over to the police right now would have been a mistake. We need to make sure that when they take her in, it’s with enough evidence to send her to jail for a long time. I won’t risk her getting out and trying to get to you, or us, again.”
“Agreed, and I think I have an idea of how to do that.”
SIXTEEN
SEBASTIAN
Starling’s idea is insane,and I fucking hate the fact that it might actually work. I might be learning to appreciate her ability to be every bit the psycho I am, but I refuse to allow her to do anything to put herself at risk.
Feeling her surrender earlier, and watching her give complete control over to me, was so heady that a part of me wishes I could take her to the island I bought with the intention of caging her on it, and keep her there naked and at my mercy forever.
But even though I desperately want to keep her my prisoner, it’s time to admit that my little bird isn’t caged anymore, and she hasn’t been for a long time. I might own her body and her heart, but her wings are spread too wide for me to clip them anymore.
She’s strong—a true force to be reckoned with—and if I keep trying to make her into the person she was at sixteen, I’m going to lose her, and that’s simply not an option.
As much as I wish she never thought about leaving me, knowing that she could run and hasn’t has forced both of us to acknowledge what we need from our marriage. I need to possess and own my wife. I need to be the center of her world and haveher understand that she’ll always be the center of mine. I need her obedience, I need her submission, and I need her to give herself to me willingly and to need me.
I’m still learning what she needs from me, but I know that she needs me to understand that her maturing into a badass woman isn’t a bad thing. I know she needs me to accept and appreciate how capable and strong she is. I know she needs me to see that she’s not an interloper in my world anymore, that she’s one of us. She’s Starling Lockwood. She’s my wife. She’s a fully fledged member of the psycho club, and she’s fucking perfect, caged or not.
Darkness has fallen, but instead of getting up and going downstairs, I ask Armand to make us a platter of Starling’s favorite foods that we can eat in bed. Although Starling might not love it, I’ve decided that we need a house manager like Sammy and Evan have. We have plenty of staff housing on the estate, so having an outsider come in twice a week just to clean is stupid when we could employ and house someone to run and organize our home.
Tom’s betrayal has opened my eyes to the risks we face and made me realize that having all of our staff live on-site minimizes the risk of this kind of thing happening again. I truly thought that the background checks we did on the security staff we employ were enough. But clearly it needs to be an ongoing process, because staff who seem loyal when we employ them can turn traitor without any real provocation.
After Armand arrives with the food, I bring it all upstairs and lay it out on the bed, watching as Starling’s eyes light up. My wife has the palate of a bougie toddler, so we have truffle mac and cheese, Wagyu sliders, scallop tacos, and fries covered in parmesan and some kind of oil that makes each one taste like an explosion of flavor. For dessert, we have tiny doughnut balls that are filled with pistachio cream that melts in your mouth.
“That was amazing,” Starling hums, rubbing her stomach appreciatively as she lifts the last doughnut ball and pops it into her mouth.
