I step further into the room, my eyes glued to the screens in front of me. I can’t seem to look away even as my horror grows and grows. My classroom, my home with Brody, even my yoga studio—everywhere I go frequently is broadcast back at me from the wall of monitors ahead. Cold dread fills my veins as realization creeps in—he’s been watching me.
I moved in with my stalker.
Panic drives my movements. Without conscious thought, I throw open drawer after drawer of the desk in front of me. Guns, knives, dozens of cheap cell phones, disks labeled with girls’ names fill every drawer I open. None of these items are the types of things an innocent man keeps in his office.
Grabbing one of the disks out of the drawer at random, I search for something to play it on. There’s so many wires, so many computers and monitors, I don’t know what’s what, butmy body is in full flight-or-fight mode, and I can’t seem to process what is happening. I push a button and a drive opens. I slide in the disk and search the screens until I notice one change as the video cues up. It’s a bedroom, not one I recognize, though. It’s dark, only a sliver of light is shining into the room illuminating a bed. It looks like a cheap motel or something. On the bed is a woman, a young woman. She appears to be passed out…and nude. Nausea churns my insides.
Why would Gabriel have this? Who is she?
A man enters the frame, sneering at the camera and rubbing his hand along the clear outline of his hardening cock through his slacks. To my utter horror, it’s not Gabriel on the screen, as I expected. No, it’s my husband’s face leering back at me. Although, Brody barely looks like himself in this video. He looks like a beast. He snickers before unbuckling his belt. Other men enter the frame. I recognize some as his friends, men I’ve known for years in passing but never really talked to. They surround the poor girl. She moans and thrashes her head back and forth. Some of the men grab her arms. Others her legs. She whimpers. My husband laughs and moves to stand between her pulled open legs.
I can’t watch this. I’m going to be sick.
I quickly eject the disk and throw it back in the drawer with the others. There’s so many disks. So many names. So many women.
Did my husband hurt all these women? How did I not know?Fuck!Why does Gabriel have these?
Searching for something, anything, to help me understand, I fling open the final drawer of the desk. Staring back at me is the same red glowing mask that’s been haunting me for weeks.
My husband is a rapist and the man I’ve been sleeping with is a stalker.
What the hell have I gotten myself into?
With my head reeling and my body humming, I make up my mind. There’s only one thing to do, only one choice I have right now.
PART TWO
IT ALL BEGAN AND ENDED WITH A KISS
“So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.” -The Great Gatsby
TWENTY
Garett
A Few Days Later
She thinks she can run from me. She thinks she can hide from me. Like a scared animal, she fled and now is on high alert—constantly looking out for the predator in the shadows.
Watching on my phone as she found my control room was one of the most terrifying moments of my life. I could only sit and watch as the carefully constructed facade of Gabriel Parsonscrumbled. I knew it wouldn’t last forever…but I thought I’d have more time. I had always planned to tell her the truth once her husband was in prison, most likely after she was already knocked up with my child. Then I had planned to tell her slowly, let her learn the truth with time. I never intended for her to learn like that. Of course, she ran. It’s what she always does when she gets scared.
One day, though, she’ll learn—there is no running, there is no hiding, there is onlyus. She is mine and I am hers. We are twin flames of a shared soul, bound together by fate. Persephone and Hades, a tragically beautiful pair that neither Earth nor Hell can separate. There is nowhere she can go and nothing she can do that will keep us apart.
Allison Clarke is mine. Even if she’s currently fighting that fate.
Others might call me obsessive, possessive, unhinged. Frankly, I don’t give a shit. They can call me whatever the fuck they want. There’s only one person in this life that I truly care about, and currently, that person is holed up in a shitty motel.
She would come here. Back to where it all began, I suppose. Her unconscious mind calls to me through the pain, through the darkness, through the fear, begging me to save her. That’s why she brought us back here.
I’m not a good man; quite the contrary, actually. But for her, I would do anything. I would burn the world down to ashes if she asked me to, cut myself open just so she could see me bleed. I’d even frame a man for murder if it meant my princess could be free.
I don’t regret framing Brody Clarke for the murder of Ali’s coworker, Celeste. He’s a shit-stain on the taint of humanity. He deserves much worse than what I’ve done to him. I can’t even say I regret what I did to Celeste. It brought her to Luke, my best friend, and that seems like another wicked twist of fate. Hisobsession for her is growing deeper and deeper the longer he’s with her. I fear my best friend is just as fucked as I am.
No, if there’s anything I regret in this, it’s that I had to scare my girl. I never meant to hurt Ali, but desperate times call for desperate measures. And I certainly was desperate for her.
The door to the motel room she’s staying in slowly slides open and Ali pokes her head outside. It took me some time to track her down once she fled. My girl is smart, she covered her tracks—no phone, cash only, no car. But she can’t hide from me, not for long, anyway. I tracked her to this seedy motel a few days ago.
It boiled my blood to find out she was staying here at this shit hole. I built her a beautiful house, her perfect house, complete with the art studio she’s always dreamed of having. And she’shere. She should be at home, with me, in our house.
