Another brutal collision.
Candace sobbed.
And I sat there, frozen, nails biting crescents into my palms, listening to a man I loved break someone else in the next room.
“You piece of fucking filth.”
His voice dropped to a terrifying whisper. The kind that promised he wasn’t done.
The kind that promised Garrett would leave this apartment a different man than he walked in.
Candace’s knees buckled. I grabbed her, the two of us clinging to each other in the middle of Damien’s immaculate dining room while violence tore through the walls. Neither of us moved.
Neither of us dared exhale. Then—“I’ll fucking kill you for this.”
“STOP!” I screamed, the sound ripping up my throat so violently it shredded the air.
Everything went still. Horrifyingly still. A silence so absolute it rang.
Then
A door creaked open. Slow. Heavy.
Footsteps… No—a dragging sound scraped down the hallway. Something—someone—was being pulled.
Candace dug her nails into my arm, body shuddering.
A thud hit the floor. Sickening. Final.
Everything in me stopped. For the briefest, most gut-wrenching moment, my mind betrayed me.
Then the sound shifted. A groan. Feet scrambling.
Garrett screamed, “Candace!” Another ragged inhale. “Get your ass over here—we’re leaving!”
Candace jumped so hard she nearly toppled the chair behind us.
Garrett’s voice came again, cracked with pain and fury—no less monstrous than before, but alive. Very much alive. “Now, Candace! Move!”
She stepped toward the hall on shaking legs.
And somewhere deeper in the apartment, Damien’s breathing—low, fast, dangerous—broke through the ringing in my ears.
“She’s not going anywhere with you,” he growled.
Garrett’s eyes snapped between Damien and Candace, pupils blown wide, face twitching with something ugly and electric. A welt had already ballooned along his cheekbone, skin split at the brow, a thin line of blood tracking toward his temple—anger and humiliation warping his whole face into something feral.
Candace took a step toward him, arms outstretched.
Then another.
Then another.
“No,” I gasped, grabbing her hand—yanking her back into my arms. “Candace, don’t.”
She trembled uncontrollably, her voice shattering in the small space between us. “Let me go, Emma,” she whispered, voice so broken it barely existed. “Everything will be fine.”
“No,” I said again, fierce and terrified. “No, it won’t.”
