Gettingto know Bambi better has proven to be quite the challenge.
I’ve spent the last couple of weeks digging up everything I could on her. But every time I get close to a trace of information, I hit a wall. No school or medical records. No personal social media. Not even a fucking digital trail.
I was only able to find her bookstore because her cell number is tied to its social media account. And even that’s curated. There are no photos of her on it. No tags. No trace of the woman at all.
So I got creative.
Installing spyware on her phone wasn’t hard. We have a former NSA agent on our payroll who builds custom surveillance packages for us. Once he threw it together, all it took was disguising the link as a small picture of my childhood pet, so she’d have no reason not to click it.
Now I can see everything. Her location. Her messages. Her calls. And tonight, when she gets home, I’ll watch hersleep from the camera on her computer. The one she doesn’t know I have access to.
For the last week, I’ve been watching her. All day. Every day. Between meetings. Between calls. Every spare moment I have has been consumed by her.
Is that extreme?
Probably.
She wanted to be friends, and this is my kind of friendship.
I take a seat at my desk and pull up the security feeds at Better Than Fiction.
She’s wearing that black turtleneck again. The same one from last week. The one that hugs her curves and makes me think about peeling it off her while she trembles underneath me.
It’s supposed to hide the marks on her neck. The ones those assholes left when they tried to choke her. But all it does is make me want to put new ones there. Ones that she’ll enjoy. Ones that show she’s mine.
She has no idea how close I came to losing my control that day. She let me touch her skin, let me feel her pulse racing under my fingertips, and she let me look deeply into those beautiful brown eyes of hers.
She wanted me to kiss her.
I could see it. I could feel it in my fucking chest. And I’ve been thinking about her mouth ever since.
Bambi isin the bookstore past 9pm again.
She’s the only light on the entire block. Every otherbusiness closed hours ago, leaving her alone in a pool of yellow light that might as well be a fucking beacon.
She doesn't see the man across the street. The one who’s been standing there for the last eight minutes, watching her through the window. But I do.
My hand tightens around my phone.
This is the third time this week. Different men. Same pattern. They drift past. They linger. They watch. And she has no idea.
Who the hell opens a bookshop near a known drug area?
Bambi.
That’s who.
I shoot of a text to one of our men nearby before I rip my fucking hair out.
Three minutes later, he shows up and parks himself across the street from her store. His orders are clear. Stay unseen, only intervene if absolutely necessary. Bambi’s still inside restocking shelves, blissfully unaware of the lengths I have to go through to keep her safe.
I make a call to her property manager next. The conversation lasts about two minutes and after a little smooth talking and a heavy donation routed through the right shell, starting tomorrow businesses on Bambi’s block will close at seven.
This isn’t about control, it’s about correction. She stays open too late. She’s alone too often. Someone has to compensate for that.
I lean back in my chair and stare at the ceiling of my office.
When the hell did this become my new normal?
