No cameras in this apartment. I gave her that. Privacy. Space. The illusion of freedom.
Didn't mean I couldn't break in.
She walks to the window and looks out at the city. Her shoulders drop. Relaxed. Happy.
She'shappy.
That realization hits like a fist to the solar plexus.
When she left my limo the day I brought her back from Story Island she wasn't happy. She was shattered. Broken. Traumatized by what I'd shown her.
Seven months. Seven months of watching her try to rebuild herself into someone normal. Someone who could survive without the darkness we both crave.
And now she's happy because some tattooed gym rat wants to fuck her?
Did fuck her?
He did. I don't know for sure, but I know.
And now I need details.
Because Scarletta came out of the gym different than when she went in. Flushed. Walking carefully—the kind of careful that means a woman's been fucked hard enough to feel it hours later.
Wearing his clothes.
Like she'shis.
Scarletta pulls off the Iron River shirt. Doesn't bother closing the blinds. Just strips it over her head and tosses it on the couch.
No bra underneath. Her tits are perfect. Still perfect. Nipples hardening in the cool air.
I should look away. Should give her this. Privacy. Dignity. The things I claimed I wanted to give her when I said I'd stay away.
I look.
She peels off the bike shorts next. No underwear. I can see the marks on her hips—finger-shaped bruises, already purpling. He grabbed her hard. Held her down.
Marked what'smine.
The rage builds slow. Methodical. The way it always does before I kill someone.
Ryan Adamson doesn't know who he's fucking with. Doesn't know the woman he just claimed belongs to me in ways that go deeper than possession. Deeper than ownership.
Scarletta is the only person alive who's seen me completely. Seen the monster behind the mask, and the mask behind the monster, and every ugly fucking layer in between.
And she ran.
Sheranfrom me and straight into Ryan's waiting arms because she thinks Ryan is safe. Thinks Ryan isnormal.
Ryan doesn't torture child traffickers. Doesn't come on corpses or the memory of killing them. Doesn't need darkness the way I need oxygen.
Scarletta walks naked to her bathroom. Closes the door. I hear water running. Shower.
Washing him off. Or maybe not.
Does she likes smelling like his sweat and come?
Every instinct screams at me to walk into that bathroom. To strip. To join her. To fuck her against the tile until she remembers exactly who she belongs to.
