Not hope.
Not peace.
Something colder. Stronger.
A quiet, lethal patience.
Because he will come for me.
Trey will come the way he does everything. With purpose. With precision. He will tear through anyone standing between us, because that is who my husband is.
All I have to do is survive.
All I have to do is stay exactly where I am.
Let Johnathon believe I’m subdued.Let Gideon believe I’m lost.Let them both underestimate the man they think they’ve broken.
I lift my gaze and meet Johnathon’s eyes.
There’s nothing there for him to read.
No fear.No gratitude.No surrender.
Only stillness.
He studies me for a long moment, like he senses the shift but can’t quite identify it.
Good.
Let him think silence means obedience.
Let him believe I’ve learned my place.
Because the man I belong to is alive, and when Trey comes for me, there will be nowhere left for them to hide.
They took everything from me but time, and time is the one thing I know how to turn into a weapon.
Chapter Four
Trey
Ashes of a Gentleman – Ether Dark Motivation
Istand at the window of my hospital room with a take-out coffee cooling between my hands, watching Los Angeles stretch endlessly beneath a low winter sky. The city moves without hesitation, unaware that mine stopped the moment her blood touched my hands and mine poured out onto the ground in return.
At least the coffee is better than the bitter sludge from the vending machines down the hall, even if it has already gone cold.
January.
The word carries its own weight, settling heavy in my chest as I stare out over the glass and steel and distant mountains blurred by haze. Our first January waking in the same bed, her hair spread across my pillow, her fingers tangled in mine.
Instead, there was nothing.
No quiet morning.
No Seraphina curled into my side, stealing the blankets and pretending she hadn’t when I pulled her closer. There was only this.
White walls. Antiseptic air. Pain that never fully loosens its grip, no matter how many drugs they push into my veins to dull it.
