But watching her submit because she had to—not because she wanted to—made it feel like the emptiest victory I'd ever won.
She sat in the passenger seat with her arms crossed tight over her chest, jaw locked, staring through the windshield like I didn't exist. The tension radiating off her was thick enough to choke on, but she didn't say a word. Didn't look at me. Just sat there, rigid and silent, like she could will herself somewhere else if she tried hard enough.
I kept my eyes on the road, but I couldn't stop glancing at her. Quick looks I told myself didn't mean anything. The way her fingers dug into her own biceps. The shadows under her eyes that hadn't been there a week ago. The exhaustion carved into every line of her body.
She looked small.
Breakable.
Wrong.
My hands tightened on the steering wheel, the leather creaking under my grip. I'd done this. Marked her throat, stripped her defiance, taken her car, made her sit here in this humiliating silence while I drove her to work like she was a child who couldn't be trusted.
The guilt sat heavy in my gut, ugly and persistent, but I shoved it down. Control wasn't supposed to feel like this. It was supposed to be clean. Satisfying. Final.
This felt like losing.
I pulled up in front of her bookstore, the renovations nearly complete, the place looking better than it ever had. My money. My decisions. All of it designed to make her life easier, safer, better.
She didn't even glance at it.
Her seatbelt clicked open before I'd fully stopped, her hand already reaching for the door handle. Escaping me the second she could.
I caught her wrist.
"Belle."
She went rigid, her pulse hammering under my fingers. I felt it skip, stumble, race. She didn't pull away—not yet—but every muscle in her body screamed that she wanted to.
"You will come straight home after your shift. I will pick you up myself."
Her wrist twisted in my grip, yanking free with more force than necessary.
The door slammed hard enough to rattle the frame.
I sat there, engine still running, watching her storm toward the entrance without looking back. My jaw ached from clenching, my chest tight with something I refused to examine too closely. Rage, maybe. Hurt that I had no right to feel. And underneath it all, something darker, something desperate that clawed at my ribs.
She hated me.
I'd earned that.
But watching her walk away—small and exhausted and mine in a way that felt increasingly hollow—made me wonder what the fuck I'd actually won.
I pulled away from the curb harder than I needed to; the tires biting into the asphalt.
Control was all I had. Even when it felt like nothing at all.
The black sedan sat half a block down, engine idling, windows tinted dark enough to hide everything but silhouettes. Two men. Still as statues. Not glancing at phones. Not talking. Just sitting there, staring straight ahead—except their heads tracked Belle as she crossed the sidewalk.
My fingers clenched around the steering wheel, the leather groaning under my grip.
They weren't casual. Weren't lost. Weren't waiting for someone else.
They were watching her.
Something primitive and vicious uncoiled in my chest, sharp enough to make my breath catch. The kind of instinct that had nothing to do with contracts or control and everything to do with territorial fucking rage.
Belle reached the door, her shoulders hunched against the morning cold. She didn't look around. Didn't notice them. Just slipped inside, the glass door swinging shut behind her.
