It's him.
Tonight. 8 pm. A car will collect you.
No question. No request. Just an expectation of obedience.
I should say no. I should reclaim some shred of autonomy, some semblance of the independent woman I used to be.
I type my response:I'll be ready.
Then I set the phone down and look at myself in the mirror again—the marks, the exhaustion, the stranger staring back at me.
I don't know who I am anymore. I don't know what I'm becoming. But as I stand in my shabby bathroom, covered in evidence of a monster's touch, I realize something that frightens me more than anything else.
I don't want to go back to who I was before.
That woman was lonely. That woman was struggling. That woman was invisible to everyone except the people who wanted something from her.
This woman—the one in the mirror, the one with bruises on her wrists and bite marks on her throat—this woman has beenseen. Truly seen, in all her darkness and desire.
And maybe that's worth the price of admission.
Maybe the serpent's coils aren't a trap at all.
Maybe they're exactly where I belong.
Chapter 18 - Gabriel
The sheets still smell like her.
I lie in the wreckage of my bed, staring at the ceiling, breathing in the lingering traces of rosemary and sex and something uniquelyher. The morning light has turned harsh now, afternoon encroaching, but I haven't moved since she left.
I should feel satisfied. I got what I wanted—her surrender, her body, her admission that she can't stop thinking about me. The prey has finally stopped running. The conquest is complete.
So why do I feel like I'm the one who's been captured?
I close my eyes and let the memories wash over me. The sound she made when I first pushed inside her. The way her back arched when I hit that spot deep within. The desperate, broken way she said my name—Gabriel, Gabriel, Gabriel—like a prayer to a god she didn't believe in.
The memory alone is enough to make me hard again.
This is a problem.
I've had women before. Many women, though none that mattered. The pattern was always the same: the chase, the conquest, the rapid fading of interest once they gave in. The thrill was in the pursuit, not the capture. Once they surrendered, they became interchangeable—warm bodies to use and discard, scratching an itch that never quite went away.
I expected her to be the same. I expected the obsession to fade once I'd had her, once the mystery was stripped away along with her clothes. I expected to wake this morning feeling sated, satisfied, ready to move on to other concerns.
Instead, I woke wanting her more than ever.
The taste of her is still on my tongue. The feel of her skin is still imprinted on my palms. And when she tried to leave—when she slid out of bed and reached for her clothes—something inside mesnarled.
I don't like that. I don't like needing anything, wanting anything, feeling anything that I can't control. Control is everything. Control is what separates men like me from the animals that run on pure instinct.
But when I'm with her, control feels like a distant memory.
I finally force myself out of bed around two o'clock. The house staff have returned—I can hear them moving through the lower floors, the quiet efficiency of people who know better than to disturb me. I shower, dress, try to focus on the mountain of work waiting for me.
The Hartwell acquisition. The Henderson situation. The quarterly Brotherhood meeting that I've been postponing for weeks. A dozen fires that need my attention, decisions that only I can make.
None of it holds my interest.
