“We hooked up.”
Jay blinks once. Twice. “You kidnapped a woman you slept with.”
“She needed protection from the Crow.”
“So naturally you put her in a trunk.”
“It was a very nice trunk. Antique. Well-ventilated.”
“Jesus Christ, Blue.”
Jay stands up slowly, deliberately. “Blue, I’ve been treating you for three years. Three years since you came to me, covered in other people’s blood, begging for help because you’d become the monster Peter would’ve hated. And you just told me you resisted the strongest trigger you’ve faced since then.” Jay stops pacing and fixes me with a stare. “But this woman—what’s her name again?”
“Saylor Mitchell.”
“Saylor is going to wake up in your murder mansion and think you’re a psychopath.”
“Iama psychopath.”
“Arecoveringpsychopath! We’ve been working on this!” Jay grabs his stress ball from where he’d set it down, squeezes it until his knuckles turn white. “Here’s what I’m hearing: You maintained your sobriety, but you’re substituting one compulsion for another. You can’t keep collecting damsels in distress like they’re rare butterflies.”
“They’re not butterflies. They’re people who need help. And she’s not just anyone. She’s Peter’s daughter. The one person I swore to protect.”
“Help, yes. Kidnapping and imprisonment, no.” Jay sits back down, his chair immediately resuming its slow spin. “Tell me something. When you look at Saylor, what do you see?”
I think about her voice, smoky and seductive as she sang at theWhite Note. The way she challenged me in the bar, unafraid. The compass necklace she wore—Peter’s compass. Still wearing it after all these years.
“I see someone who’s about to be very angry with me once she wakes up. And someone who doesn’t know how close she came to disappearing forever. Which is why I relocated her. Why she needs to stay under lock and key. For her own good. I owe Peter that much.”
“You’re deflecting. This isn’t about Peter anymore, is it?” Jay stops spinning and leans forward. “Blue, you’re going to have to let her go.”
“Not while the Crow are still a threat. Brutus doesn’t leave loose ends.”
“Then eliminate the threat without keeping her prisoner. Use those skills you’ve been redirecting. The planning, the strategy. Be the protector Peter believed you could be, not the killer—andkidnapper—you used to be.”
“I can’t protect her if she’s not where I can see her.”
Jay stares at me for a long moment, then reaches into his desk drawer and pulls out a flask. He takes a long pull, coughs, and offers it to me.
“It’s Tuesday,” he says.
“Your point?”
“My point is that it’s Tuesday afternoon and I’m drinking shitty tequila because my patient just casually informed me he’s kidnapped someone and doesn’t plan to let her go.” Jay takes another sip. “I need you to understand something. What you’re doing isn’t protection. It’s possession.”
“She’s not a possession.”
“Then prove it. Let her choose.”
“Choose what?”
“Whether she wants your protection or not. Whether she wants to stay at Maison Rouge or leave. Whether she wants anything to do with you at all.” Jay caps the flask and shoves it back in the drawer. “Because right now, you’ve taken that choice away from her, and that makes you the threat.”
The words hit harder than I expected. I think about Saylor lockedin the wing of my estate, probably trying to figure out how to escape, how to get as far away from me as possible. The same way any sane person would react to waking up in a stranger’s house.
“She’ll try to leave,” I say finally.
“Probably.”
