Page 5 of Hellebore

Hood up, gloves tight, duffel heavy against my thigh. Rain slicks the pavement as I cross the street, boots silent. The apartment building looks even more pathetic up close, peeling paint, cracked concrete, a front door that doesn’t even latch properly. One push and it swings open.

“It’s fucking broken.” I mutter under my breath.

Her father has money and when her mother died five years ago I know she left her money.

It kills me that I wasn’t there to check on her but I sent black hellebore to the funeral, unsigned, of course. She wouldn’t have known the name anyway. I was always there, always watching, but I never allowed her to speak to me.

I climb the stairs two at a time, heart hammering against my ribs. Her apartment door is the last one on the left, it’s made out of old cracked wood with a flimsy lock. The tool in my hand makes short work of it. A soft click, and I’m inside.

The air is warm and smells like her, faint orange blossom, floral shampoo, and something faintly sweet from the bakery still clinging to her clothes. My chest tightens. I close the door behind me and stand in the silence, breathing her in.

This is love. This is necessary. She belongs to me. She always has. I’m simply taking back what was stolen when they locked me away.

Her living room is small. One little couch, a second-hand coffee table, a dying plant on the windowsill and books.

I move fast but carefully, placing the first miniature camera high in the corner where it blends with the light fixture. Another behind the television. One more angled at the front door so I’ll know the exact second she comes home each night.

The moment I step into her bedroom, the madness surges—a living thing inside my chest.

Her bed is unmade, sheets twisted and tangled. I drop the duffel and move straight to the pillow she rested her head on. I pick it up with both hands and bury my face in it, inhaling so deeply my lungs burn.

A guttural groan tears from my throat. My eyes roll shut. Six years I jerked off in a concrete cell to the ghost of this scent. Now it’s real, warm from her body, soaked into the fabric, and my cock hardens so violently it hurts, straining against my pants.

“You’re mine.” I breathe out into the pillow, voice cracking with reverence and madness. “You’ve always been mine.”

I set the pillow down exactly as I found it, but not before I reach out and carefully pluck three long black strands of her hair from where they cling to the fabric. I wrap them around my fingers like a rosary, then tuck them into my jacket pocket, closest to my heart.

I open her nightstand drawer and find a small, worn hair tie. I bring it to my nose, inhale, then slip it onto my wrist. It’s my new charm, a piece of her that will always be with me.

One deep breath and I continue planting.

One camera in the corner above the dresser, angled perfectly to watch her undress. One tiny microphone under the bedside table, close enough to hear every breath she takes in sleep. Another in the bathroom, high enough to capture her in the shower, water running down her naked body, the way her hands move over her skin.

Every device I install calms the roaring in my head.

I’m fixing this. I’m correcting six years of emptiness. When she’s finally chained to my bed at Hellebore, she’ll never know how deeply I’ve already lived inside her life.

In the tiny bathroom cabinet, I see the box of black hair dye.

Rage explodes through me like molten glass. I snatch it up, knuckles bone-white, crushing the cardboard until it buckles and tears.

She butchered her beautiful honey hair. She destroyed the one thing I kept sacred and untouched inside that cage for six fucking years.

“You don’t get to ruin what’s mine,” I growl into the empty room, voice shaking with barely contained violence. “You don’t get to change a single thing about yourself unless I allow it.”

I shove the ruined box into my duffel. She won’t be dyeing it again. Not while I’m watching. Not ever.

I finish the last placements, a tracker slipped under the lining of her favorite purse, another sewn into the hem of her jacket. Then I stand in the center of her bedroom, breathing hard, surrounded by the evidence of her life without me.

I press my forehead against the wall, eyes closed, cock still aching:

“Soon, my love. Soon you’ll understand that every breath you take is a mercy I allow.”

Everything is quiet. Everything is perfect.

I step outside her door, pull a single black hellebore from my pocket, and lay it gently on the threshold. The dark petals look almost wet against the linoleum.

A calling card. A promise. A warning.