Page 44 of Glorious Sinner

There was one reply to Ryan.

It had been sent this morning after we’d seen him across the street, after Tomas had carried me back up to bed. Two words.

She’s mine.

I blinked down at those two words, then the ones below them. Ryan’s response.

You’re dead. I’m going to cut you into tiny pieces and deliver them to her then I’m going to kill her as well, nice and slow.

I started shaking. Ryan would do it. He’d kill Tomas the first chance he got. He’d kill him without a second thought.

Losing Tomas…I couldn’t think about it.

I loved him.

The shaking got more intense.

And now I knew what drove him, the reason Tomas was so determined to protect me. His father had been abusive to him and his mother. Was that the real reason he kept coming back? Why he was so single minded; why he chose me? Was it more to do with his own past? Perhaps unresolved feelings drove him. Seeing his mother being hurt had to have been traumatic for a child. Add in his own abuse—

I stood and strode from his office. I needed to move, to get out of my own head, away from the swirling thoughts in my mind.

As I ran down the hallway, I felt the walls closing in.

Had he ever stopped seeing me as that broken little bird? Could he? Or was that the attraction in the first place?

Someone to save.

Tomas

I strode from my room and headed back downstairs. Stephanie wasn’t up there and she wasn’t in the kitchen or my office. There was one place left to check, and if she wasn’t there I was going to fucking lose my mind and tear this city apart.

I was flat-out running by the time I reached the gym and nearly collapsed against the door when I heard the music pumping through it.

She was inside. She was dancing. Thank fuck.

After seeing Ryan outside, after trying to hunt the fucker down all day, I was out of patience. She was safe here. I’d made this place near impenetrable, but Ryan wasn’t going away. He was getting careless. He was obsessed with Stephanie, with my angel, which meant he was capable of anything.

I shoved the door open, desperate to see her, and halted in my tracks. I’d seen her lose herself on stage at Stilettos and here in this room, but this was something different, something much more. She didn’t even glance up when I walked in, like she always did, like she could sense me whenever I was near.

No, right now she wasn’t even in this room, she was so deep in her own head. Christ, her eyes were blank…when she wasn’t squeezing them shut.

Fuck that. I couldn’t watch her suffer. Whatever this was, I couldn’t leave her in pain. Never again.

I moved up to her, and fuck me, she didn’t even look at me when I was a foot away. She was so far gone she jumped when I reached out and touched her. She spun to face me, hand to her pounding chest.

What the fuck?

When I reached for her, she shook her head and tried to move out of reach. “I…I need to keep dancing.”

She’d lost her mind if she thought I’d walk away now. I closed the distance between us and took her shoulders in my hands. “Talk to me, Stephanie.”

She shook her head again. “Please, Tomas.”

I didn’t know what she was pleading for, and going by the lost look in her eyes I didn’t think she did either. I grabbed her phone and turned off the music, then pulled her to me. She started to struggle and, fuck, that killed me. I would have never forced her to do anything she didn’t want, but the way she was acting was scaring the shit out of me. When the first sob broke from her, I did the only thing I could think of. I wrapped her in a bear hug and sank to the floor, taking her with me.

She grabbed onto my jacket and buried her face against my chest, tears soaking it almost instantly.

“You’re scaring me, Steph. Please, Angel, talk to me.”