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“Let me out!”

“Where you going?” I taunted.

He spun around. “Caspian, let me go, man! Please!”

I started toward him at an unhurried pace. “You remember what I told you six years ago?”

His face told me he did, even while he shook his head.

“Nah. Don’t do that. I know you remember.”

His attention dropped toward the weapon in my hand.

I lifted it just enough to make his breathing hitch. “I told you if you were really gonna do it, you better make damn sure I didn’t get back up. I told you if I survived, I was coming for yo’ ass. You succeeded in killing me. But here’s where you fucked up.” I smiled. “You assumed dead meant gone.”

He backed away from the door.

“I told you I’d find you, and I don’t give a fuck that it took six years. I’m here now, mothafucka.”

Chalis turned and ran.

I didn’t chase him… there was no need.

He barely made it across the foyer before something caught his ankle and ripped his feet from beneath him. His body slammed against the marble with enough force to knock the breath out of him.

“What the fuck?!”

He scrambled forward, but the mansion had already claimed him.

An unseen force tightened around both ankles and started pulling him backward.

“Get the fuck off of me!” he screamed.

I remained exactly where I was. “All that begging you doing tonight is getting embarrassing.”

Chalis dug his fingers against the marble, grabbed for the leg of a nearby table, and fought hard enough that the muscles in his arms strained.

None of it mattered.

His grip slipped, and whatever held him continued dragging him across the foyer, past the staircase, past the table where he had stood earlier, and straight toward the place I had been waiting all those years to see him return to.

The moment his body stopped, Chalis went still.

His eyes dropped toward the floor, then he understood.

“No…”

I approached him slowly. “Oh, you remember this spot?”

“Caspian…”

I stopped in front of him. “You wanted my spot so fucking bad… well, you got it.”

He frantically shook his head. “Nah, man.”

I crouched until we were eye level. “This is where you left me thinking you had ended everything. My life. My future. My relationship. All because you thought removing me meant everything I had would somehow become yours.”

His face was wet with tears now.