Chapter 58
DAKOTA
Mathew slipped on a ski mask and came over to me. Instinctively, I recoiled away from him, but he merely chuckled.
“So dramatic,” he muttered, sweeping some fallen hair back into position.
“What are you doing, Ma—”
The blur of his hand registered a millisecond before pain exploded across my cheek. Hard. So hard, my head whipped to the left, and stars danced behind my eyelids.
“If you want the privilege of continuing to have a tongue, you’ll be careful with your words.”
My cheekbone throbbed like a drum, but I pushed through the pain and turned back to him. Oh. He was trying to keep his identity hidden. For the cameras.
Like anyone watching won’t figure out it’s my unstable ex-boyfriend.
“What are you doing?” I managed.
“You thought you could just push me away? After everything I’ve done for you?” His voice cracked with hurt and rage. A dangerous combination.
My mind scrambled to understand. “What are you talking about?”
“I made you, Dakota. I was your first fan. First person who believed in you when you were nothing.”
I blinked away the shock swimming in my vision.
“Username BlushBabe123 ring a bell?” He asked.
My jaw fell open, horror swirling in my chest like a warning siren sounding far too late. “You are BlushBabe123?”
I could hear his smirk beneath the mask. “The one and only.”
No. No, no, no.
My stomach dropped to my feet. I thought that person was some girl who appreciated my makeup tutorials and hair product reviews.
But after a while, BlushBabe123 started to creep me out.
I’d post a video, and fifteen seconds later, there would be a comment, like they were just sitting there watching my account, waiting for me to post something.
I told myself I was being paranoid, that the girl probably just had alerts set up on her phone.
Plus, that was what I wanted, wasn’t it? Engagement?
God, I was so stupid.
Now I replayed all of that through this new lens. That had been Mathew the entire time? Long before we ever “met”? And when we did meet, he’d claimed he’d never seen my online account.
“I was your biggest supporter before anyone else cared. I saw your potential when you were nobody.”
He leaned down, bringing those dark eyes—and, Jesus, the black had spread through them like ink, like the Devil himself had drained away all the color—closer to mine.
“I helped cultivate your rise.” His tone dripped with ownership. “I created a hundred usernames to comment on your posts. The algorithms love that kind of engagement.”
A hundred different accounts? It was a full-time job for me to keep up with just one. That wasn’t support.
It was obsession.
“I gave you your first expensive studio light. I gave you the stage. I built the woman they adore. I’m the one who encouraged you to always look your best.”
Which I had interpreted as encouragement from a supportive boyfriend. Not manipulation from an online stalker who’d been pulling my strings from day one.
“I became your fantasy ideal,” I realized.
“And you ruined it!” His voice cracked like a whip. “You ruined everything! You were perfect, Dakota. My perfect creation. And then you destroyed yourself on that live stream. You showed them the broken, pathetic girl underneath all the beauty I built.”
Looking at the pictures taped behind me again, I realized with growing horror that Mathew wasn’t just a jilted ex-boyfriend. He was an obsessed fan who’d lost his favorite toy.
“But you left me,” I said, grasping for logic in this nightmare. “Months ago, you left me for another job.”
I braced for him to catch my mistake, to deflect or punish me for nearly exposing his identity. After all, anyone close to me would know who had left me for another job. But he was too far gone in his rage to even notice what he was revealing.
“You were supposed to come with me!” he snapped, and I could see his hands shaking with rage. He was hemorrhaging tells now, leaving breadcrumbs that would lead straight back to him. But he was spiraling too fast to realize it, lost in whatever twisted narrative he’d built in his head.
I replayed what happened with a new light.
At the time, I had been so devastated at the obvious end of our relationship because there was no way I would move across the world from my family.
I thought Mathew knew that. But looking back, that’s exactly what he expected.
And by the time he realized I wasn’t going to do it, too many things had been set into motion.
Hell, if I remembered correctly, the furniture had already been shipped overseas when he’d finally gotten the message.
And when he moved and I didn’t follow, that’s why he wouldn’t stop texting and calling me. Not because he loved me. Because he still thought he could manipulate me into following him. When that didn’t work, he came back.
“It wasn’t a coincidence that you showed up at the restaurant that night, was it?” I accused. The night Axel and I made our first public appearance together.
Axel and I were basically finished with dinner when Mathew had arrived with his brother and future sister-in-law. They’d just sat down to eat. He must’ve convinced them to come with him so it wouldn’t look so obvious.
“You were monitoring my social media posts. Following those influencers who were reposting real-time updates of my dinner with Axel. Including the location.”
“I moved halfway across the world for you.” The venom in his voice carried the promise of retribution. “And then there you were, in the arms of another man. After everything I sacrificed! After everything I built for you! You threw it all away for him.”
Something else niggled in the back of my mind. His jealousy, his possessiveness. “You’re the one behind the threats, aren’t you?”
Mathew stood up, satisfaction radiating from his posture.
“You’re the one who sent those flowers.” The memory hit me like ice water. Had he been following me too?
“You should have left Axel Pierce then.”
“You wanted me to be afraid to date him. Like we’d be in danger.”
“He hit on a woman whose family has ties to suspected organized crime. He is a threat to you, Dakota.”
Jesus. Of course Mathew would’ve seen my accidental post that started the PR nightmare. With his level of obsession, he probably would’ve researched Axel Pierce immediately, figured out exactly who that woman was and what kind of people she was connected to.
“You’re behind my assault too,” I realized, the pieces clicking together with sickening clarity.
“All I did was hire a guy to hit you. Once. Didn’t it strike you as odd that he didn’t rob you or do anything else? I wasn’t going to let you get killed, Dakota.”
I was going to be sick. Actually throw up right here on live stream.
“You led a violent criminal right to me!”
“The flowers didn’t work, so you needed another push to leave him. I was trying to save you from yourself, Dakota. You were making all the wrong choices. First destroying your perfect image online, then choosing him over me. Me! The person who made you everything you are!”
Oh my God. “You’re deranged,” I said, staring at this stranger wearing my ex-boyfriend’s eyes. “You can’t claim to love someone and send a violent criminal to hurt them at the same time.”
I thought back to how Mathew acted that night I’d been hit. He’d been crouching by my side, almost as if … as if he expected I’d seek refuge in his arms?
“Love?” He laughed, a sound like broken glass. “This stopped being about love the moment you betrayed everything I built. You were supposed to be grateful. You were supposed to choose me. Instead, you spat in my face.”
That’s what set him over the edge, I realized. Coming to my apartment. Finally hearing me profess my love for Axel, seeing the evidence we’d just made love in the dew on my skin.
Mathew walked to the other side of the cameras again, adjusting the lighting to get it just right. Professional to the end. And then, to my horror, he picked up something from the floor, gesturing around the room with it.
“You want to know what this is really about, Dakota?” He turned back to me, his voice turning cold and methodical. “First, I’m going to destroy what’s left of your pathetic online image. Show everyone who you really are underneath all the makeup and filters. The broken, ugly truth.”
I’d already revealed my makeup-free self to my followers, so something told me whatever he had planned to show who I “really” was, would be much more ominous.
“Mathew—”
“Then, when I’m done humiliating you the way you humiliated me …” His voice dropped to a whisper that somehow felt more terrifying than his shouting. “Well, if I can’t have you, no one can. Especially not him.”
The implication hit me like a sledgehammer. He was going to kill me. On camera. For everyone to see.
“Enough talking.” He walked closer to me, and that’s when the studio lights reflected off something in his hand.
Something that gleamed like a promise.
A knife.