Chapter 3 #2
"With the job search. The apartment." All concern now, all sincerity. "I have connections throughout the valley. If you're struggling to find opportunities, I'd be happy to make some calls."
The words are kind. The tone is kind.
But I hear what he's really saying.
I know you're failing. I know you're running out of options. I know you're exactly where I want you.
"I'll manage." I yank my hand free. The loss of contact leaves me cold and shaking. "But thanks."
Something flickers in his eyes. Amusement. Anticipation.
The look of a man who's already won and is enjoying watching me figure it out.
"The offer stands." He steps back, and the space between us feels like a trap waiting to spring. "Whenever you're ready."
He walks away, returning to his adoring crowd.
And I stand there with my heart pounding, my skin burning, and rage building in my chest so thick I can barely swallow past it.
I hate him.
I want him.
I hate that I want him.
And I hate that he knows it.
***
Sleep won't come.
I lie in the dark, stare at the ceiling, and feel his thumb moving against my wrist, over and over, like he's still touching me.
Like he'll never stop touching me.
The memory makes me sick, and it makes me wet.
I press my thighs together, hating myself, and replay every second of our conversation, looking for weapons, looking for weaknesses.
Finding nothing but the echo of my own desperate need.
This is what's keeping me awake. Not fear. Not anger.
The desire.
It's lived inside me for ten years.
Since I was sixteen and he looked at me across Gracie's living room and something in me recognized something in him.
Something dark. Something hungry. Something that should have sent me running.
Instead, I lay awake at night and thought about him.
Wondered what his hands would feel like on my skin.
Imagined his voice in my ear, telling me all the things he wanted to do to me.
I was a child. He was a man. And I wanted him anyway.
That's why I ran. Not because I was afraid of him.
Because I was afraid of myself.
Eight years. I put eight years and an ocean between us.
I buried myself in combat, in duty, in anything that would burn him out of my system.
And one conversation, one touch, and it all comes flooding back.
I'm furious.
Not at him—at myself. For feeling this. For wanting someone who looks at me like I'm something to be consumed.
Around midnight, I give up on sleep and open my laptop.
The rejection email from the apartment complex sits in my inbox.
I've read it a dozen times. Generic corporate verbiage about documentation issues.
But my instincts won't shut up, and I'm done pretending everything is fine.
Twenty minutes and three searches later, I have the leasing agent's personal cell. Diana Marsh. Forty-three, divorced, two kids.
I call her.
"Hello?" Sleep-thick voice. Confused.
"Diana." I sit up, phone pressed to my ear. "This is Liberty Cole. The apartment on Riverside Drive. I need the truth."
A long pause. Rustling sheets. "Ms. Cole, it's midnight—"
"I know what time it is. You've been avoiding my calls for days now. Tell me what happened to my application."
Silence.
"Diana." I make my voice soft. Desperate. The voice I used on informants when I needed them to crack. "Please. I'm out of options here."
She sighs. Long and shaky.
"I could lose my job."
"I won't tell anyone."
Another pause. Then, barely a whisper:
"There was a deposit. A large one. Made before your application came through. With instructions not to rent to you specifically."
My stomach drops. "Who made it?"
"I can't—"
"Who made the deposit, Diana?"
Silence. Then, she gives me the truth. "Ashford Holdings."
The phone falls from my hand.
I don't remember ending the call. Don't remember getting out of bed. Don't remember crossing to the window.
But I'm here now, forehead pressed to cold glass, staring at the dark shape of the main house on the hill.
Ashford Holdings.
His company. His money. His instructions.
No one named Liberty Cole.
The truth hits me like a bullet.
He blocked the apartment. He blocked the jobs. He's been herding me, closing every door, eliminating every option, backing me into a corner so slowly I never saw it coming.
My parents. The new roof. The medical bills.
The "grant" my mother couldn't explain.
All of it. Every single piece of it.
Him.
He's been orchestrating my life for god knows how long.
Moving the pieces, controlling the board, making sure that no matter which direction I ran, I'd end up exactly where he wanted me.
Here. On his land. In his cage.
My hands are shaking. My whole body is shaking.
This isn't fear. This is rage.
It erupts through me like a detonation, white-hot and blinding. My vision goes red at the edges. My jaw aches from clenching. I want to scream until my throat tears apart.
I want to march up to that house and put my hands around his throat and watch his eyes bulge while I squeeze.
He knows me.
That's the worst part.
He knows what coffee creamer I used at eighteen.
He knows what sparkling water I like.
He knows every scar on my body, every nightmare that wakes me, every shameful secret I've ever tried to bury.
He's been inside my life for eight years, watching, remembering, collecting me like I'm something that belongs to him.
And I never knew.
I never fucking knew.
I press my palms flat against the glass and watch my reflection—this woman with wild eyes and shaking hands, standing in a prison disguised as a paradise.
He thinks he's won.
He thinks he's broken me down, boxed me in, left me nowhere to turn but his open arms.
But he's forgotten something.
I'm not some soft civilian who'll crumble at the first sign of trouble.
I'm not one of his grateful fucking townspeople, too blind to see the monster behind the smile.
I'm a goddamn soldier.
And soldiers don't surrender.
We adapt. We overcome. We find the weakness in our enemy's armor and we drive our knife straight through it.
He wants a war?
Fine.
I'll give him a war he'll never forget.
I turn from the window, and I start to plan.