CHAPTER FIFTEEN
RILEY
The polished brass of the doorknob was cool beneath my palm, a quiet luxury that mirrored everything about this house, cold, expensive, precise. I turned it slowly, feeling the subtle shift of the latch disengaging, a soft mechanical sigh that was almost human in its obedience.
Then I stepped into my own room.
The transition was immediate, almost violent.
From the closeness of our bathroom, where the air had been thick with her scent, to the vast, sterile calm of my bedroom.
The difference was like stepping from fever into frost. I closed the connecting door with deliberate care, pressing the edge until it clicked into place.
That sound, clean, final, irrevocable, satisfied something dark and deep inside me.
I waited a few seconds, breathing evenly. Then I heard the faint click of the lock.
She had locked me out.
A slow smile unfurled across my mouth, the kind that never reached my eyes. She had locked me out as if it meant something. As if a lock could keep me out and undo what I had already done to her mind.
Her panic still lingered in the air, clinging like the ghost of heat after a storm. I could taste it if I breathed deeply enough, the acrid, electric scent of adrenaline and fear, tangled with the faint sweetness of her perfume. It was defiance laced with terror. My favorite blend.
I stood there for a moment, letting the silence expand.
The house around me was quiet, except for the low hum of the air conditioning and the faint, distant echo of the trees outside.
But even in that silence, I could hear her.
I could hear the soft, broken rhythm of her breathing through the wall.
The way she must have pressed her back against the locked door, convincing herself she’d built a fortress.
Satisfaction. That was the word. The clean, clinical satisfaction of victory. The kind that came when a plan executed itself perfectly. The sight of her trembling hands had been proof enough that I had the upper hand. That she was learning her place in the world of Maddox men.
But as I replayed the moment, her eyes, wide and blazing, something twisted in my chest. A small, unwelcome knot of feeling that had no business being there.
I told myself it was adrenaline. That buzz of dominance and control. But it wasn’t. It was colder, more corrosive. It was the echo of a feeling I had trained myself to kill years ago.
Anger.
Not the childish, reckless kind that made men shout or break things. That kind of anger had died in me long before I was old enough to think. This was the quiet, disciplined fury that burned slow and deep. The kind that sharpened itself into purpose.
And beneath it, buried under the layers of rage and satisfaction, was something worse. Something I didn’t want to name.
She had made me feel.
That flash of panic in her eyes, that defiance trembling in her throat, it should have been fuel. It should have made me feel like a god, towering and untouchable. Instead, it made me feel… alive. Uncomfortably, irritatingly alive.
It woke something that had no place in this carefully constructed life I had built.
For years, I had lived behind walls higher than this house, in a world carved from precision and cruelty.
I had learned to mimic the smiles that charmed and the tones that soothed.
I had learned that love was leverage and kindness was camouflage.
I had learned that people broke when you pressed the right nerves hard enough.
And yet, when she looked at me, really looked, not with submission but with that impossible mix of fear and fire, I felt something recoil inside me. Like the boy I had been before life taught me the cost of softness was still trapped somewhere, clawing to get out.
I hated her for that.
I hated her because she reminded me that I hadn’t buried that weakness as deeply as I thought.
I crossed the room, the soft carpet muting my steps.
I needed a drink.
The whiskey caught the light as it sloshed in the glass, honeyed and false.
The liquid burned its way down, a perfect punishment.
“She’s not special,” I said aloud to the silence. “She’s just another test.”
The words fell flat.
I turned toward the connecting wall. The one that hid her from sight but not from thought. I could almost feel her energy on the other side, tight and restless, probably pacing like a trapped animal. Maybe crying. Maybe plotting.
Good. Let her.
She needed to learn that in this house, survival wasn’t granted, it was earned.
Still, I found myself wondering what she was doing. Whether she was sitting on that bed with her knees pulled up, clutching the blanket like she had the night before when I’d snuck into her hotel room.
The memory sent a current of heat through me, something primal, dark, and dangerous.
Not lust, exactly. It was hunger, yes, but not for touch. For reaction. For control. For proof that I could unmake her if I chose to.
But there was also something else buried in it. An unwilling fascination.
She didn’t crumble the way others did. She fractured, yes, but every time I thought she would shatter, she pulled herself back together just enough to defy me again. There was a kind of beauty in that defiance, a terrible, infuriating beauty that made me want to destroy it just to see if I could.
I told myself this was strategy. That breaking her would break the marriage. That every tear, every act of rebellion I provoked would feed my plan. But I knew the truth was starting to rot through that logic.
This wasn’t strategy anymore. It was something darker.
Obsession had a way of wearing the mask of reason until you forgot the difference.
“She’s not special,” I whispered once more.
But this time, I didn’t believe it.
My lips curved in a slow, reluctant smile. The kind that came before something irreversible.
Let her lock the door. Let her pretend she was safe.
Locks were for people who still believed in safety.
And I had already stepped inside her fear.
That was where the real door opened.
I moved toward the dresser, my steps measured, deliberate, the way a man walks when he is forcing himself not to feel.
The air in the room was still, too still, the kind of silence that felt aware.
Every sound seemed to echo louder, the faint brush of my shoes on the carpet, the quiet rustling of leaves outside.
The mirror above the dresser was an antique. Gilded edges, cracked faintly in the corners, its surface slightly warped from age. It reflected the world like an old memory, half-truth, half-lie. I stood in front of it and stared at myself until my own face began to blur.
I raised a hand, fingers splayed, and dragged it through my hair, destroying the perfect symmetry I’d built that morning. The motion was oddly satisfying, as if disorder could cleanse something deeper. A dark strand fell across my forehead. I let it stay there.
My reflection stared back at me, sharp jaw, cold eyes, a mouth still curved into a faint, unconscious smirk. The predator’s smirk. The one I wore around her all the time.
This is necessary.
The thought rose up in me, like a defense mechanism, a lifeline thrown into the cold.
Everything I do is necessary.
Everything I am doing to her is necessary.
The words pulsed through me like a mantra, hollow and hard.
Breaking her was not cruelty; it was strategy.
It was an inevitable part of the greater plan.
To fracture the illusion my father had built, to tear apart his new marriage until the rot beneath it was exposed for everyone to see.
This was not about her. It was about control. Balance. Justice.
Collateral damage. That was what she was.
She was a pawn. A tool. A minor piece to be moved and, if required, sacrificed to end the game.
I repeated the thought until it stopped sounding like murder.
But even as I recited the lie, something deep inside me cracked, the fissure spreading wider with every heartbeat. Because I knew, knew in the pit of my chest where logic couldn’t reach, that I had already crossed the line between necessity and obsession.
I was watching her too closely.
Not as a strategist. Not as a rival. But as something else. Something far more dangerous.
My mind catalogued her without permission.
The details came unbidden. The small, defensive clench of her fists when she was fighting the urge to cry, the rigid line that formed along her jaw when she gathered courage to face me, the way her breath caught in her throat before she dared to speak my name.
I knew the sound of her silence, the rhythm of her hesitation, the tremor in her defiance.
I should not have known these things.
I should not have wanted to.
It was too intimate. Too human.
I told myself it was reconnaissance. I was studying her patterns, mapping the weaknesses that would one day help me destroy my father’s marriage. It was strategy. Observation. Nothing more.
But the lie was fragile, and I could hear it cracking every time I breathed her name in my head.