Chapter Twenty - Simon
I was raised to believe that love is a liability. Attachment makes you weak, turns your sharpest instincts soft, gives your enemies leverage you can’t afford.
For years, I built my life around those rules. I learned to want without needing, to possess without ever letting anyone too close. Wanting, I could manage; needing was something I could never allow.
Until Eden.
Possession was easy. It was instinct—a primal urge to take what I wanted, to mark her as mine, to keep her within reach and under my eye. But what I feel now is different. Stronger. Wilder.
When Eden is in the room, the world falls into order. Her voice—soft, unhurried, alive with quiet humor—smooths the edges of my anger, steadies the violence I’ve spent a lifetime mastering. When she smiles at me, something tight in my chest loosens, a pressure I never realized was always there.
This morning, she wanders into my office, bare feet on the polished floor, hair still tangled from sleep.
She looks half awake, but when she sees me, her face lights up in a way that makes everything in me go still. I watch her settle on the couch, curled up like a cat, one hand absently tracing circles over her stomach. She glances at the papers on my desk and raises a brow, teasing.
“You planning on conquering a small country today?” she asks, smothering a smile.
“Not before breakfast,” I reply, my voice rougher than I mean it to be.
She laughs: low, throaty, the sound curling into the quiet. It’s the kind of laugh that settles me, pulls me back to the moment, away from the plans and threats that usually keep my mind spinning.
For a while, we work side by side—her with her notebook, me with the latest reports.
She’s found a way into my routines, slipping past walls I thought were impenetrable.
It’s not just that I want her close. It’s that, when she’s near, the chaos that rules my life recedes, just enough for me to breathe.
She gets up to fetch tea. The second she steps out of sight, a surge of unease floods my veins. I listen for her—every soft sound, every shift and clink and stir. My pulse spikes.
I force myself to stay seated, to not follow her. To trust that the world isn’t waiting to take her from me the moment I look away.
She returns a minute later, balancing two mugs. She hands me mine, her fingers grazing my wrist—a touch so casual it shouldn’t matter, but it does. I catch her hand and don’t let go, my thumb tracing the lines of her palm. She looks at me, eyes gentle, questioning.
“You’re staring,” she says, amused.
“I know.” I don’t let her pull away. “You wandered off.”
“I was gone for a minute,” she says, rolling her eyes, but her tone is fond.
“That’s long enough.”
She leans in, presses a kiss to my jaw, and my defenses crumble a little more. It’s terrifying, how easily she undoes me. When she’s close, I feel grounded. When she moves away, every part of me is on alert, as if distance alone could threaten what’s mine.
Yet, I’m learning to let her breathe. She tests her limits, sometimes, and I force myself not to clamp down too tightly. I don’t want her to feel caged, even as the urge to keep her safe claws at me.
The distinction between possession and attachment is sharper now: possession is about ownership, about control. Attachment is risk, hope, the ache that comes from caring what happens after the sun rises.
***
That afternoon, a meeting with my men turns tense—rumors of a potential threat, someone asking too many questions about Eden.
I dismiss them with a single look, ice in my veins, making it clear what will happen if anyone so much as breathes her name without my permission.
When I return to my office, she’s curled on the couch, lost in a book, sunlight haloing her in gold.
She glances up, worry flickering in her eyes. “Bad news?”
“Nothing you need to worry about,” I say, sitting beside her.
She tucks her legs under mine, pressing closer. “You always say that.”
“Because it’s true.” I wrap an arm around her, drawing her against my chest. Her body molds to mine, fitting perfectly, as if she’s always belonged here.
“I can take care of myself,” she says, quietly stubborn.
“I know you can,” I reply, but my hand tightens at her waist. “I just don’t want you to have to.”
She rests her head on my shoulder, her breath a soft warmth at my throat. We sit like that for a long time, the city’s noise muffled by the glass, the world shrinking to just the two of us.
Later, I watch her walk through the house, talking to the housekeeper, laughing at something on her phone. Each time she steps too far, that old instinct rises in me—protect, claim, defend—but I try to swallow it back.
I remind myself she’s not a thing to be possessed, but a woman I can’t live without. And that is far more frightening.
Night falls, and I find her in bed, already drifting toward sleep. I slide in beside her, pulling her close. She murmurs something, half asleep, and I press my lips to her temple, feeling her relax against me.
“Do you ever regret this?” I ask, barely above a whisper.
She turns, blinking up at me. “No. Do you?”
I shake my head. “Not for a second.”
She smiles—a small, secret smile—and in that moment, I know the truth: she steadies me in ways no one ever has. She is more than an obsession, more than a possession. She’s the only thing in this life that makes me want to be gentle, to hope for something better.
She is everything.
As I watch her fall asleep, I make myself a silent promise: whatever it takes, I will keep her safe. Not because she’s mine, but because I am hers.
***
A week later, I watch as evening settles over the city, deepening the shadows in my office and blurring the skyline to a smear of gold and bruised blue.
Eden curls up in the armchair across from my desk, her knees drawn to her chest, loose hair shining in the lamplight. She’s been quiet all night, reading, occasionally glancing up at me with something gentle in her eyes.
I’m pretending to focus on paperwork, but really, I’m just memorizing the sight of her—soft, peaceful, so utterly out of place in my world that it almost feels like a dream.
When the silence grows too heavy to ignore, she marks her page and sets the book aside. She watches me for a moment, lips parted as if searching for the right words.
Finally, she asks, very quietly, “What made you the way you are?”
I go very still. No one asks me that. No one dares.
My first instinct is to deflect, to mock, to turn the question back on her. But she just sits there, patient, eyes wide and clear, not demanding, not judging. I could lie—God knows I’ve built an empire on half-truths—but the softness in her gaze pulls something loose in my chest.
She deserves more than another wall.
I lean back, staring at the ceiling, letting the memories come in fragments.
“I was born into this. My father… he was a monster. The kind that smiles for the camera and breaks your nose when the door is shut. My mother left before I was old enough to remember her, and I was raised by men who believed fear is respect and violence is love. The first time I held a gun, I was nine. The first time I used it… I was twelve.”
Eden doesn’t flinch. Her face doesn’t twist with pity or horror, just listening—real, undivided attention.
“My brother and I learned early to trust nobody, not even each other. There were betrayals, some small, some that nearly killed us. You get used to the idea that nothing good lasts. You get hard, or you die.”
My voice comes out flat, colder than I intended. I want to stop, to shove the pieces of myself back into the box where I’ve kept them locked for years. But she waits, quietly, letting me fill the silence however I need.
I give her a few more pieces—the childhood beatings, the uncle who taught me to lie, the years spent earning trust I’d never give back. I don’t tell her everything. Some things are too dark to say out loud. But I give her enough.
When I finally look back at her, I expect to see fear, maybe even disgust. Instead, she crosses the small distance between us, her movements slow and sure. Her hand finds mine, fingers warm and gentle. She squeezes, just once, as if to anchor me here with her.
The contact jolts me in ways I can’t explain. My whole life has been spent waiting for blows, for sharp words, for threats disguised as affection. I don’t know what to do with kindness when it comes without an agenda.
Before I can pull away, she climbs into my lap, folding herself against me with the quiet certainty of someone who knows she belongs there. My arms come around her automatically, ready for the surge of desire that always follows.
Tonight, it’s not hunger that fills me. It’s something softer. Safer. Her head rests on my shoulder, her breath warm against my neck. The world falls silent except for the steady, in-and-out rhythm of our breathing.
We stay that way for a long time, neither of us speaking. The tension between us dissolves, replaced by a warmth so unfamiliar it’s almost frightening. I stroke her back in slow, aimless circles, feeling her heartbeat echo against my own.
She doesn’t ask for more. She doesn’t try to fix me. She just stays, solid and real, as if her presence alone can quiet the ghosts I’ve never escaped.
I don’t know how to hold tenderness without crushing it. I’ve spent too many years learning to survive by being sharper, harder, crueler than everyone else.
Somehow, with Eden, I manage. I keep my hands gentle, my grip steady, afraid if I let myself feel too much, I’ll ruin the one good thing I have.
She shifts slightly, her hand sliding beneath my shirt, palm flat over my heart. The touch is light, tentative, but it steadies me more than any threat ever could. I close my eyes, breathing her in, letting her anchor me to a world that isn’t all blood and betrayal.
For a fleeting, dangerous moment, I let myself imagine a future that isn’t built on violence and fear.
I see Eden walking through these rooms freely, her laughter filling the halls. I see her choosing to sleep beside me because she wants to, not because she has to. I see her carrying our child, trusting me with her body, her secrets, her love. I see her choosing me every day, without fear.
The image is so vivid it hurts. I want it. God, I want it so badly it makes my hands shake. It’s more terrifying than any enemy, more overwhelming than any threat.
If I let myself hope for something this soft, this good, I might never survive losing it.
I press my lips to her hair, breathing her in, letting the dream linger for a moment longer. Her arms tighten around me, as if she knows what I’m thinking.
“I’m here,” she whispers. Just two words, but they hit with the force of a promise.
I hold her tighter, feeling something deep inside me shift. I don’t answer, not with words. Instead, I let the silence fill with everything I can’t say—the longing, the gratitude, the impossible hope that maybe, just maybe, I’m not too broken to be loved.
We stay there long after the city’s lights go out, two survivors clinging to warmth in the darkness, learning together how to make room for softness without letting the world tear it apart.