Chapter 11 Sterling
Sterling
A while earlier
Because it’s only Elle. And only me. In a dark corner of her bedroom, where she’s being kept. And…this is worse than I thought.
A week ago, watching Stanley with her, I thought that was torture. Standing back, doing nothing. But this… This is what real torture feels like. Because now I’m not just losing her. I’m watching her lose herself. And I’m standing here, fucking hesitating.
I’ve handled blood, betrayal, bodies. But nothing prepared me for this—watching the one person I’d burn the world for look me in the eye and not understand what’s happening to her.
Elle’s slipping. Been slipping. Fuck, why did I wait?
Why didn’t I just take her sooner? It wouldn’t have mattered if she saw me as a monster.
As the goblin who haunts, who kills, who scares her.
It wouldn’t have mattered if I didn’t deserve her, if I hadn’t avenged her, or burned Clo’s poison from the inside out.
None of it matters now, because Elle is too far gone.
Clo got to her. Got in her head and stayed there.
I’ve been watching her from the shadows all night, dread clawing its way up my spine. I’m too late. She’s gone. I’ve seen it in the way she carries herself like something weightless, like a marionette hollowed out and redressed in silk. She’s still her, but Kys is in her system.
I keep watching her, figuring out what the hell to do.
But I’m a damn mercenary. I get orders, I execute—clean, efficient, brutal.
But saving someone who doesn’t even know she needs saving?
No one trained me for this. And even if I’m figuring it out the best I can, I have to swallow my pride and admit that I’m not good at this.
Because every time I see her, my chest cracks a little more. My hands shake. My thoughts scatter like ash. All I want to do is be with her. Touch her. Take her. But I don’t know how to do that without breaking her even more.
So I’ve been staying in the shadows for hours, stalling like a coward, wasting more fucking time because I’m goddamn heartbroken.
I should feel relief. Elle’s alive. She’s here.
I should feel grateful that I can still reach for her.
But all I feel is fucking grief. I missed her.
It’s pathetic how much. Every night without her gnawed at me.
She lived in the periphery of every thought.
Her voice echoed in my head, even in silence.
She crawled into my dreams. And now, seeing her like this, she’s more than I remembered.
Now, night’s fallen and all I’ve done is stare at her while she settles in bed, finally away from any other prying eyes.
Elle has looked so lost all night, but right now, she looks almost at ease, thinking she’s alone.
Her hair falls in waves down her back. One thin strap of her nightgown’s slipped down.
There’s a haze in her eyes. A drowsy kind of vulnerability that makes my pulse stutter.
She looks like she’s been loved gently, worshipped slowly, and I…
I know what that really means. She’s been claimed by someone who didn’t earn her.
I clench my jaw, hard enough that pain shoots up behind my eyes. She’s someone else’s. But I’ll remind her. I’ll remind her of everything.
She lifts her head slowly, her gaze landing on me. I’m not trying to hide, but even if I did, she always seems to find me. Even when I want to be swallowed by shadows, hiding in the dark, where I always belonged, she always finds me.
Her lips part slightly, breath catching before she speaks, sounding so uncertain. “Are you…real?”
I don’t answer yet. I just stare, moving closer.
Elle doesn’t move a muscle, but she studies me. Even now, drugged to the edge of herself, she looks at me like I’m someone she knows. Even when she’s gone, there’s something in her that reaches out.
I move forward again, just enough for the candlelight to hit the mask. Her breath hitches. But she still doesn’t look away.
So I crouch down, watching her the way I’d study violin strings right before pulling the bow, ready to feel the tension.
She shouldn’t be awake. She shouldn’t see me.
But she does. Even with her mind smudged, part of her still sees me.
And for one raw second, I think she recognizes me. I hope she does.
My head tilts. “What do you think?” I finally say, tender and distorted through my mask’s modulator.
Her fingers grip tight in the sheets. She looks like she’s trying to hold on to a thought, trying to piece me together through the haze. I see her struggle with it, how hard it is for her. She frowns. “I don’t know.”
A muscle ticks in my jaw. I almost smile, but it’s bitter. The silence settles between us. Then I stand. I step fully into the candlelight, letting her see everything. The tactical black. The gloves. The red mask. The killer who’s carved Clo’s empire apart.
I expect her to shrink back. I want it. I deserve it.
But she just keeps studying me. Like she’s trying to remember something that keeps slipping away.
And that’s when I realize she’s forgotten me completely.
The sting is sharp, but fair. I burned everything for her, but still… I took too long to save her.
I step closer. She has to crane her head back to meet my eyes. Her lashes flutter. “Why are you here?” she asks quietly.
My answer could fill pages. I could give her the truth.
I could lie. I could beg her to remember me.
But instead, I reach out. I lift a hand, gloved fingers catching a strand of hair that’s fallen over her cheek.
I brush it back, slow and careful. Her breath stutters, but I don’t say anything.
Her voice is a whisper. “Am I dreaming?”
My chest goes tight. I could be a dream. I could be a nightmare. I could be both. So I don’t answer that either. Instead, I study her too, taking in every part of her, now that we’re finally together again.
The candlelight dances along her skin, across her neck, the delicate dip of her collarbone, and the bare shoulder her nightgown won’t cover.
Her hair’s in rousing disarray, her lips parted enough to wreck me.
She looks breakable. And I want her. God, I want her in ways that scare me.
I’ve killed men without blinking. I’ve buried bodies and torched down empires.
But Elle makes me lose control. Every. Single. Time.
She’s the one thing I can’t kill my way through. The one weakness I’ll never outpace. And I know, if I stay here much longer, I’ll do something I can’t take back.
Her blue eyes search mine, wide and unguarded. There’s no fear in them. No recognition of the danger standing by her bed. Her eyes are curious. The longer she stares, the worse my want gets. My pulse pounds, worse than when death is close enough to taste.
I don’t move. I can’t. Because if I do, I’ll lose control. And this time, there’s no guarantee I’ll pull myself back. The air between us is too thin. If I traced my fingers down her throat, over the hollow there, I bet I’d feel her heartbeat echoing mine.
But I don’t know what she really sees when she looks at me. I don’t know if she realizes I haven’t been sleeping. That I’ve spent every fucking night haunted by her.
She’s still watching me, waiting for something I haven’t said. So I reach out, gloved knuckles brushing against her cheek. She shivers under my touch, but she doesn’t pull away. Neither do I.
My voice is quieter than it should be. “Do you want to wake up?”
She inhales, sharp and shallow. Her eyes blink slow. I see the confusion behind her eyes. “Wake up from…what?” she whispers back.
I let my hand fall away. She’s looking at me like she’s searching for a lifeline and doesn’t even know she’s sinking.
She doesn’t know what’s been done to her.
But I could tell her. Could lay everything bare—the pills, the programming, the slow erosion of who she is.
But I see the fog in her eyes. She wouldn’t believe me.
At least, not yet. So I try something simpler.
“Do you know what Clo’s been doing to you? ”
She blinks slow. Her lips part further. But no answer comes right away. Her fingers tighten around her nightgown. “Clo is…helping me,” she says softly. “She’s taking care of me.”
The way she says it is so wrong. Too smooth and mechanical.
Like it’s been trained into her. Something in my chest breaks.
I’ve spent so much of my life in the dark, erasing people who needed to be erased.
It’s always been easy. The line between necessity and morality blurred so long ago I stopped looking for it.
My hands became my compass, my weapons became my truth.
But this isn’t that. This is Elle. This is a need so fierce, so possessive, it scorches through my ribs.
The feeling cuts itself into me while I look at her—drugged, hollowed, still so hauntingly beautiful—and all I can think is how badly I want to destroy everything that ever hurt her.
I reach for her again. Her pulse flutters beneath my touch. It’s steady, fragile, far too trusting. She doesn’t even realize she should be afraid of me.
“Clo’s not helping you,” I whisper.
Her voice is gentle, dazed. “I don’t understand.”
Of course she doesn’t. But she will. And when that moment comes, she won’t look at Clo the same again. Elle will only look at me. Just like she is now. Now that she’s become everything to me.
This close, I see every inch of her. The delicate lines of her face.
The lashes casting shadows across her cheeks.
She’s so beautiful, it hurts. I don’t deserve this.
I don’t deserve to have a moment like this with her.
I don’t deserve to be the one standing here, whispering in the dark like a thief at her window.
But I want it anyway. I want her more than I’ve wanted anything.
More than survival. More than revenge. More than the sound of a clean kill or the silence after a job’s done. She’s the only thing I want.
I exhale slowly. My voice comes out low, careful. “Elle.”
Her lashes flutter. She stares right into my eyes, through my mask. It steals my breath away.
“You don’t have to understand it yet,” I murmur, barely a whisper between us. “Just know, from now on, you’re mine.”
I pull my hand back.
“When you wake up, I’ll always be there,” I promise.
She watches me slip back, confusion swimming in her eyes.
I don’t know if I can save her right now.
I’m a breath away from breaking, taking her away from here without a plan, while she’s still brainwashed and drugged.
So I step back and disappear into the shadows.
She stays perfectly still. I let my voice be the last thing she hears before I vanish. “Sleep, Elle.”