Chapter 15
RETH
The monitor glows in the dark like a temptation I should have deleted the second I saw it.
I’ve been sitting here for an hour, maybe more, watching the same loop on repeat. The feed I swore I wouldn’t touch—the one inside her room. The one that caught her the moment she shut the door after what played out in the seasons room.
Her thighs spread wide on that stool like her body was still chasing what I started against that fucking wall.
Fingers buried deep in her pussy, pumping hard, hips rocking desperately while she bit back sounds that made my cock throb so violently I had to grip the desk.
The way her back arched when she came, and I imagined the slick gushing out of her.
The broken, muffled cries. The way her head fell back like she was lost in something she couldn’t control.
She came hard… and I can’t stop replaying it.
Right after she came, I lost control. I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking going over there to her room.
While I stood outside her door, some semblance of sanity slowly trickled back in…
until she opened that door and I saw that post-orgasm flush on her cheeks—flushed, glowing, guilty. And then I smelled her fingers.
Christ.
The second I breathed in the warm, musky scent of her cum, something inside me snapped. My cock jerked so hard it hurt. My mouth watered. I wanted to drop to my knees right there in the hallway and lick every trace of it from her cunt.
But the shame slammed into me like it always does—that old, sick twist deep in my gut that turns every ounce of want into something filthy and wrong.
Pleasure has always felt like poison. Like the second my body reacts, I become the thing I hate most. But it didn’t stop me this time.
It only made me inhale deeper, slower, dragging the filthy proof of her orgasm into my lungs like I was trying to drown in the very thing that disgusts me.
I wanted to fucking suffocate on the scent of her cum.
Goddammit!
My cock is aching like a motherfucker, thick and heavy against my zipper, leaking steadily into my boxers.
I wanted to be in that room. Wanted to replace her fingers with mine—with my cock—and fuck her through every pulse until she couldn’t remember her own name.
I still want it. So badly my hands won’t stop shaking.
I flex my bruised fist, feel the deep pull of split knuckles, but the pain is nothing. Nothing compared to the way her scent is still burned into me. The way her cunt smelled after she came thinking about whatever the fuck she was thinking about.
I tell myself it has to be the seasons room. My hand on her breast. My cock grinding against her. That’s why she fell apart so violently on that stool. That’s why she was still dripping when I smelled her.
It has to be. Because if it’s not…
I shove the thought down before it can finish.
Pleasure has always felt like poison. Like something that turns you into the thing you hate most. I learned that lesson young, and I learned it ugly.
But this—wanting her, watching her, breathing in the evidence of what I did to her—this is different.
This wanting gets into my blood without permission.
It made me ease her shirt down in the middle of a confrontation.
It made me watch her make herself come. It made me stand in her doorway and inhale her orgasm like it was the only air I’d ever need.
I wanted to fuck her.
I’ve never wanted to fuck anyone the way I want her. I still do.
And that truth is the most dangerous thing in this house.
My phone lights up on the desk beside me. I look at it, recognize the number, and my jaw tightens, every thought of sex and fingers and cum out the goddamn window.
I let it ring. Once. Twice. A third time.
She’ll wait. She always waits. Patience is the one thing she has in unlimited supply.
I pick up. Say nothing.
Her voice slides into my ear like warm honey over a razor. “You followed the breadcrumbs I left for you. Such a clever boy.”
Dean. I knew the moment I found the trail that it was too clean, too visible, left for me like an invitation you can’t refuse without being rude.
“You found them faster than I expected.” I can hear the smile—the practiced one, all teeth and calculation. “Though I really should stop underestimating you. You found it faster than I anticipated.”
Did I? I found it in forty-eight hours, which means she wanted me to find it in forty-eight hours.
“You never cease to surprise me.” The warmth in her voice is the kind that has never once been earned and has never once been real. “You don’t even want to know what I offered him?”
Money. Power. Whores. I couldn’t give a fuck.
“Oh, come on,” she continues. “You and I both know you liked it. When you get rid of all the pieces like he never existed, it means you relished it.”
I give her nothing. Not a syllable. Not even a goddamn breath.
She lets out a soft, fond laugh that makes my skin crawl. “Still so quiet. My beautiful, silent boy.”
The words slither under my skin like old poison, the same endearment she used when I was broken enough to be molded. It reminds me how perfectly she taught me to stay quiet while she sharpened the knife.
I don’t flinch, but inside, something ancient snarls.
“I can’t seem to trace this call.” A pause. The sound of someone recalibrating behind a smile. “Have you been playing with new tech?”
Finally, I snarl. “Old habits.”
“Mmm. There he is,” she hums. “But you sound different. You have that edge in your voice. The one you always get when you’re about to disappoint me.”
My back teeth press together. I think about the seasons room.
About split knuckles and black sheets and a woman who asked me what happened to me in a voice that wasn’t clinical, wasn’t professional, wasn’t building a case—just asked, like the answer mattered to her personally.
I think about how much damage this woman on the phone could do with that information.
“Now, why would I want to disappoint you?”
“That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?
” She lets it sit. She’s always been good at letting things sit, and grow, and simmer.
“You know what your problem is?” She doesn’t wait.
“You’ve always believed that if you’re clever enough, fast enough, careful enough, you can outrun the way things are. The way they have to be.”
I don’t respond.
“You can’t.”
This isn’t news to me. Not since a fourteen-year-old boy was trapped in a room where the door only opened from the outside. But I don’t give her the satisfaction of acknowledging it.
“Still so quiet.” Her voice shifts into that register I know too well, the one that gives you just enough warning to think you can brace for impact, right before she breaks you anyway. “She used to worry about that, you know. All that silence. She never knew what to do with it.”
There it is. The thing she always returns to. The thread she keeps because she knows exactly what it’s attached to.
I hold my breath because she reads rhythm the way other people read words, and if she hears how long I take to exhale she’ll know exactly how deep she’s already scratched.
“She’s well, by the way. In case you were wondering.”
The line crackles with everything I refuse to feed her.
“I know how you worry about her. It’s your most predictable quality. And your most useful one.”
The monitor shows the hallway outside Sophia’s bedroom, and I watch the door open.
Usually, there’s an uptick in my heartbeat when I see her, but I keep it steady, keep it still.
Keep it mine. There’s an irony to it, how the two most dangerous people in my life are occupying the same space right now, one of them in the dark without knowing it, and one of them on the phone making sure I don’t forget it.
“I’ve been thinking about you.”
The words land the way they always do—somewhere in the specific register of a predator who wants you to know you’ve been on their mind.
Sophia heads in the direction of the stairs, then I turn the monitor off, deciding the image of her isn’t something I want in front of me when I’m dealing with the devil. “I’m flattered.”
“Don’t be. It wasn’t fondly.” A breath. “You know…I always feel it when you’re up to something.”
“Your intuition is impressive.”
“Don’t be clever with me. It’s unbecoming.” Her voice drops. “What are you doing?”
“What I always do.”
“And what is that?”
“Calculating.”
“Calculating? How very clinical. How very…you.” I hear her swallow her champagne. It’s always champagne because she treats everything like a celebration. “And what have your calculations told you?”
I look at my split knuckles. “That I’m ahead.”
“Are you.” Not a question. “That’s interesting. Because from where I’m sitting, it looks like you’ve developed a… variable.”
I don’t say a word.
“Variables are dangerous. You know that better than anyone…Nazareth.”
The inevitable knife twist. My name in her mouth. She saves it for moments like this when she wants me to remember exactly who named me and exactly who owns that name now.
I’ve stopped reacting to it a long time ago. “Variables can be contained.”
“You’ve always been so sure of yourself. I used to find it charming.” A pause. “I find it less charming now.”
“I’m going to hang up in ten seconds. If you have something to say, say it.”
“I didn’t raise you to be cocky.”
Anger moves through me, old and ugly, but I keep it chained. I’ve been keeping it locked up since the day I first understood what she was capable of, and I’m not about to stop now. “You didn’t raise me.”
“Perhaps. But I taught you one of life’s most valuable lessons. Surely you can give me credit for that.”
“And what lesson is that, Valeria?”
“Oh.” She lets out a sound of appreciation. “You hardly ever say my name, but whenever you do, it sounds deliciously personal.”
“What. Lesson?” I ball my fist on the table, and there’s a pause timed to a second.
“That everything costs something.”
“You don’t have to threaten me.”
“It’s not a threat.” Her voice is almost gentle now. The gentleness is the worst part. It always has been. “But it does seem like you need a little reminding.”
“I don’t need—”
“You remember our agreement, don’t you?”
My pulse spikes.
“Or has the blonde distracted you? The one who collects wounded things and calls it purpose?”
My hand closes around the phone so hard I feel the casing flex.
“There’s a cost here, Nazareth.”
My spine turns to stone.
“Don’t make me raise it any higher, sweetheart. You know how much I hate being disappointed.”
The line goes dead.
My laptop chimes once. A single encrypted notification. No sender. No timestamp. Just a name, highlighted in red. And a number. Seven digits. Wired on delivery. The kind of money that doesn’t get offered for a hit that’s clean or quick or merciful.
I look at it for a long moment.
Red means she wants the kind of damage that echoes. Red means she wants him to feel every second of what’s coming before it ends. Seven digits means she wants it done right.
But I see through it. The message. The job. The phone call.
All of it—security.
A way to ensure my leash is still perfectly in place.