Chapter 31 Archie
Archie
I always knew she’d come back to me.
Not in the sentimental way men like to romanticize—no fate, no soul-deep pull nonsense. I knew it the way you know gravity exists. The way decay always finds the softest part of the wood.
Mikayla was never made for cages. Not even the pretty ones.
Especially not the kind Gianni Cavalho preferred—the ones that paraded as protection but were more like control.
Men like him liked to tell themselves they were being kind.
That if a woman was wrapped in enough safety, she’d forget she wasn’t free.
She wouldn’t.
There were only ever two possible endings. Either Cavalho would eventually decide she was too much trouble and dispose of her quietly—efficient, bloodless, disappointing—or she’d do what caged things always do.
She’d test the bars.
So when my phone rang that morning, I wasn’t surprised.
Delighted, yes. Mildly smug, absolutely. But surprised? No.
“Mikayla just walked,” one of my men said. “Out the front gates of the Cavalho estate. Alone.”
I let the word roll around my mouth. Alone.
Now that was interesting.
I didn’t move right away. That’s the trick, you see. Everyone expects men like me to rush. To lunge. To bare teeth the second opportunity presents itself. It’s how they comfort themselves—by believing monsters are predictable. But there is nothing predictable about this monster.
I had my men check that it wasn’t an act. No cars waiting nearby. No Cavalho guards watching from a distance. No sudden movement meant to look accidental. Just Mikayla, a backpack on her shoulder, and a long stretch of road ahead of her—like she was daring the world to stop her.
Gianni had let her go.
That earned him a point. Pity it would cost him everything.
I followed her from a distance, my car quiet and unhurried, like a shadow she didn’t notice.
I stayed close enough to be there, but far enough not to rush her.
She walked like someone who had already given up arguing with herself—her steps steady but empty, moving forward more out of habit than choice.
She didn’t seem to be running toward anything.
Perfect.
I watched her put distance between herself and the Cavalho estate, each step loosening his grip and tightening mine. Every metre she walked alone rewrote the story in my favor. I could already see the angles. The optics. The narrative.
She left him.
She came back to me.
I simply found my wife wandering.
It was almost generous of Gianni to hand her to me gift-wrapped.
I let her walk long enough to feel it. The ache. The fatigue. The creeping doubt that whispers when the adrenaline fades and the world gets very quiet. By the time I decided she’d earned her reunion, she was ripe for it.
I watched from the back seat as the car eased up beside her, smooth and unhurried. Tyres whispered over the asphalt, polite as a secret. There was no urgency to our movements. We were merely here to reclaim something that had wandered off without permission.
She didn’t react right away. Either she didn’t hear us, or she heard us and chose not to care. Her steps stayed even, mechanical. She was power walking, the faster the better, as though stopping meant thinking—and thinking meant feeling.
I tapped the glass once.
The window slid down. It was enough to get her attention.
“Well,” I said lightly, leaning forward so she couldn’t pretend I wasn’t there, “fancy running into you here, wifey.”
She stopped. Turned. Scowled.
But it was a poor effort. Weak. All edges and no fire. Her eyes were too wide, too flat, fixed on me with that same hollow, doe-like stare I’d always found irritating—and useful. The kind of look that said something inside her had already snapped, quietly, without asking permission.
I saw it instantly. There was only one way to describe my girl.
Broken.
For a brief, deeply inconvenient second, something shifted in my chest. I told myself it wasn’t guilt or regret, despite the flicker of recognition. Curiosity, maybe. A distant echo of empathy, if I were feeling charitable.
I crushed it without effort.
The feeling went out hard, stamped flat like a spark under a boot. There was no room for softness in my world. No space for doubt.
Mikayla didn’t say a word.
And somehow, that silence felt louder than screaming.
“Get in the car, Mikayla,” I said.
“Fuck you, Archie. You already took everything from me, so you do not get to pretend you still have choices for me.”
“I can force you to do whatever I want,” I replied evenly. “Do not confuse your anger with power.”
She kept walking as if I were not there, the car drifting alongside her like a patient predator. Her stride did not break. Her shoulders did not fold.
“Do yourself a favor and get in the car,” I said. “This does not need to be ugly.”
“Come near me and I will scream,” she replied, still facing forward. Her back was straight, her spine rigid, her gaze steely.
I watched her for a long moment, recalculating.
Then she turned her head and looked at me.
Something cold slid through my ribs.
Her eyes were dark, not with anger but with absence. Whatever Cavalho had done to her had not softened her. It had scraped her hollow.
“Mikayla,” I said.
“Archie,” she replied, flat and fearless.
She was not getting into that car unless I made her.
I leaned forward and touched my driver’s shoulder. He understood immediately.
The door flew open. He moved fast, cutting her off before she could take another step. The cuffs snapped around her wrists. She screamed then, raw and furious, kicking and twisting as he dragged her back, but he might as well have been a wall. He shoved her into the seat and slammed the door.
The locks clicked.
The sound was very satisfying.
“I trust your time at Villa Cavalho was comfortable,” I said lightly.
She did not answer.
“Do your worst, Archie,” she said quietly. “Death right now would be more than welcome.”
I blinked.
It was interesting that she would say such a thing.
I leaned back as the car eased forward, the road unspooling beneath us, the city lights ahead flickering like a promise of something ugly and inevitable. My thoughts moved fast, lining up theories, testing angles, turning over every possible explanation.
What had happened in that house?
Gianni Cavalho was many things. He was careful.
He was precise. He was brutal when the moment demanded it.
He treated control like a belief system.
But he was not sloppy. He was not the kind of man who broke women for entertainment.
He did not hollow them out and send them wandering back into the world like wreckage.
That particular vice, I reflected, belonged far more comfortably to me. It was practically a hobby, and one I pursued with real dedication.
We drove on in silence. I did not press her.
There is a rhythm to people when they are afraid, and she had already stepped outside of every one of her comfort zones.
I watched her reflection in the dark glass as fields slid past, her eyes fixed on nothing at all, as if her body were here but the rest of her had already left.
That quiet disturbed me more than any screaming ever could.
She did not cry. She did not plead. She did not even look at me again, like I had already faded into the background.
For the first time since I had ever taken notice of Mikayla Gregory, I was not entirely sure what I was dealing with. The uncertainty crept in, slow and sharp, and to my surprise I did not push it away. It felt strange. It felt new.
The corner of my mouth lifted before I could stop it.
Whatever Gianni Cavalho had taken from her, I intended to fix it. I would take her apart carefully, piece by piece, until I understood exactly what was missing. I had always been very good at figuring out how things worked once I broke them open.
And if what was left of her couldn’t be put back together?
Well.
That had never stopped me before.