Chapter 12 - Gabriel #2
"I hope you're right." He moves toward the door, then pauses with his hand on the knob. "For all our sakes."
He leaves, and I'm alone with my thoughts and the silence of my office.
I sit back down and pull out my phone. No messages yet. She's only been home for—I check the time—forty-seven minutes. Not long enough to read the contract thoroughly, to wrestle with the decision, to come to terms with what she's about to agree to.
But I want to know what she's doing. I want to know if she's thinking about me, the way I'm thinking about her.
I dial Hutton.
"Sir?"
"Report."
"Subject arrived home at 2:23 PM. She's been in the kitchen since, seated at the table. The contract is in front of her. She's been reading it for approximately—" A pause, presumably checking notes. "—thirty-one minutes."
"Has she made any calls? Sent any messages?"
"Negative. She picked up her phone once, looked at the screen, put it down again. No communication."
She wanted to call someone. Bea, probably. Or her mother. She wanted to reach out, to ask for advice, to share the burden of this decision. But she didn't.
Because she knows there's no one who can help her. Because she's smart enough to understand that involving others would only put them at risk.
Good girl.
"Continue monitoring," I say. "Inform me immediately if anything changes."
"Understood, sir."
I end the call and set the phone on my desk, staring at it as if I could will it to ring. As if she might call me—not about the contract, just to talk. Just to hear my voice.
Absurd. She's not going to call. She's going to sit at her kitchen table and read the contract over and over, looking for loopholes that don't exist, escape routes that will never open.
She's going to wrestle with her conscience and her fear and her desperate need for the money I'm offering.
And eventually—tomorrow, or the day after, or Monday at the latest—she's going to sign.
And then she'll be mine.
Officially. Contractually. Legally.
But that's not enough. That's not what I really want.
I lean back in my chair and close my eyes, letting myself sink into the memory of the lunch.
The way she looked in that navy blouse, professional but soft, the fabric moving against her skin when she breathed.
The way her voice trembled when she asked about exclusivity, as if she knew exactly what I meant by the word.
The way she met my eyes, even when she was terrified, refusing to look away.
She's strong. Stronger than she knows.
I want to break that strength. I want to shatter her composure, peel away her defenses, expose the raw, vulnerable creature beneath. I want to see her cry, hear her beg, feel her tremble in my arms.
But I also want—
I open my eyes, disturbed by the direction of my thoughts.
I also want her to choose me. Not because she has no other options, but because she sees something in me worth choosing. Because she looks at the monster and decides, against all reason, that she wants it anyway.
The way I saw something in her, that night in the doorway. The recognition that passed between us, predator to prey, darkness to darkness.
She has shadows in her. I've seen them—in her sketches, in the way she tends dying flowers, in the way she kept my dahlia alive instead of throwing it away. She's drawn to darkness, even as she fears it. Even as she runs from it.
I want to be the darkness she stops running from.
Is that love? I don't think so. I'm not capable of love, not the way normal people mean the word. Whatever capacity I might have had for softness was burned out of me at St. Augustine's, in the years of torment and the blood-soaked aftermath.
But it's something. Something I've never felt before. Something that defies categorization, that resists the neat labels I usually apply to my emotions.
Want. Need. Hunger.
Mine.
My phone buzzes. Hutton again.
"Sir, update. The subject has stopped reading the contract. She's... crying."
Crying. Tears streaming down her face as she stares at the document that will bind her to me.
I should feel triumph. Satisfaction. The pleasure of watching prey finally understand the trap.
Instead, I feel something else entirely. Something that might, in another man, be called concern.
"Is she—" I stop myself. What was I going to ask? Is she all right? Of course she's not all right. I'm the reason she's not all right.
"Sir?"
"Nothing. Continue monitoring. Inform me when she signs."
"Yes, sir."
I end the call and stare at the phone in my hand.
She's crying. Because of me. Because of what I've done to her, what I'm doing to her, what I'm going to keep doing until she has nothing left except me.
The game is entering a new phase. Once she signs that contract, she'll be in my world regularly. At the estate. In my space. Close enough to touch, close enough to smell, close enough to taste.
The proximity will either satisfy this hunger or make it unbearable.
I'm looking forward to finding out which.