Peter
Ishouldn’t have let her walk away. Not tonight. Not after the way her voice cracked—that delicious, jagged sound of a girl breaking—when she told me to let her go.
Not after the way her thighs pressed together in that desperate, silent plea when I leaned in and whispered the truth she pretends she doesn’t want to hear.
But I did. Because sometimes the leash cuts deeper when you loosen it first. You have to let them think they’ve escaped just so they can feel the snap of the collar when you reel them back in.
I sit in the backseat of the car, city lights smearing across the tinted windows like neon blood. My hand flexes once, twice—my skin still prickling with the memory of the heat radiating off her wrist.
I can still feel the frantic, pathetic leap of her pulse against my thumb. A rhythm I could crush between two fingers if I wanted. A rhythm I will eventually own.
She thinks I stumbled across her tonight. She thinks it’s accident or fate or some fucked-up coincidence that I found her in the same booth, drinking the same pink poison, wearing that shade of lipstick that makes me want to smear it across her throat.
She has no idea I’ve been keeping her in my sights for months. Years, if I count the nights before she was legal enough to haunt bars, back when I used to watch her from the shadows of her driveway, counting her breaths through a cracked window.
She doesn’t understand the rot that grows in me when I see her laugh with some pathetic, soft-handed man who doesn’t know the first thing about how to handle her. The violence that itches into my very bones when she touches anyone who isn’t me.
She doesn’t understand that I already own her. Every cell. Every breath. Every shiver.
Not because she’s my sister’s best friend. Not because she looked at me once three years ago and flinched, a look of pure, unadulterated terror that I’ve tasted every night since. But because she’s the only one stupid enough to think she can survive me.
And I’m going to spend the rest of my life proving her fucking wrong.
I light a cigarette, the flame illuminating the scars on my knuckles, and drag in smoke until it burns my lungs. I let it out slow, watching it coil in the dark. The driver doesn’t speak; he knows the price of my silence is high.
The quiet leaves room for the memory of her face when she slapped me in that alley—the stinging heat of her palm, the way her eyes lit up with a fury that made my cock ache.
I crave that fury. I’ll starve her of everything else until anger is the only thing she has left. Then I’ll take that too. I’ll strip her down until there’s nothing left but the need for my hand on her neck.
My phone buzzes. A message from a number that exists on a ghost-server I built myself.
She’s not safe.
The words curl through me like gasoline catching a spark. I know. Of course I fucking know. That’s why I watch her. That’s why I’ve got cameras stitched into the corners of her building, why I have men on her street even when she thinks she’s finally alone in her bed.
But whoever sent this—they’re not warning me. They’re mocking me. They’re standing in my territory and pissing on the fence.
Because someone else is circling her. Someone who thinks they can poach what’s mine.
And that? That I will not allow. I will gut them in the street before they even get a taste.
My jaw locks. My fingers twitch against my thigh, the muscles coiled like a spring. She doesn’t know it yet, but Wendy Darling is standing at the edge of something much bloodier than obsession. She’s standing on a cliff, and I’m the only one who gets to push her off.
I’ll kill whoever tries to touch her. I’ll peel the skin from the fingers of anyone who leaves her notes, anyone who thinks they can breathe her name like a prayer.
Because she’s mine. Always mine. And when I finally drag her under? She’ll thank me for the salt in her lungs.
The cigarette burns low, the cherry glowing like a dying star. Ash flakes across my lap like dirty snow. Outside the window, the city blurs, the red lights of the traffic cutting the night into jagged, bleeding pieces.
All I can see is her face when she looked at me tonight—the way her pupils blew wide, the way she tasted the air like she was already drowning in me.
She doesn’t know how close she was to being dragged out of that booth and thrown into this car. She doesn’t know that the only thing stopping me was the vibration of that text.
I flick the ash out the window and read it again. She’s not safe.
It’s not a threat. It’s a challenge.
Somebody else is moving on her—someone with the same hunger, maybe worse. Someone who thinks they’re faster, quieter, meaner.
I smile. It’s a terrifying, jagged expression. Let them try. I’ve been waiting for a reason to kill something lately.
I lean my head back and close my eyes. I see her apartment door closing.
I see the way she cracks her fire escape window just an inch so she can hear the city breathe.
I see her fingers trembling when she lights a cigarette outside the club, her eyes scanning the crowd and never landing on me—even when I’m standing ten feet away, watching the smoke curl around her lips.
She thinks I’m the danger. She doesn’t realise I’m the only thing standing between her and a far worse monster.
The driver clears his throat, his eyes meeting mine in the rearview mirror. “Back to the house, Mr—”
I cut him off with a look that makes him go pale. No one says my name unless I give it to them. Not anymore. Not since I became the ghost of this city.
We turn off the main drag. The streets get narrower, slick with grease and rain, the part of town where I keep the life my sister pretends doesn’t exist.
This is where I build my empire out of threats and silence. This is where I’ve built the cage she’ll end up in—whether she walks into it willingly or I have to carry her there, kicking and screaming.
Another buzz.
She’s marked.
My jaw locks so hard I hear the bone creak. My hand tightens around the phone until the plastic groans in protest. Marked. Like she’s property. Like she’s a game to be played.
They think they’re playing with me. They’re not. They’re just providing the fuel for the fire I’m about to set.
I roll my shoulders, tasting smoke and iron. She has no idea how deep this rot runs. No idea what her little fire-escape heart stumbled into when she walked into that club and dared to look me in the eye.
She thinks I’m only her best friend’s brother. She thinks this is about wanting to fuck her. She thinks she has a choice in how this ends.
I chuckle, a low, mean sound that echoes in the plush interior of the car.
This isn’t a choice. It’s a war. And tonight was the last time I play nice.
When the car stops, I slide out, pulling the collar of my coat up against the freezing rain. I head for the warehouse door at the end of the alley—a place where screams don’t travel.
Inside, the lights hum with a sick, yellow vibration. My men look up from the table, their eyes wide and flicking away the moment they see the look on my face.
I drop the phone onto the table. The message glows: She’s marked.
Jax, a man whose hands only stop shaking when he’s holding a knife, risks a glance. “Sir?”
I smile, and it’s the most violent thing in the room. “Find out who thinks she belongs to them. Find out who’s been watching her besides me.”
“And when we do?”
My fingers brush the scarred, heavy edge of the hook strapped under my sleeve—the jagged piece of metal that replaced what I lost, the one I haven’t shown her yet. Not until I’m ready to watch her scream.
“When we do,” I murmur, the words thick with the scent of upcoming slaughter, “we show them exactly what ownership costs in this city.”
The warehouse hums with a heavy, suffocating silence. A dozen men hold their breath. They know that when I look like this, someone is going to die.
I light another cigarette, letting the smoke curl lazy in the air. “Find out who’s sniffing around Wendy Darling. Every name. Every face. I want to know what they eat for breakfast before I kill them.”
Jax swallows hard. “And if it’s someone close to the family? Someone your sister knows?”
I laugh. Short. Sharp. Cruel as a winter storm. “Closer just means I don’t have to drive as far to dispose of the body.”
I lean against the table, flicking ash onto the concrete.
In my mind, I see her again—sitting in that booth, glaring at me like she wasn’t already soaking wet underneath.
She thinks she hides it well. She doesn’t.
I knew she’d show up tonight. I knew she’d break her own rules just to feel the weight of my gaze on her skin.
And now she is caught. Pinned. Mine.
“Peter,” Jax says, his voice a cautious whisper. “You sure this is worth the mess? That girl… she’s the only thing that links you to your sister’s world. If this goes sideways, you lose the only piece of humanity you have left.”
I look at him until he flinches. “Humanity is a weakness I burned out of myself a decade ago. She isn’t a link, Jax. She’s the prize.”
The truth is, none of them understand. She isn’t just another girl to fuck and forget. She isn’t a trophy. She isn’t even a weakness. She’s the reminder that there’s still something in this rotten, godforsaken world worth breaking every single rule for.
And if anyone else so much as breathes her name without my permission—I’ll paint the fucking streets with their blood.
I stub out the cigarette on the table, my voice low and final. “Track them. Make it fast. Anyone who so much as whispers her name pays for it in inches of skin.”
The men nod and scatter, the sound of their boots echoing like a countdown.
But I stay. I stand there, staring at the phone, and all I can see is the way she stiffened when I leaned close. The way her eyes flashed with that intoxicating mix of hatred and hunger.