Chapter 20
Chapter twenty
Hayden Herron
Istorm through the doors to the kitchen from the stables. My hands are fists. I don't know what I'm doing until I'm already inside, wrenching open the cabinet, and grabbing the first glass I see. And then I throw it across the room with a crash.
Shards explode against the far wall. I’m acting like a child. I’ve killed men for simpler outbursts.
If my father were alive, he would be disgusted to see me like this.
My chest heaves as I brace both hands against the counter, head down, eyes shut. What the fuck is wrong with me?
It’s her.
It used to be enough to scare her, to own the room just by stepping into it. I told myself it was power. That she needed to learn, that control mattered more than comfort. That love didn’t require kindness, only obedience.
But now?
Now I feel it like rot in my gut.
The way she looked at me at the stables was as if I were something truly dangerous.
And I am. It used to thrill me. Now it turns my stomach.
Every time I blink, I see the horrified expression on her face. Normally, it's her fear, the fear that is overcome by lust, that I crave. But there wasn't lust accompanying the fear this time; there was only betrayal.
I chose to threaten Lilibet because, in the past, I had only craved seeing a look of terror on her delicate features.
I like to see how far I can push her until she breaks.
Not the fear that makes her want to shield herself from me.
I’m not a man who will bend; I’ll never ask her for permission.
I’ll take until she has nothing left to give.
And I want to watch her unravel while it happens.
Except I want to make her feel good while I do it. I’ve reached a horrible middle ground where I only crave her pain if the end goal is her pleasure. I don’t fantasize any longer about finishing her off. About wrapping my hands around her throat just to watch the light snuffed out of her eyes.
I’m overcome with the want to end her for the insufferable curiosity she fills me with.
The desire to steal her panties, drink from her bedside water glass, and use her toothbrush while she was in class.
I used to think that ending her would be the solution to the horrific desire I felt to watch her. To be near her daily.
She was perfectly imperfect from the second I laid eyes on her. And I knew right then, I was going to ruin her. I wanted to drag her by the hair out of that over-decorated suite at her boarding school and make sure she never forgot who she belonged to.
She wasn’t mine yet, but I waited. I stalked her in silence, every weekend she came back from boarding school to her family's estate.
I watched from her balcony, her closet, and even her bedroom chair when she finally went to sleep.
Took what I wanted when no one was looking, lip balm, a pair of tights, even her toothbrush.
I survived on scraps like an animal during Thanksgiving breaks, winter holidays—any excuse the school gave to send me home. I was there.
Then she finally enrolled at Eulogia, and it was over for me. I was done pretending. Her scent was everywhere. Her hair on the furniture. Her underwear in the laundry chute. I had access to it all, and I still couldn’t get enough.
She had that bratty, well-bred thing about her, where she is always dressed to perfection. A screwed up pursed lip look on her face made her look like no one could touch her.
From the moment I saw her at the family mixer my freshman year when she came to send her brothers off, I knew. I knew I needed to break her.
I needed to break her down until underneath the pearls and silk, all that was left was skin and blood.
When I first got the assignment, I should’ve been paranoid. But I’m not built to fear. They couldn’t have known, not about her. Not about what I’d already done, what I was still doing.
If anything, it confirmed what I already believed: I was untouchable. My obsession was safe, locked tight behind the face I show the world. So I held it even closer. Protected it. Worshipped it.
They sent me to watch her family. But all I watched was her.
But she wasn’t part of the assignment. Her mother was, until eventually Martine herself got dragged down into the mess. It’s a deep wave of deceit, lies, and mistakes made before she was born.
I grew close to the twins, but everything shifted when the assignment developed more midway through my sophomore year.
Before I knew it, I had a key to her place, and my obsession grew to new depths. I was even surprised, myself, when I began following my obsessive compulsions, reading her diaries and smelling her hairbrush.
Every page was a window into that chaotic little mind. Seeing reflections of my own barely restrained monster was terrifying.
She had no idea I was tracking her every move, watching her sleep, memorizing her routines like scripture. She wasn’t trained like me to watch out. To expect any possible modicum of chaos. She didn’t know. And why would she?
Suddenly, most tasks were meaningless.
What could matter to me more than knowing what goes on in that pretty little head, besides imagining what it would feel like to crush it between my hands? To destroy the thing that’s ruined me.
To snap her delicate neck in my hands.
And the longer it went on, the harder it was to separate the assignment from her.
I wanted her ass up and her haughty little fucking face smashed into her bed pillow. I wanted to smear my cum in her hair, or maybe just tie her to my bed and leave her there for however many days it takes for her to sign her soul over to me.
Watching her made me want to own her. Not just her body, everything. Her space. Her time. Her choices. I tried to dismantle her reality and rebuild it in my image.
I wanted her to second-guess herself at every turn. Every decision should be obsessed with pleasing me. Every instinct. I wanted her to look in the mirror and only see me.
The assignment? Irrelevant. The endless bullshit that came with the Huntington-Russells? Noise. I didn’t care that she was the baby sister of two of my fellow Bonesmen. I wanted to fuck her up.
I got off on the idea of ruining her—not just once, not for a fleeting moment, but for good. I used to imagine her brought low, eating from the palm of my hand, kneeling before me, starved for my attention, helpless in her devotion.
Some nights, I laid awake thinking about locking her in my house and stripping it down to nothing. No furniture, no clothes, no food, just her, wandering empty halls, naked and starving, with nowhere to go and nothing to cling to.
I used to wonder if that would truly push her to the same lengths as my devotion.
If, after a week of isolation, she’d break.
Would she fall to her knees and crawl to me with nothing left but instinct?
If I stripped her down to feel what has plagued me since I first learned her name, would she choose me just the same?
Would she collapse into my arms like I wasn’t the one who destroyed her, just to spend her final breath close to me?
Now, the thought of her dying guts me.
She’s mine—my pet, my possession. I care for her as much as I control her, and I would raze the world if it meant keeping her alive. I once fantasized about ending her; now I know I wouldn’t survive without her.
And now she’s crying in my fucking stables.
I look out the window, and there she is, walking back across the lawn. Walking slowly with her shoulders dropped, guarded. Like she doesn’t know who she’ll find on the other side of the door, me or the monster.
And at this moment, I decide.
I don’t just want her fear. I want her fire too.
I meet her at the door before she can reach for the handle and open it. She just stops, still and silent, the wind catching in her hair. Her arms are crossed, tight to her chest, like armor.
We stand there staring at each other. She's waiting for me to move or say something. My insufferable need to control everything is momentarily stunted. I swallow anyway and force myself to get over it.
Her eyes are soft and red and rimmed with tears.
“I will only ever give you what you need,” I try. Not sure where to start. I lean forward and tuck her hair behind her ear, looking into her beautiful eyes.
“I’m not your golden boy, and I’ll drag you through the fucking mud.” I try again, and her brow furrows. Fuck I have no idea what I’m doing.
I usher her to step fully into the warmth of the room, and she does so, looking at me with an odd expression.
Like she doesn’t understand what I have to say, and honestly, I don’t either.
I shut the door behind her. Her eyes are rimmed in red, and there are tears still in them.
It’s so fucking beautiful to see her so torn apart.
I can't help but rub my thumb along the under of her eye, across the small freckle that rests there.
Her eyes lock onto mine with a confused, raw, look. Like she’s trying to figure out what I’m about to say, and I’m not even sure I know myself.
“I’ll never ask for permission to keep you. You need to understand that you will never know a life where I don’t control you.” I suck in a breath, needing to get the words out like vomit. “I can’t stand how much I need you, Martine. I could fucking kill you for it.”
She inches closer to me, a moth to my fucked up flame. She doesn’t speak; she simply wipes at her tears with the back of her hand like it’ll help.
And God, it’s fucking beautiful.
That pain on her face. That edge of humiliation. The fact that she’s standing here at all. Torn to pieces and still trying to hold herself together in front of me, like pride is going to save her from any more hurt.
She’s unraveling, and I get to be the one watching it happen. I get to be the one to hold all of those pieces.
“I won't give you the option to leave me,” I say finally, not quite sure if any of my words encompass how I feel. I don’t fucking do feelings, and she's dragging them out of me.