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The sound of the city is a dull roar against the glass, but inside the penthouse, it’s silent.
I’m standing in the doorway of the room we finished yesterday. It doesn’t smell like gunpowder or blood. It smells like fresh paint and expensive wool. It’s the perfect room for my child.
Another Morelli. Another soul added to the tally of our rot.
Charlotte is asleep in the center of the bed in the next room, but I can’t stop looking at the monitor in my hand.
I have cameras in the nursery. I have cameras in the halls.
I have three different tracking frequencies embedded in the jewelry she wears.
I know the rhythm of her heart better than I know my own.
The “curse” didn’t break. I just found a woman as insane as I am.
I run my thumb over the railing of the crib. My mind is already mapping out the next twenty years—the way I’ll teach this child to identify a threat before they can even speak.
I’m a sick man. I know this. But I’ll give my child everything that wasn’t given to me.
I think about the way Charlotte looked when she told me. She didn’t cry or look afraid. I would have broken if she had. She just took my hand a month ago, placed it over her still-flat stomach, and told me that now I had two things to hunt if they ever tried to leave.
She’s as far gone as I am. She’s the only one who looks at the monster and asks it to growl.
I hear a soft shuffle behind me. I don’t have to turn around to know it’s her. She slides her arms around my waist, her head resting against my shoulder blades.
“You’re hovering again,” she whispers.
“I’m watching,” I correct. “There’s a difference.”
“He’ll be safe, Valerio. Or she will. No cellars.”
I turn in her arms, gripping her jaw with a hand that’s killed more people than I can count. I look down at her—at the woman who walked into the fire and decided to stay. How did I get so fucking lucky?
“They’ll be safe because I’ll be the only monster they ever have to fear,” I say. “And you… you’re never leaving this floor again. Not until I’ve made sure the world is empty of anyone who could look at you the wrong way.”
“I know,” she breathes, and she’s smiling. She doesn’t try to fight, because she knows that with a little please, I’ll give her everything she wants.
“I’m your prey, remember? You caught me. You kept me.”
I kiss her then. The Morelli blood is a sickness, a dark, heavy tide that swallows everything it touches. But as I pull her closer, feeling the life we created pulse between us, I realize I don’t want a cure.
I want the dark to stay exactly this deep.
I don’t use the word love with her. It’s a flabby, useless word. My father probably told my mother he loved her while he was beating her within an inch of her life.
But Charlotte is everything to me. My lawyers looked at me like I’d finally lost the last shred of my sanity when I put everything I own in her name—it’s all hers. If she woke up tomorrow and decided to ruin me, she could do it with a single phone call.
I can smell the expensive oil she uses, the one I ordered from a boutique in Paris because it reminded me of the way her skin tasted after we fought.
I enjoy everything with Charlotte. I enjoy eating with Charlotte. I enjoy fucking Charlotte. I enjoy fighting with Charlotte. There’s nothing Charlotte could do that I wouldn’t enjoy.
But sometimes, I don’t feel like I’m enough for her. She deserves a man who can tell her he loves her, who isn’t such a psychopath… but he won’t have her. Only me.
“I don’t tell you I love you because it’s too small,” I say. “It doesn’t cover the way I want to crawl inside your chest just to hear your heart from the inside. It doesn’t cover the fact that I’d dismember anyone who even thought about hurting you.”
I drop to my knees—my favorite place to be when we’re alone. I press my face against her stomach, where the skin is still flat.
“You’re my religion, Charlotte,” I mutter against the fabric of her robe. “My church. My god. I don’t need to say the words when my entire life is written in your name.”
“I’m obsessed with you too, Mr. Morelli.”
I reach up, pulling her head down for an even more desperate kiss.
“Say it,” I growl against her lips. “Tell me you’re never going to set me free.”
“The door is locked, Valerio,” she whispers. “And I threw away the key a long time ago.”