Chapter Eleven
Chapter Ten
Marius
She doesn’t stop shaking. It isn’t the kind of trembling that comes in bursts or fades with time.
It lives in her now, quiet but constant, threading through her muscles in a way that makes it clear her body hasn’t yet understood that the immediate danger is over.
I feel it through every point of contact she allows.
Through the careful way her fingers clutch my coat.
Through the uneven rise and fall of her breathing against my chest. Through the small, involuntary shifts of her weight as if she is still bracing for something that is no longer happening but has not yet released her.
I don’t tighten my hold. Every instinct in me demands it.
To close the space between us entirely. To anchor her to me in a way nothing can break.
To remove even the possibility of distance.
I force myself to remain measured. My hand stays steady at her back, firm enough to support her, light enough that she can pull away if she chooses to.
My other hand rests at the base of her neck, not gripping, not guiding, simply present, a point she can feel and reject if she needs to.
I watch her for every sign of that rejection. It doesn’t come.
Instead, her grip on my coat tightens in small, uneven increments, as though she is holding on without fully realizing she is doing it.
Her fingers twist into the fabric, knuckles paling, her body leaning into me in fractions rather than in one single movement, each inch of closeness something she allows rather than something I take.
That matters. More than anything else in this moment, it matters.
I shift slightly, adjusting my posture so more of her weight rests against me without altering her position in any way she might interpret as control.
The movement is subtle. Practiced. Something I learned long ago in different contexts, around different kinds of damage.
It feels entirely different with her. There is no calculation here.
No strategy. Only awareness. Only restraint.
“She’s in shock,” Willem says from the front seat, his voice kept low.
“I know.”
I don’t look away from her. The words come automatically, but the truth sits heavier than I allow to show.
I’ve seen shock before. I’ve caused it. I know the signs.
The detachment. The tremor. The way the body goes on reacting long after the moment itself has ended.
This is different because it’s hers. Because her body is trying to survive what was done to it, and mine is the first hand she hasn’t recoiled from after.
She shifts against me, a small movement that sends a sharp breath through her teeth as if even that much motion hurts. I feel it immediately. My hand tightens for a fraction of a second before I force it to ease again, loosening my grip just enough to remind her she isn’t being held in place.
“Easy,” I say quietly.
Not an instruction. A promise.
My gaze drops briefly to her wrists where the marks are already darkening, the skin broken in places where the rope cut too deep.
I force myself not to linger there. The visible damage is the smallest part of what has been done to her.
I know that. I feel that. It coils in my chest, sharp and controlled in a way that makes it far more dangerous.
It isn’t only anger. Anger burns hot and then burns out.
This doesn’t. Something colder settles in its place.
Possession. The thought surfaces without invitation, primitive and immediate.
Mine.
I shut it down the second it appears. Not because it isn’t real.
Because it has no place here. Not with her like this.
Not when she has just been stripped of every form of control that matters.
If I act on that instinct now, even in something as small as holding her too tightly, deciding too much, taking more comfort than she has offered, I become no different from the men I just put down. I won’t be that.
Her breathing shifts again, catching on something internal I can’t see but can feel in the way her body tightens against me. The tremor deepens before settling back into its constant rhythm. I adjust my hand at her back, slower this time, making sure she feels it before it happens.
“Do you need space?” I ask.
I don’t assume the answer. I wait.
For a moment she says nothing. Her fingers tighten in my coat, hesitation in the grip, the fragile calculation of what is safe and what isn’t. Then, barely above a whisper, she says, “No.”
Quiet. Clear.
I exhale slowly, something in my chest shifting into a different kind of tension.
“Okay.”
I don’t move. I leave everything exactly as she chose it.
Outside, the vehicle cuts through the forest road, headlights carving narrow paths through trees and darkness.
My men are already ahead, already tracking the one who escaped.
He won’t get far. Not in this terrain. Not tonight.
I glance forward once, toward the windshield, toward the direction he fled.
Then I look back at her. Gone. For now. Not for long.
The outcome is already decided. The only variable left is time.
She makes a small sound against my chest, something caught between a breath and a break, and everything else drops away.
“I’ve got you,” I say.
The words come easier now because they’re true. My hand shifts again at her back, slow, deliberate. My thumb brushes lightly against the fabric where her fingers cling. Small. Controlled. She tightens her grip in response. Leans closer. She doesn’t pull away. That’s enough.
I lean back against the seat, my gaze tracking every breath, every tremor, every fragile sign that she is still here, still present, not slipping too far beyond reach.
The instinct hasn’t disappeared. It sits beneath everything, sharp and unrelenting.
But it has changed shape. Not something to take.
Something to guard. Not something to claim.
Something to protect. For now, that’s all I allow myself.
It has to be enough. Because if I move too quickly, if I let that darker part of me take shape in action instead of thought, I become something she fears.
And that is the one thing I refuse to be.
So I hold her exactly as she allows. No more. No less.
The rest of the violence can wait.
By the time we leave the forest road and hit pavement, the tremor hasn’t lessened.
It has changed. She is quieter now, her breathing still uneven but no longer breaking apart.
The shaking has settled deeper, internal now.
Her grip loosens slightly, but she doesn’t let go.
Her body is shifting from reaction into something slower.
Something that will take longer to surface.
I watch all of it. I don’t interrupt. The drive stretches longer than it should.
It doesn’t actually take long. It only feels that way.
Time shifted the moment I saw her in that cabin.
Everything after that is measured differently.
Distance. Silence. Breath. Pain. All of it distorts around her.
We reach the estate. The gates open before we stop, wrought iron unfurling inward between stone pillars blackened by age and weather.
Beyond them, the drive curves through old trees and clipped hedges toward the house, which rises out of the dark in lit windows and hard lines of stone and slate.
The de Witt estate was never built to feel welcoming.
It was built to endure. My great-grandfather started with a hunting lodge and a freight office on the lower road.
My grandfather rebuilt after the fire and made certain the second version looked less like a home and more like permanence made architectural.
Local stone. Welsh slate. Leaded glass. Ironwork ordered from an old foundry in Albany that no longer exists.
The sort of place that tells visitors, before they ever cross the threshold, that whatever happens here will happen on de Witt terms.
My family built its power the same way it built this house.
Publicly, it was legacy. Industry. Land.
One more old Dutch family rooted deep enough into the Catskills that people stopped asking where the roots ended and the rot began.
Privately, it was routes. Warehouses. Contracting lines.
Timber access. Quiet leverage held over judges, councilmen, deputies, and men too indebted to remember where the favor started.
My father liked to say the smartest violence was the kind hidden beneath polished floors and family portraits.
The house was part of that performance. Respectability above.
Teeth below. Since taking control, I have stripped some of the performance away.
Less clutter. Fewer staff. More locked doors.
The bones remain de Witt. The discipline of it is mine.
My gaze flicks to her. She hasn’t looked up yet. Good.
The vehicle stops. The engine cuts. Silence follows, but it is a different kind now. Not the silence of the woods. Not the silence of aftermath. This one belongs to walls, gates, and decisions made long before either of us was born.
“We’re here,” I say.
She stirs slowly. Her head lifts first. Her body follows more reluctantly. “Where…” Her voice is rough enough to catch. She looks past me through the window and freezes. Confusion first. Then something sharper.
“This isn’t my farm.”
“No.” I don’t soften it. “It’s not.”
Her hand tightens in my coat. Not pain this time. Awareness. Her eyes find mine.
“Why am I here?”
Clear. Present. She is coming back into herself in increments, enough to question, enough to challenge.
“Because your farm isn’t secure,” I say evenly. “And whoever ordered this knows where it is.”
She goes still. Understands.
“They could come back.”
Not a question.
“They will.”
I don’t lie. Not about this.