Chapter Three
Valen
I’d underestimated her.
She pointed the gun directly at my chest with barely a tremble in her hand.
I laughed, cold and dark, and took a step around the table toward her. If she thought a gun was going to scare me, she was in for a rude awakening. She narrowed her eyes and moved back, making her chair fall over in her attempt to put distance between us.
Seraphine Ashford.
The woman who’d pointed at me in a courtroom and said I was in her house that day. That I might have killed her friends. Tried to kill her.
But she hadn’t been sure.
It hadn’t mattered.
The jury had taken one look at her—young, beautiful, terrified to look at me—and decided “I don’t know” was good enough to convict me.
But the universe had a sick sense of humor. That was the only possible reason why when I’d opened my door last night, she’d lain there wounded at my feet like an offering from the Devil himself.
I could sense something in the air before she arrived. It was like the wind was laughing right before the screech of tires and bang in the distance.
Fate had put her on my doorstop, and I wasn’t going to turn down such a gracious gift.
“Put the gun down, Seraphine.” My voice was like silk wrapped around steel, the same tone that had made grown men in prison step aside. I wasn’t trying to frighten her, just make her listen before she did something stupid.
Maybe that was the problem. That was why she thought she could come into my cabin and pull a gun on me. I’d been trying to be reasonable. Levelheaded. Kind. Unintimidating.
All the things I’d been before I went to prison.
I’d gone in an innocent man, but I sure as fuck hadn’t left one. My hands were capable of violence I’d never imagined possible, and now they were stained with blood.
The first week in, some low-level drug dealer made a comment about the scar on my face. Laughed at my conviction. But he wasn’t laughing after I shattered his orbital bone and left him drinking his meals through a straw.
Nobody was.
It was either kill or be killed.
And I’d promised myself when they closed the bars in my face that I would survive and make everyone pay.
The first year I spent in a rage, building up a reputation as someone you didn’t want to fuck with. I was angry. At her, at the cops, the court. I hated her. Thought about her way too much. Her voice. Her mouth. The way she couldn’t look me in the eye when she pointed her trembling finger at me.
The second year, I wanted to die. I wanted her to.
By the third year, I wasn’t sure which of us deserved it more.
She fucking haunted me. I wanted her to suffer, to say she was wrong. To beg me for forgiveness. The obsession with her turned me into someone else.
Mean.
Violent.
The kind of man who would smile while breaking your fingers and let you scream until your voice gave out.
I’d kept replaying the trial over and over in my head, trying to make it make sense. But it never had, because I wasn’t the one who’d killed them.
Five years of replaying every lie. Of watching my life get buried because of another man’s sins.
His sins.
And every year I sat in there rotting, he walked around free. Breathing. Laughing. Living a life that wasn’t rightfully his.
But I knew one day I would get out, and I was going to find him and make him pay.
“Do you know how to use that, little lamb?” I took a step closer, trailing my fingers over the kitchen table where my knife still lay from breakfast. “Because I do. I’ve learned all types of useful skills recently.”
She visibly swallowed, her hand wavering, but the gun stayed aimed at me. I knew about the gun. I’d seen it last night when I searched her bag after saving her fucking life. I should have left her out in the snow. That was what a monster would have done.
Retribution.
The word tasted like blood on my tongue.
But leaving her out in the blizzard to die a simple death wasn’t going to be good enough. Not when she was one of the reasons I had lost almost everything.
She was here now.
In my space.
Mine to keep.
Mine to break.
I started undoing the buttons of my shirt. One. Two. Three. Deliberate. Slow.
“What are you doing?” Her voice rose an octave as I spread the fabric open.
I tapped the center of my chest, taking a step closer. “If you shoot me here, it’ll be quick. Straight to the heart. Easy.” I dragged my fingers down, her gaze following, until I reached just under my ribs. “But here?” I shook my head. “Slower. Messier.”
Her hand twitched as I held her eyes. I wanted her to imagine it. Did she have the guts to do it? She bit her bottom lip, and that was all I needed to see.
I moved before she could even blink, grabbed her wrist and twisted.
Not enough to hurt her, but enough for the gun to slip from her fingers and clatter to the floor.
She gasped as I stepped closer and twisted her arm behind her back.
Her breath caught when I slammed her back into my chest and wrapped my other arm around her waist, securing her to me.
Her heartbeat was hammering wildly. Mine was steady. Unfazed and unhurried.
“I spent five years thinking about what I would do when I finally got you alone,” I murmured against her ear. She trembled in my arms, tried to break free, but it was no use. I had her locked to me.
“When?” she whispered.
“Hm?” I inhaled, letting myself enjoy the scent of her hair. Lilacs and sunlight and rage.
“You said when you saw me. Not if you saw me.” There was a quiver in her voice that hadn’t been there before.
“Oh, Seraphine…” I eased the pressure on her wrist just enough for her to feel it but not break free. “It was always going to be when.”
She slammed her head back, barely missing my nose by centimeters.
I chuckled and tightened my hand around her stomach until her body molded to mine.
Her flesh was warm where her shirt had ridden up, and I hated how soft she felt.
It made me want to punish her for it, even as some sick part of me wanted to keep her there.
“And you know what I didn’t think would happen?
” My breath brushed against her ear, making her shiver.
“That the first time I’d see you again, it’d be dragging your half-dead body out of the snow.
Stitching you up. Watching you breathe, hour after hour, just to make sure you didn’t die.
Only for you to repay me by aiming a gun at my fucking heart. ”
The last few words snapped out, breaking through my control.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and the sound sliced through me.
I laughed, unable to keep the bitterness at bay. “For which part? For ruining my life, or for trying to kill me?”
She turned her head, trying to meet my eyes. “Courtney said it was you,” she choked out, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. “She said it was you.”
My chest tightened and my hands locked harder around her, forcing her back against me until she gasped. “But you didn’t see me, did you? Tell me, Seraphine.” I was desperate to hear her say it. “Say the words you should have said in that courtroom.”
She trembled in my arms, her body going slack. “I didn’t see you kill my friends,” she whispered.
I closed my eyes, the words tearing through me. Six years I’d waited to hear them, but they did little to ease the turmoil running through me. It was too little, too late. If she thought she was going to be forgiven, she was wrong. Forgiveness was a luxury I wasn’t accustomed to.
“Tell me why you’re here, little lamb. Why you walked straight into the lion’s den.”
She stiffened in my arms, and I felt the lie before she even spoke it.
“It was time to come home.” She sounded like a robot, like she’d rehearsed the answer a million times. Her pulse betrayed her, hammering against my palm.
I growled deep in my chest and marched us over to the window. Frost covered the glass, even though I’d had the fireplace roaring all night.
“Look at that storm, Seraphine.” It was a whiteout outside.
Snow had drifted up the exterior of the cabin, and you could barely make out the tree line.
There was at least three feet of snow, and there was no sign of it stopping.
“That storm keeps you here. The safest place for you is inside these walls. You step outside, you die. And if you die on my land, I go to prison. Do you understand?” I squeezed until she nodded, her breath shuddering.
“If you pull a weapon on me again, or if you try to leave before I say so, I will tie you down and make you beg to stay. Do you understand?”
She nodded frantically.
“Good.” I let my hands fall and stepped back. “Now sit down and eat your fucking breakfast.”
I left her at the kitchen table, my plate of food mostly untouched.
She sat there, her fork shaking as her gaze followed me down the hall.
She touched the scar on her neck, the one the real killer had given her, as if out of habit.
I unlocked the door to my office at the far end and slipped inside, making sure I locked all the deadbolts.
The room smelled of ink and paper. And obsession. Maps covered one wall, highways and cities marked in red, pins pushed in marking every place the most recent murders had taken place, and every city Seraphine had recently been.
She’d been a ghost for five years. No social media.
No trail. Believe me, I’d checked. Then, when I’d been released, the killings had started again.
First in California, a group of college women with their eyes cut out and throat slit.
A hiker in Colorado. A bachelorette party in Texas.
Always the same signature. Always overkill.
I’d had an alibi for each and every one. But I knew the killer wasn’t trying to frame me this time. He was toying with me. But even worse, he was toying with her. All the victims looked exactly like Seraphine had back in college.
It had to be the reason she’d resurfaced.