CHAPTER SIXTEEN
DAMIEN
She lied.
She fucking lied.
I pace the length of the abandoned storeroom, fists clenched so tight my knuckles crack. My chest feels like it’s going to split open from the pressure building inside me. Every breath is too loud, every heartbeat a fucking gunshot in my skull.
A brother.
She says he’s her brother.
But I’ve studied her. Obsessed over her. Stalked her for years like a disciplined animal. I’ve seen her habits, her playlists, her bedroom drawers, her trash. I’ve read the letters she never sent. Watched the videos she didn’t know she recorded.
And not once—not fucking once—did she mention a brother?
Not in the school records. Not in the medical files. Not in the surveillance notes I paid a quarter of a million for.
She doesn’t remember me. She doesn’t fucking remember me, it shouldn’t hurt. It was a long time ago but it does.
Not once looking into her past was a brother mentioned, it would have popped up, I would have known.
So either she’s lying.
Or someone else is.
And I don’t know which version of that truth I want to destroy more.
She’s in the other room. Sitting on the floor, silent, with her arms wrapped around her knees like a child. I haven’t locked the door. I don’t need to.
She won’t run again.
Not now that she’s seen what I become when I’m angry.
I stare at my bloodstained hands. Not hers—mine. From punching the wall hard enough to split the skin. I didn’t even feel it.
All I could feel was the shift. The crack. The second the fantasy rotted because I’m not just obsessed with Raven.
I built my entire world around her.
Since I found her, I have painted every room I’ve lived in, in her image. Every woman who looked at me was compared to her. Every single part of me that felt human again—came from imagining her beneath me, screaming my name.
And if she lied?
If she manipulated me—
“Don’t,” I growl to myself, pressing the heel of my hand to my temple. “Don’t think it. Not yet.”
Because if she did—
If this whole thing is a trap—
Then I’ll burn every fucking building she’s ever walked in to the ground just to watch her scream for me.
I storm back into the room. She startles, flinches like she thinks I’m going to hit her.
Fuck.
The way she was so scared when she looked at me—It short-circuits something in my chest.
I kneel in front of her slowly, my bloodied hand resting on the floor.
“Raven,” I say, and my voice comes out wrong. Quiet. Strained. “Tell me the truth. Just the truth. Was he ever in your life? Is he who you say he is?”
She nods. Swallows. Her voice is soft, broken.
“He’s my half-brother. We weren’t close. I never told anyone about him. Not even friends. Not even my mother. We… we didn’t talk for years.”
I study her face.
She’s not blinking very much.
She’s not looking away.
She’s telling the truth.
And it hurts to believe her. Because if she’s not lying—then someone else fucked with the file. Someone else deliberately erased him.
Which means someone else knew I was watching her.
Someone else touched my obsession.
I reach up, brushing her hair away from her face, and she doesn’t flinch this time.
“Did he touch you?” I ask too calmly.
She nods. “He hugged me.”
My jaw flexes.
I force myself to nod. Then I press my forehead to hers.
“I believe you,” I whisper. “But I’m still going to put a knife to his throat until he explains why I didn’t know he existed.”
She sucks in a sharp breath.
And I smile.
“That’s not rage, Raven.” I kiss the tip of her nose. “That’s love.”
She doesn’t pull away.
That’s the most dangerous part.
Not her lies. Not her secrets. Not the half-brother I didn’t see coming.
It’s that she’s still here. Still breathing me in. Still letting me touch her.
And that means I still have her.
Even if I have to break the world in half to keep her.
I cup the back of her neck, my fingers threaded through the soft strands of her hair. She’s warm beneath my palms. Real. Shaking, but not from fear—no, I know her tremors. They’re the kind that come when control is stripped away.
The kind I taught her to love.
I press my mouth to her cheek, then lower. Her neck. Her collarbone. I kiss every inch of skin not already bruised by me.
A prayer.
A promise.
A brand.
“He touched what’s mine,” I whisper against her throat, voice like smoke. “That makes him a problem.”
She closes her eyes.
I don’t tell her I already sent the photo from the surveillance footage to my contact at the docks. I don’t tell her that by sunrise, I’ll have every detail on her brother—real or not. I’ll know where he works. Where he sleeps. What he fears.
If he’s clean, I’ll scare him.
If he’s not, I’ll bury him.
Because I don’t share.
But just as I lower my hand again, brushing the hem of her shirt—
My phone buzzes.
I snarl, pulling back, one hand still on her throat as I check the screen.
Unknown number. No name. No ID. Just coordinates.
And a single sentence:
She’s not just yours, Damien. I touched her first.
The world narrows to a pinpoint.
Raven stiffens beneath me.
Because she sees it in my face.
I’ve gone still.
Not quiet. Not calm.
Frozen.
Like a wire pulled taut and seconds from snapping.
I lower the phone slowly, my hand shaking—a thing I swore I’d never do.
And then I look at her.
Really look.
She’s watching me like she knows the storm’s about to break.
Like she knows someone else has stepped onto my game board and tipped over the queen.
“Who sent this?” I ask, voice barely audible.
She shakes her head, terrified. “I don’t know what that is.”
I believe her.
Which is worse.
Because someone sent this on purpose.
Not to warn me.
To provoke me.
To let me know—I’m being watched.
I stand. Slowly. Phone clutched in one hand. My other curls into a fist so tight I feel the bone grind.
“Someone touched you before I did.”
My voice is hollow. Mechanical. Like it’s coming from outside my own body.
She pushes to her feet, reaching for me.
“Damien. Look at me—”
I do.
And she flinches.
Because she’s never seen me like this.
Not unhinged.
Not unravelling.
Not vulnerable.
“No one touches what’s mine,” I whisper, but it’s not for her. It’s to whatever god is listening. “No one stalks the stalker. No one watches what I claimed.”
She’s saying something, but I don’t hear it.
All I can hear is the voice on the message. The phantom behind the screen.
“She’s not just yours.”
And suddenly, my obsession isn’t just an obsession anymore.
It’s war.