Chapter 14 REICH
REICH
That was too close. Too damn close.
She came back—just like I knew she would.
Predictable. Relentless.
But still, I had hoped—hoped that this time, she wouldn’t.
Not because I didn’t want to see her.
Not because I didn’t crave her nearness with a hunger that left me raw and restless.
But because every time she did, I made it worse.
Every time she stepped into my space, my world, I lost another piece of the control I’d spent years building.
And every time I pushed her away, every time I drove another splinter into her trust; I could feel something cracking beneath the surface.
In her and in me.
And when it finally broke, I wasn’t sure who would survive it.
I didn’t want to hurt her.
But it was a lie I told myself to stay sane.
Because I already was.
Every cold word.
Every hollow stare.
Every brutal dismissal.
It wasn’t just driving her away—it was dismantling her.
And somewhere deep in the rotted core of me, I knew I was setting the stage for something I couldn’t undo.
I was making her brittle and fragile.
Breaking her down into something I could hold in my hands.
And it wasn’t for mercy’s sake.
It was strategy.
Because when I took her—and I would—I needed her to trust me.
Stripped bare of resistance, pliable enough for me to extract every secret, every truth she had no idea she was keeping.
And I was making damn sure I was the only place she could turn when the bottom dropped out.
Her persistence was admirable.
But also, reckless.
There was something in her, something that wouldn’t be dismissed, a hunger for answers so fierce it was consuming her from the inside out.
She didn’t just want the truth.
She needed it.
The way a drowning woman needs air.
Like if she could just understand why the world had carved her into pieces, maybe she could stitch herself back together again.
Maybe she thought I was the key.
And maybe, in some twisted, cruel way—she was right.
I thought it was endearing.
But mostly, it was a liability.
And liabilities needed to be controlled.
But she kept saying my name, as if she’d known me for years instead of days.
And I came undone.
Something about the way she said it and what that did to me.
It begged to destroy me.
My control, already hanging by a thread, snapped with a single syllable from her lips.
One look from her and every wall I had constructed with painstaking precision collapsed like sand under a rising tide.
And in that moment, I knew.
She was a danger to me in ways she could never comprehend.
She was the flaw in my system.
The variable I hadn’t accounted for.
And I couldn’t let her in.
Not until I had answers.
Not until she was mine.
Once she was under my protection, under my roof, in my bed—I would get them.
Every answer she didn’t even know she carried.
Every truth she’d buried to survive.
I’d uncover all of it.
Because I knew enough about Klay and his family to understand that their involvement with her was no accident.
The bounty made that clear.
A price on her head high enough to tempt the worst kind of men.
And Klay wasn’t just another piece of shit with too much power and not enough conscience.
He had to be obsessed.
Fixated.
And you don’t get that way unless there’s something you’re hiding.
Something you can’t afford to lose.
His loose end.
The key to something he was desperate to bury.
And I was going to extract it from her.
No matter what it cost.
Of course, there was always the small possibility—the shadow of doubt gnawing at the edges of my logic—that she was working with him.
That this was a setup from the beginning.
That I was being played.
But even that didn’t lessen the pull I felt toward her.
It didn’t kill the instinct to protect her.
Even if I didn’t know what I was protecting.
Or why.
Because the second Castor showed me that bounty, the decision had already been made.
I didn’t need to think.
If I didn’t get to her first, someone else would.
And if they got their hands on her before I did…
If she was innocent… she’d never see the light of day again.
So, I made a plan.
Simple. Efficient.
Hold her hostage. Uncover the truth. Keep her alive. Get to Klay. End it.
It should be easy.
It was the kind of thing Castor and I had done a thousand times over.
But my focus was a fragile thing around her.
She had the power to unravel me with a glance.
With a single word.
With every unguarded moment she handed me, I became less of the man I was supposed to be.
And more of the thing I swore I’d never become.
The third time she walked away, I saw it.
The shift.
She didn’t run.
She didn’t fight.
She lingered.
Just for a second, but long enough for me to see the crack in her armor.
The defeat in her eyes.
Her spirit—once stubborn, feral, wild—was cracked and subdued.
And I hated myself for it.
But it was necessary.
She had to stay away, until I was ready to bring her in for good.
Castor had grumbled about the plan for days. Called me a psycho more than once.
But he knew better than to challenge me outright.
I was the one who got us this far. I was the one who kept us alive. Cleaned up every mess. Fixed every mistake.
This was no different.
I told myself that until I almost believed it but if I was being honest with myself, something about this was different.
***
Later that night, I found myself in my studio.
The walls lined with shelves of my vinyl collection meticulously ordered. The faint scratch of the needle settling onto black grooves sounded like static in my head as I dropped into the worn leather chair by the window and closed my eyes while the music bled into the air.
I let the words swallow me whole.
The weight of its inevitability.
That beautiful wildflower had no idea what was coming for her.
No clue of the storm I was about to unleash.
I intended to be both her salvation and her ruin.
Her dream and her nightmare.
Because I wasn’t just going to take her life apart.
I was going to rebuild it.
Around me.
And if I had to burn everything else to the ground to get what I needed, so be it.
I hoped she was ready for the chaos that was about to erupt.
Because I knew that the next time she tried to walk away from me—it would be the last.