The Hellebore Obsession

1. Drystan

Chapter One

DRYSTAN

These motherfuckers kept me away from her for six fucking years. Six long, rotting years of concrete and steel and the constant ache of not having her under my hands. The cage is open now. I’m finally coming for what has always been mine.

“Behave now. We don’t want to see you back.” The guard’s voice scrapes at my back as I step through the gates. His words dissolve into the downpour before they even finish forming.

I will never set foot in this shithole again. I’d carve my own throat open with my own fingers as long as her pulse is beating next to mine when I go.

Rain hammers down, cold and relentless, the sky bruised black in the exact shade my chest has been every single day since they tore me from her.

Water sluices over my skin, soaking the cheap release clothes until they cling.

So many years of breathing the same stale air thick with piss and rust, dreaming night after night of those sweet blue eyes…

the way she used to drop them to the ground whenever someone raised their voice, like making herself smaller might keep the world from touching her.

A horn cuts through the roar of the storm. I tilt my head and start walking toward the shadowed line of trees where the black BMW X6 waits. The black matte paint drinks every scrap of light, swallowing it whole, born for days exactly like this one, perfectly invisible when I need to be a ghost.

The man in the suit steps forward, raising one gloved hand slowly to show me the key fob. “Mister Drystan.”

I take it without a word.

He nods toward the car. “Your father left this.” He hands me a sleek black suitcase. I set it on the hood; rain drums against the metal in steady, violent percussion. I flip the latches. Credit cards, thick stacks of cash, fresh documents. Everything I need to start over.

“Perfect.” I snap the case shut and drop it into the backseat.

He hesitates, voice low and I can hear the warning in the way he says it. “He also said to leave the girl alone.”

My spine locks straight. The smirk comes slow, curling one side of my mouth as I turn fully toward him.

I step in close, until I can smell his aftershave cutting through the wind, something too floral and chemical trying to hide the fear already leaking from his pores.

He’s six-one, solid through the shoulders, mid-forties.

He has a build that says ex-military or ex-cop, the type of man who still believes size and training matter against someone who has spent years waiting to see her again.

I lock my green eyes on his and let the words drip slowly. “The girl is mine. She always was.”

“Sir, your father said to—”

He doesn’t get to finish.

I drive the key fob into the side of his neck so hard the plastic housing cracks against my palm as the jagged edge punches through skin, through muscle, straight into the carotid.

Hot blood sprays in a violent arc across my wrist and chest, mixing instantly with the rain running in thick red ribbons down my pale skin, warm at first, then cooling fast in the storm.

He chokes, the sound is a wet, gurgling rasp that bubbles up from deep in his throat, hands flying up to claw at the wound, fingers slipping and his nails scraping uselessly against the torn edges.

His knees buckle and he drops hard, splashing into the muddy gravel, still trying to plug the hole with both hands while arterial blood pulses between his knuckles in rhythmic jets, each one weaker than the last.

I crouch over him, one knee pressing into his heaving chest so he can’t crawl away.

My fingers wrap around the back of his neck, slick and warm from the blood.

I lift his head just enough to watch his eyes widen, pupils blown black with shock and the slow, dawning realization that this is it, that the rain will be the last thing he ever feels.

“No one—” I murmur, voice almost tender as I lean in until our faces are inches apart, breath mingling with the copper mist rising between us. “—will come between me and her.”

I let go. His head smacks back against the ground with a wet crack.

He thrashes once, twice. His legs kicking uselessly, heels digging furrows in the wet dirt, then the movements turn sluggish, weaker, the wet choking sounds slowing to a bubbling rattle that fades into the roar of the storm.

Blood pools beneath his skull, spreading dark and glossy under the downpour, mixing with the mud, thick and shining.

His eyes stay open, staring past me at nothing, the light bleeding out of them the same way the life bleeds out of his neck in slowing pulses.

I wait until the last shallow wheeze stops, until the only sound left is rain drumming on the car roof and the faint drip-drip-drip from his ruined throat.

I stand and drag him by the wrists, his body heavy, limp and already cooling fast. I drag him deep into the tree line where the shadows are thickest. Branches snag at his suit as I pull, tearing fabric with sharp little pops, leaving long wet streaks of blood on leaves and bark that the rain immediately begins to dilute.

I arrange him against a trunk so he looks almost peaceful, head lolled to the side, mouth slack and full of dark clots.

I wipe the key fob on his jacket until the worst of the red is gone, pocket it, and walk back to my car.

The engine snarls awake under my hands and I roll the car out from the tree line, slow, lights off, gravel barely whispering under the tires. The body’s tucked deep in the bushes, no one’s finding that mess for days. When they do, I’ll be in another country.

I hit the highway. New phone in my palm, I thumb the music app. Bad Omens “Like A Villain” slams through the speakers, bass punching my ribs. Twenty-two hours. Twenty-two fucking hours of blacktop and diesel until I’m close enough to smell her again.

Her scent is crawling up the back of my throat again, so sweet and warm.

I can still see it: sixteen, ponytail swinging, little scared eyes that never quite met anyone’s for long.

She was nervous when I first noticed her.

I was playing rugby, seventeen years old, tired of everything and everyone until I saw her.

Scared but she never quit. She got vicious with that racket, best on the team by the end of summer.

I sat in the bleachers every single match, my jaw locked so tight my teeth felt as if they were going to crack.

Never spoke to her. Never touched her. She was too perfect.

I needed her frozen exactly like that, honey hair catching every ray of light, cheeks flushed soft pink, the same girl I would come back for when I was ready.

She went to Seattle for college and I followed, didn’t give a fuck about classes so I paid who I had to.

The ones who said no got a visit, one less finger, one split ear, one kneecap gone in a dark parking lot.

My father kept wiring the money. He thought his psycho son was finally “doing something with his life”.

I was. I was keeping her in my sight, keeping her exactly as she was.

Until that greedy piece of shit got caught.

Stole from the wrong thieves. Crypto bullshit.

Thought no one would care because they were all dirty too.

They cared. The FBI cared. I was twenty-one.

My old man looked me dead in the eye and swore, “You’re young, clean sheet, it’ll just be a slap on the wrist. Maybe a year, tops.

Take the fall for me, son.” So I did. I took every charge. Thought it was nothing.

They lied.

The judge had a hard-on for my father. One of the idiots Dad bled dry put a bullet in his own skull.

Suddenly it was all my fault. Six years.

Six fucking years in a concrete cage that reeked of piss and metal.

I was counting every single day and her face was the only thing that kept me from chewing through the bars.

In my head she never changed. Same beautiful hair swinging across campus, same nervous little smile, same soft light under her skin.

I held her there, untouched, perfect, waiting for me.

I flex my hands on the wheel at the memory. The cold cell, the noises, the screams. I wasn’t ready but I became ready.

Fuck, I miss her.

Her face keeps flickering on the dark windshield: that nervous little smile when she tripped at campus that one time, looking around to see if anyone saw her, never knowing I was twenty feet behind her in the shadows, lungs full of her orange-blossom scent, heart slamming so hard my ribs hurt.

Even in prison, she never left me. Not for one fucking day.

In that hellhole, while everyone else rotted, I worked.

I got help. One of the lifers had a cousin on the outside—some greasy fuck who knew how to dig without asking questions.

I paid in commissary cash, smuggled packs, promises of more when I got out.

And he found her in a small town in Canada.

She quit college and is now working at some hole-in-the-wall bakery.

A bakery. She was supposed to be a doctor, she was supposed to be saving people.

Touching them with those soft hands, making them feel cared for.

How the fuck does my perfect thing end up wrist-deep in flour and sugar?

It burns. It burns behind my eyes every time I blink.

She’s wasting herself, throwing away what she was meant to be but I’ll fix it.

She lives in a one-bedroom apartment on a cheap street. She drives a tiny old Volkswagen. Why? Where the fuck is her father? Why isn’t anyone dragging her back to the path? Why is she alone, scraping by, when she could’ve had everything? The questions claw up my throat, but I swallow them down.

First stop sign ahead. I ease off the gas, the car purring low under me. I punch the address into the GPS, a little detour I have to make before I keep going to Kelowna.