3. Drystan
Chapter Three
DRYSTAN
Eight in the morning and she’s already leaving for work.
Still punctual. That much hasn’t changed.
She used to bounce out the door for practice wearing soft blouses that catch the light.
Now she steps into the gray drizzle wearing a high, tight bun of black hair, a faded black-and-grey hoodie, and cargo pants that swallow her frame.
My heart beats harder, faster. If I blink, I’m terrified she’ll disappear again.
The moment she turns the corner, I move.
Hood up, gloves tight, duffel heavy against my thigh. Rain slicks the pavement as I cross the street, boots silent. The apartment building looks even more pathetic up close, peeling paint, cracked concrete, a front door that doesn’t even latch properly. One push and it swings open.
“It’s fucking broken.” I mutter under my breath.
Her father has money and when her mother died five years ago I know she left her money.
It kills me that I wasn’t there to check on her but I sent black hellebore to the funeral, unsigned, of course. She wouldn’t have known the name anyway. I was always there, always watching, but I never allowed her to speak to me.
I climb the stairs two at a time, heart hammering against my ribs. Her apartment door is the last one on the left, it’s made out of old cracked wood with a flimsy lock. The tool in my hand makes short work of it. A soft click, and I’m inside.
The air is warm and smells like her, faint orange blossom, floral shampoo, and something faintly sweet from the bakery still clinging to her clothes. My chest tightens. I close the door behind me and stand in the silence, breathing her in.
This is love. This is necessary. She belongs to me. She always has. I’m simply taking back what was stolen when they locked me away.
Her living room is small. One little couch, a second-hand coffee table, a dying plant on the windowsill and books.
I move fast but carefully, placing the first miniature camera high in the corner where it blends with the light fixture. Another behind the television. One more angled at the front door so I’ll know the exact second she comes home each night.
The moment I step into her bedroom, the madness surges—a living thing inside my chest.
Her bed is unmade, sheets twisted and tangled. I drop the duffel and move straight to the pillow she rested her head on. I pick it up with both hands and bury my face in it, inhaling so deeply my lungs burn.
A guttural groan tears from my throat. My eyes roll shut. Six years I jerked off in a concrete cell to the ghost of this scent. Now it’s real, warm from her body, soaked into the fabric, and my cock hardens so violently it hurts, straining against my pants.
“You’re mine.” I breathe out into the pillow, voice cracking with reverence and madness. “You’ve always been mine.”
I set the pillow down exactly as I found it, but not before I reach out and carefully pluck three long black strands of her hair from where they cling to the fabric. I wrap them around my fingers like a rosary, then tuck them into my jacket pocket, closest to my heart.
I open her nightstand drawer and find a small, worn hair tie. I bring it to my nose, inhale, then slip it onto my wrist. It’s my new charm, a piece of her that will always be with me.
One deep breath and I continue planting.
One camera in the corner above the dresser, angled perfectly to watch her undress.
One tiny microphone under the bedside table, close enough to hear every breath she takes in sleep.
Another in the bathroom, high enough to capture her in the shower, water running down her naked body, the way her hands move over her skin.
Every device I install calms the roaring in my head.
I’m fixing this. I’m correcting six years of emptiness. When she’s finally chained to my bed at Hellebore, she’ll never know how deeply I’ve already lived inside her life.
In the tiny bathroom cabinet, I see the box of black hair dye.
Rage explodes through me like molten glass. I snatch it up, knuckles bone-white, crushing the cardboard until it buckles and tears.
She butchered her beautiful honey hair. She destroyed the one thing I kept sacred and untouched inside that cage for six fucking years.
“You don’t get to ruin what’s mine,” I growl into the empty room, voice shaking with barely contained violence. “You don’t get to change a single thing about yourself unless I allow it.”
I shove the ruined box into my duffel. She won’t be dyeing it again. Not while I’m watching. Not ever.
I finish the last placements, a tracker slipped under the lining of her favorite purse, another sewn into the hem of her jacket. Then I stand in the center of her bedroom, breathing hard, surrounded by the evidence of her life without me.
I press my forehead against the wall, eyes closed, cock still aching:
“Soon, my love. Soon you’ll understand that every breath you take is a mercy I allow.”
Everything is quiet. Everything is perfect.
I step outside her door, pull a single black hellebore from my pocket, and lay it gently on the threshold. The dark petals look almost wet against the linoleum.
A calling card. A promise. A warning.
She won’t understand it yet, but soon she will feel me everywhere, in the walls, in the silence, in the sudden certainty that she is no longer alone.
I pull the door shut behind me, reset the lock, and disappear down the stairs the same way I came.
The rain is still falling when I reach the BMW. I open the laptop on the passenger seat. One by one, the screens flicker to life.
There it is. Twelve perfect angles of her empty apartment, waiting for her return.
I lean back in the leather seat, breathing hard, a slow, unhinged smile pulling at my mouth.
“Come home, Briar. I’m already inside.”
The waiting is killing me.
I spent hours inside her apartment earlier, moving through the quiet rooms with careful precision, hiding every camera, placing every microphone so I could catch the soft rhythm of her breathing even when she thinks she is alone.
Every tracker is synced now to the laptop glowing on the passenger seat beside me.
The rain has not stopped. It drums steadily against the roof of the car, matching the violent rhythm pounding inside my skull.
I should feel calm. I should feel in control after setting everything in place.
Instead the voice in my head screams the same demand over and over: Grab her.
Take her now. Drag her back to Hellebore tonight.
I grip the steering wheel until the leather groans under my fingers. No. Not yet. I need to learn this new version of her first, every changed habit, every secret, every crack in the perfect girl I kept frozen in my mind. Only then will I bring her home.
I glance at the clock on the dashboard.
She is late.
She is never late.
My jaw aches from how tightly I clench it. The screens on the laptop flicker between the twelve feeds, showing nothing but empty rooms and silent walls, waiting.
Headlights cut through the rain. My spine snaps straight.
There she is. Black hoodie pulled up, hair in a tight bun, that cheap VW pulling into her usual spot. But she is not alone.
A man climbs out of the passenger side, that fucking asshole smile plastered across his face.
“Who the fuck is that?” The words rip out of me in a low growl. My entire body starts shaking, the tremor running through my arms and into the wheel.
He follows her to the building door. The fucker does not even hold it open for her. He just stands there laughing at something she said, hands shoved casually into his pockets.
I switch frantically to the camera aimed at her door. The black hellebore lies exactly where I left it on the threshold.
She stops and stares at it.
The man walks around her, bends down, and picks it up. “Have a secret admirer, bunny?”
Bunny.
The word slices through me like a blade dragged across bone. My vision tunnels red at the edges.
“No,” I hiss through gritted teeth. My hands shake so hard the laptop screen trembles on the seat. “No. No. No!”
She smiles—that small, soft smile that used to belong only to me in my memories—and takes the flower from his hand. “Aren’t these toxic?”
He makes a dramatic scowl. “Shit, I need to wash my hands. Someone’s trying to kill you.” He chuckles as if it is the funniest thing he has ever said.
Oh, you stupid, dead fucking meat.
I will kill you so slowly you will beg God to take you.
First I will carve that filthy tongue out of your mouth with a dull blade so you can never call her “bunny” again. I will keep you awake for every second of it, sawing through muscle and flesh until all that remains is a ragged, bleeding hole that can only gurgle and you choke on your own blood.
Then I will take my time with the rest of you.
I will peel the skin from your fingers, the same fingers that dared touch what is mine.
I will break every single bone in your hands one by one until they are useless crushed things.
I will cut out your eyes so you never look at her again.
I will rip out your heart so you never feel anything for her again.
Because she is mine.
She has always been mine.
I will burn this entire fucking city to the ground and paint the streets red before I let another worthless piece of shit think he has any right to what belongs to me.
“No. No.” I breathe the words out loud, forcing them past the rage choking my throat. “Drystan, keep it together. We wait. We fucking wait.” I repeat it like a mantra, knuckles white on the wheel.
She unlocks the door. The man follows her inside without waiting, without any respect. The second the door clicks shut behind them, he is on her.
He pushes her against the wall. His mouth crashes down on hers and one of his hands gropes her breast hard, squeezing, claiming.
She lets him.
She. Fucking. Lets him.
I can’t breathe.