Suha doesn’t smile. He just stares at me, his expression unreadable in the half-light. The chaos of the cleanup continues around us, but in this little bubble of space, it goes quiet. “You knew it was him,” he says finally. Not a question. A statement, flat and sure.
I affect my best look of wide-eyed innocence. “I’m not sure I follow.”
“Don’t.” The word is a shard of ice. He takes a step closer, and the scent of him washes over me.
He doesn’t touch me. He just looks down, his dark eyes picking me apart. “I’ve watched you take down some of my best guys. I’ve watched you give my trained trackers the slip more times than I can count. There’s no way you let a bunch of second-rate loan sharks get the jump on you. Not unless you wanted them to.” His voice drops. “You let them catch you on purpose.”
The act drops. I shrug, the movement pulling at the cut on my palm. A fresh bead of blood swells and drips onto the asphalt.“You wouldn’t accept my help when I told you I could find your uncle.”
For a second, something hot and furious flashes in his eyes, there and gone so quickly I might have imagined it. His jaw tightens. “So you gambled your life that I would come rescue you, just to lead me to him?”
I can’t help the snort that escapes me. It makes my ribs protest. “There was no real risk involved. I know you by now.” I tap my temple with my good hand. “The tracker, remember? The moment you saw me heading somewhere suspicious on your little screen, you’d be on it like flies on shit.” I take a final drag and flick the cigarette butt into a dark puddle. “Honestly, I was expecting to have to endure your uncle’s charming hospitality a little longer. You got here faster than I expected.” I tilt my head, studying him. The perfect suit, the impeccable hair, the utter lack of sweat or strain. “Were you already following me or something?”
He ignores my question. His focus is absolute, a laser pointed right at the heart of my little scheme. “How did you know?” he asks, his voice dangerously soft. “How did you know it was my uncle?”
This is the part I’m proud of. I let a slow, smug smile spread across my face, feeling the split in my lip stretch. “Saw a picture online. Your dad’s funeral.” I watch his expression, but it’s carved from stone. “When I first took the money from the sharks, years ago, it was him who signed off on it. I never forgot a face that smug. Put it together a few days ago.”
Suha lets out a slow breath through his nose. He looks away, over the scene of his men working, and for a moment he just seems tired. The anger bleeds out of his posture. When he looks back at me, there’s a faint, incredulous shake of his head. “It was suicidal, but you did solve a problem for me.”
For a long moment, he doesn’t say anything. He just holds my gaze, and I watch something unfamiliar move behind his eyes. It’s not anger or even that cold amusement he gets when he’s about to do something particularly creative to me. It’s the same flicker I caught a glimpse of in his bedroom, when he’d accused me of pretending to care. It’s vulnerability, laid bare for a heartbeat before he shuts it down.
But he doesn’t shut it down completely this time. A trace of it lingers in the set of his mouth, in the slight softening of the severe lines around his eyes.
“I’m not going to chase you anymore,” he says, and his voice is quieter than I’ve ever heard it outside of the dark, just before sleep takes him. “If you want to go, you can go.” He pauses, and his next words land with a quiet certainty that makes my breath catch. “But I don’t think you do.”
My heart suddenly kicks into a wild, frantic tempo. I go completely still, the smirk freezing on my bloody lips.
He continues, his voice steady but weighted. “I’m going to give you a last chance. The choice has to be yours.” He gestures vaguely toward the dark street beyond the warehouse alley. “You can walk away today. Right now. I will stop coming after you. I will stop sending my men. But,” and here his eyes lock onto mine, unblinking, “I will also turn you away if you come back to me. That door will be closed.”
He takes a small step closer, not invading my space, but making his presence utterly inescapable. “But if you choose to come back with me now, then you stay. Permanently. You will follow my rules. You will move out of that cardboard box you’re living in and into my home. As mine.” He lets the word hang there, heavy with implication. “But you must make the choice. After that, there is no going back. No more games. No more running. You are either in, or you are out.”
He tips his head slightly, studying my face as if trying to memorize it. “Think carefully,” he says, and the command is soft, almost gentle. “I’ll be in the car.”
Then he turns. Just like that. His expensive shoes make a soft, deliberate sound on the wet asphalt as he walks away, his broad back a dark silhouette. He doesn’t look back. He just gets into the back of the sleek black sedan idling at the mouth of the alley. The door closes with a solid, finalthunk.
And I am left alone.
The silence he leaves behind is heavy.
I’m not going to chase you anymore.
The words aren’t a threat. They’re a gift. A grenade with the pin already pulled, handed to me gently.
He’s giving me my freedom. Actually giving it. No more games, no more henchmen appearing out of shadows, no more furious phone calls lighting up my screen. I could walk away right now. I could go back to my shitty apartment, back to the ring, back to the restless, empty searching that defined my life before I saw him in that alley. I could be free.
But that’s not what he’s really offering, is it?
He’s offering me a choice. A real one. The first one he’s ever given me that didn’t involve which toy he was going to use next. Walk away, and the door slams shut. Permanently. No coming back when the bond aches too much, no sneaking in through his window, no more of this electric, terrifying dance. It would be over.
Or get in the car. Go back with him. Stay. Permanently.
As mine.
Not as a pet. Not as a temporary distraction. Not even as a bonded obligation. He saidas mine. The way he said it... it wasn’t the cold command of a boss claiming property. It was quieter. It was a statement of fact, and beneath it, a question he would never, ever voice out loud.
I look down at my hand. The blood is starting to congeal at the edges of the cut, but the center wells fresh and red when I flex my fingers. I think about the other marks. The faint scar from his knife, the deeper bites on my shoulders that still ache in the morning, the fresh, angry burns on my thighs. The cool weight of the nipple bars, the oppressive, humiliating confinement of the cage. The tracker, a tiny, cold secret buried deep inside my ass. Ownership written on my skin and under it.
I think about the cage beside his bed. The collar. The way he looks at me sometimes, not with anger, but with a focus so intense it feels like he’s trying to see the wiring underneath.
