Cason.
My thoughts keep jumping around, but now they finally stick.
“Where is he?” I ask, the question cutting through everything else.
Malcolm tilts his head, studying me. I don’t believe he’s having to think too hard of who it is I’m talking about, but his gaze is unreadable as he answers.
“He’s alive. Safe.”
Relief hits fast and hard, followed just as quickly by something else, something darker and more dangerous.
“Good,” I mutter with a slight nod of my head.
Malcolm watches with quiet interest. “You know you can never see him again.”
There’s an underlying threat in his tone, one I’m not sure if it’s directed toward me or Cason. It’s clear that Malcolm is responsible for my current situation and probably more than I realize. It’s not so difficult for me to imagine he’d threaten his own nephew.
What I felt before grows, becoming stronger, uglier.
No one will ever fucking hurt Cason.
Not as long as I’m fucking breathing.
“You don’t belong to the world you died in anymore, Mr. Morgan,” he continues as he rounds the bed until he’s standing at the foot of it, staring down at me. “You belong to me.”
“You don’t own me.”
The shadows in the room react to my voice that’s rough but somehow steady. They press into the corners, flutter around the edges. My fingers curl against the sheets. I can feel it now, feelthem. The difference, the wrongness. There’s something under my skin that wasn’t there before.
“Legally, you’re dead,” Malcolm says, and the words settle in, heavy and absolute. “You’re safer if you don’t exist. More importantly, everyone else is safer. You have nothing now but what I choose to give you. Resources. Purpose. You’ll find soon enough that Idoown you.”
I swallow, my throat even drier than it was before. “And if I refuse to be whatever it is you expect me to be?”
He purses his lips and turns away, his gaze landing on the shadows moving across the wall.
“You and Cason were never meant to grow as close as you did. I saw the look in his eyes and heard his screams as he was dragged out of that basement. He didn’t even know I was there because all he cared about was you.” He faces me again, something wolfish in his expression now. “Turns out, more things worked out to my advantage than I anticipated.”
I fall still. It clicks into place with a brutal kind of clarity that cuts through the lingering haze in my mind.
He’s using his own nephew as leverage.
My jaw tightens, but I don’t give him anything else. No visible reaction, no shift in posture. Nothing more that he can use against me. But inside, something dark unfurls, slowly and violently.
No onethreatens him.
No one fuckingtoucheshim.
I was already starting to feel possessive over Cason before Malcolm’s men stormed in and stole him away from me, but it appears death has amplified the obsession. I was ready to run away with him, and now here I am about to sell my fucking soul to keep him safe.
Malcolm watches me like he’s expecting something. Maybe a fight or defiance, just one single mistake.
I don’t give it to him.
Leaning back against the pillows, I ignore the ache in my chest, forcing my breathing to even out, forcing my expression into something flat and indifferent. Empty.
“Understood.”
The word tastes like ash in my mouth, like giving up. But I know I’m not. I’m just waiting for the right moment to strike.Even the shadows at the edges of the room are still, as though waiting for a command I’m not going to give. Not yet.
