An alarm rings in my head, dark desire festering, Liam’s face morphing into my fallen angel, and I slide off him, nuzzling his head back. I instantly feel cold from the tip of my fingers to somewhere in a corner underneath my ribs.
His hand reaches for me, fingers brushing my wrist. “Sara—”
“Don’t. You shouldn’t have come back.” My voice trembles but holds truth. I walk out before he can stand.
I started believing I had lost him too. I can’t pinpoint when the dangerous illusion that he was mine to lose took root, but now I see what I can’t bear, and I have to let him go.
Twenty-One
Liam
It's been two weeks since I’ve been back to Saint-Tropez, fourteen days since I’ve felt the salt and warmth rising again in the village. I would've stayed in Marbella longer, but as we were methodically raiding one yacht, I got an interesting update from Mateo's guy I hired to monitor Sara.
My phone buzzed, and what Riviera said next was not on my casual Monday list. Incongruously timed as I had my silencer pressed against a trafficker's forehead, the metal digging into his sweaty skin as he whimpered, piss already staining the polished deck beneath him.
“She's being watched,” he said.
I nearly laughed. “No shit, Sherlock. I'm paying you to watch her.”
Then his voice dropped. “Not just by me.”
Something cold slid down my spine, my fear suddenly matching the pleading eyes of the man beneath my gun.
“I'll be there tomorrow,” I told him. “Don't lose sight of her.”
After hanging up, I pulled the trigger and observed another problem vanish.
Below deck, I remained focused and discovered a terrified missing girl whom I recognized from our database of lost girls. This database contained records of girls who were reported missing but lacked family or papers. I asked Damien to bring her back to Saint-Tropez, where one of my guys would make her a passport, an ID, and a debit card with some money to get herself on her feet. As if the girl hadn’t gone through enough, Sara had to push her out the door, and I shit you not, I got hard for a second, but that poor girl didn't need more aggression.
I have never seen Sara with rage burning hot enough that it made the air hurt. I haven’t seen her in two months, and I underestimated how she had gotten under my skin. She's the ache that sits between my teeth when I try to sleep. And the truth hits me with brutal clarity.
I’m not keeping an eye on her. I’m keeping her.
I've been trying to shake her loose for months, but even in her absence, she dug deeper. The way she felt, my face buried in her neck as she was rolling her hips on my lap, I didn't know what it was like to hold on to someone you had promised yourself to hate until that line blurred with something else much more powerful, and I fear there is no going back until I have her completely.
The irony now is that she refuses to acknowledge my existence while I monitor her house.
At first, I was a sneaky shadow, parking my bike down the street. But eventually, I shrugged off any pretense and crept closer each day until I was practically pitching a tent by her gate, all while flashing a devilish Care Bear smile whenever she or her mom dared to peek out the window.
Howdy, neighbors.
I can only wonder what stories she has spun to her mother about the brooding figure outside, but honestly, I am having too much fun stirring the pot.
I knew the little vixen would eventually boil over, so stunningly fierce, she can probably set fire to the rain.
And yeah, she’s livid with me, but here’s the kicker: I can’t identify when the tables flipped and I became the moth drawn to her flame.
I treated her horribly, yet she still felt abandoned by me, and double yet, I missed her as if I had always possessed her in ways I denied myself.
Probably for Joe's sake, probably because I never wanted to love at the risk of turning into my dad. She is challenging hidden truths I want to bury. The need to ruin her, for my eyes only, and burn any man that’s ever touched her, is brewing to life inside of me.
The past week has been quiet, and I haven’t seen anyone stalk her, no shadows trailing her, no unfamiliar cars idling across the street. Whoever they are, know I have assigned myself to the very job of keeping her safe. They know I’ve claimed this territory now. I catch myself checking her windows in the middle of the night, wanting to count her breaths through the glass.
I'm breaking every rule I made.
And the worst part? I still don't know what kind of trouble my dead brother's girl has stumbled into or who's hunting her, but I’ll find them, and I’ll kill them.
Simple, really.
