Page 103 of Shattered Obsession

“Remember the first time you listened to me?” Damian smiles, nostalgia coating his words like sugar over poison. “You froze so perfectly. Most girls cry first.” His eyes drag down my body. “But not you. You submit.”

“I never submitted,” I whisper.

“Yes, you did,” he murmurs. “Your body remembers.”

A knife flashes menacingly, grazing the skin along my collarbone, leaving a whisper of fear in its wake.

He presses the flat of the knife to my sternum, letting it rest there without cutting. Not yet. “You know what the best part is?” he murmurs. “You taught him how to love you, but I taught you how to fear.”

His thumb brushes the corner of my mouth.

“And fear always wins. Every time you resist, you only make me want to break you more.”

Yet, he pauses. He doesn’t strike, doesn’t escalate the violence. He relishes my fear, the power he feels when I am at my lowest, begging for mercy. I lift my eyes and meet his dead stare with cold clarity.

“You think breaking me means owning me,” I whisper. “But you never understood… You only forged the weapon that will kill you.”

I am not helpless.

I am loading the gun.

He seeks my submission more than he craves my pain, and I refuse to give him either. He is not infallible. He bleeds. He stumbles. He rattles with the pressure of a prey that has finally dared to bare its teeth. And one day, he will fall.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

-Xander-

The roads twist and turn, merging into a single crooked vein on the map, illuminated only by the glowing red of taillights mingling with a sense of impending doom. My mind is a fog, and I can’t recall the last stoplight I sat at or the last breath I took that didn’t feel like a blade slicing through my chest. All that haunts me are her desperate calls, the ones I couldn’t bring myself to answer. I find myself replaying the voicemail in my mind, just four agonizing seconds, a ghostly echo of her voice pleading, “Xander, please.” I have to silence it before it consumes me.

I grip the steering wheel so tight that the leather squeaks in protest, as if sensing my desperation. I know that if I let go, if I allow myself to relax, I might shatter into a thousand pieces. I grip the wheel harder, knuckles whitening.

“I won’t lose her,” I whisper into the dark cab.

This isn’t heroism.

This is instinct.

Primal. Violent.

Thalia isn’t someone I want to save.

She’s someone I refuse to live without.

Focus. Track. Hunt. Each mile stretches before me like a dark highway, and I’m piecing together the remnants of hopes and clues. There was the gas station along Highway 7. The night clerk remembered a guy with a tight smile and bruised knuckles who purchased nothing but beer and duct tape. Then, two exits later, I stumbled upon a storage yard. The gate’s rusted chain had been cut open and dropped on the floor. A farmer at the last turnoff gestured with two fingers, indicating the barren flats, muttering that he’d heard a car engine idling in the dead of night where it shouldn’t be. It’s enough. It has to be enough for me to take action.

I kill the truck’s headlights two hundred yards from my destination, slowing the vehicle to a creeping crawl. The night stretches out before me, a desolate expanse filled with the crisp sound of wind and the incessant hum of crickets. The silhouette of a blocky structure looms ahead, an old canning warehouse that’s long fallen into disrepair, a scar on the landscape. Only one sodium bulb sputters weakly above a side door, casting a faint, sickly light that seems almost ashamed to emerge from the darkness. I cut the engine, and the sudden silence rushes in like an overwhelming tide. Her name sits heavy on my tongue, a bitter reminder of my drive, but I swallow it down hard and strain to listen.

There it is: a metallic clatter, distant yet sharp, like a coin falling in another room. Following it is the faintest scrape of metal against concrete, succeeded by a low, sickening chuckle that sends a chill down my spine. It belongs to a man I would never allow to draw breath in my presence.

My heartbeat turns cold and calculated, each pulse cautious. I pop open the glove box, retrieving my flashlight and knife. I tuck everything securely into my jacket. My phone in my pocket vibrates once—Isla, again—but I can’t answer. Not until I have Thalia safely in my arms and Damian is nothing more than a face from a fading memory.

The air inside the warehouse is stale, smelling of dust, decaying mice, and the oily residue of forgotten machinery. I melt into the shadows, gliding along the outer wall until I reach the side door, its rusted hinge creaking ominously at my approach. Up close, the dying hum of the bulb above sounds like a tired insect, struggling against its own inevitability. A padlock dangles from the door, its shackle cut cleanly through, carelessly discarded. He doesn’t even bother to hide it; he craves an audience for whatever dark intentions lie within. Not tonight.

I ease the door open a fraction, and it groans in protest, causing me to freeze in place. I count silently to five, breathing as carefully as I would when wrestling with a stubborn bolt, knowing that impatience could lead to a stripped thread. Inside, the darkness seems to inhale deeply in response, a waiting predator. I angle the flashlight downward, clicking it on to reveal a slender beam of light that spills over the floor, illuminating a thick layer of dust. There are footprints, one set large and careless, pacing with a reckless abandon, and another set, smaller, starkly contrasting, leaving dragged arcs in the dust, as if someone had been forced along. My chest constricts painfully, but I force myself to breathe deeply, stealing my resolve. My body shakes uncontrollably, but it’s the survival kind of tremor, not fear.

“I’m here,” I whisper into the void, speaking to nobody, to her, to the god I refuse to believe in unless her life hangs in the balance. And then, with my heart pounding in my ears, I move forward into the darkness. I catalog every sound. Metal shifting. A chair sliding. Her gasp.

I breathe through the terror, counting heartbeats instead of seconds.