Page 92 of Cold Bastard
“Look at me.”
Slowly, reluctantly, she turned her head. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her face streaked with tears, and the look she gave me was so full of confusion and hurt.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my words foreign on my tongue. “I’m sorry I had to do that. But it was the only way to keep you safe.”
“Safe?” Her voice was hoarse, broken. “You just fucked me in front of everyone. You humiliated me. You—”
“I claimed you,” I interrupted, my voice firm. “I made it clear that you’re mine and that anyone who touches you will die. Doyou understand what that means? Do you understand what I just risked for you?”
She stared at me, her eyes searching mine, and I could see the moment she started to understand. The moment she realized that what I had done wasn’t just about control or dominance or proving a point. It was about protection. In the Brotherhood, the only way to keep something safe was to make it clear that it belonged to you. That you would go to war for it. That you would burn the world down before you let anyone take it from you.
And that was exactly what I had done.
I’d declared war on anyone who tried to touch her.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered, her voice small. “I don’t understand any of this. I don’t understand you. I don’t understand what’s happening to me.”
“I know,” I whispered, my hand moving to cup her face. “I know you don’t. But you will. Eventually.”
“Will I?” She looked up at me, her eyes full of doubt. “Or will I just keep losing pieces of myself until there’s nothing left?”
The question hit me harder than I had expected. Because she was right. That was exactly what was happening. I was taking her apart, piece by piece, and rebuilding her into something that fit in my world. Something that belonged to me. “You won’t lose yourself,” I stated, even though I wasn’t sure I believed it. “You’ll just become something different. Something stronger.”
“Something broken,” she corrected, her voice bitter.
“Maybe,” I admitted. “But broken doesn’t mean worthless. Broken doesn’t mean weak. Sometimes the broken things are the most beautiful.”
She closed her eyes, fresh tears spilling down her cheeks, and I pulled her against my chest. She didn’t fight me. Didn’t push me away. She just lay there, trembling and crying, and let me hold her. And for the first time in years, I felt something other than emptiness.
I feltsomething.
I didn’t know what it was. Didn’t know if it was love or obsession or just the twisted satisfaction of owning something completely.
But whatever it was, it was mine.
She was mine.
And I was never letting her go.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Nano
I held her for a long time. Long enough that her breathing evened out, long enough that the trembling stopped. Long enough that I started to think she had fallen asleep. But then she shifted slightly, her cheek still pressed against my chest, and I felt her fingers curl into my shirt.
Not pulling away. Just... holding on.
The room was dark except for the faint glow from outside filtering through the blinds. It cast shadows across the walls, across the photographs I had hung there. All those women, all those moments of control and dominance captured forever.
Evidence of what I was. What I had always been.
“My mother worked three jobs,” I said suddenly, the words coming out before I could stop them, and Alex went still against me. She didn’t pull back, didn’t look up. Just listened.
I stared at the ceiling, my hand moving absently through her hair. “She was a waitress at a diner during the day. Cleaned office buildings at night. Took in laundry on weekends. She worked herself to the fucking bone trying to keep me and my brother fed.”
The memories came back in fragments. Sharp-edged and painful.
“Travis was older than me by three years. He tried to help. He got a paper route when he was ten, started mowing lawns whenhe was twelve. But it was never enough. We were always broke. Always one missed payment away from losing the apartment.”
