Page 60 of His Orders

There is a long pause.

Then his hand lashes out, fast as ever, wrapping around my wrist. “You’re not leaving me again,” he murmurs, his mouth too close to my ear.

The echo of it splits something open in my chest, not just fear, but a bone-deep realization that I’ve made a mistake. A dangerous one. I thought I could come here and be the one in control. I thought I could reason with him, pretend to cooperate just enough to draw a line in the sand, convince him to leave Ethan alone. But the man in front of me is not one who negotiates. He never was. He only ever takes.

The grip on my wrist tightens with the sharp precision of someone who’s practiced possession like a craft. I try to step back, to turn my body away, to twist out from under him like I’ve done in nightmares that always ended with me gasping awake in a dark room. But this time, I don’t get away. His other hand slams into my shoulder and shoves me against the car with the kind of strength that makes my teeth clack together. Pain blooms in my ribs as the metal bites into my spine, and the breath catches in my throat before I can stop it.

“Daniel—” I try, but my voice is paper. Thin, crumpled, not loud enough to matter.

He leans in close, too close, his breath hot on my cheek, smelling of cinnamon and mint and something underneath that curdles in my stomach. His cologne hits next, that same expensive blend he used to wear when he wanted to impress donors or take me out somewhere just to show me off. It used to smell like comfort, like luxury, like the world I was supposed to be grateful to have been brought into. Now, it smells like rot beneath polish.

“You’re so dramatic,” he says, like I’m a child misbehaving in public. “Ivy, look at you. Still beautiful. Still mine. All this time, I’ve waited for you to stop pretending.”

I can feel his hand slide from my wrist to my waist, slow and possessive, fingers spreading wide like he’s claiming territory. I try again to push him off, to wedge space between our bodies, but he only presses closer. The coat I’m wearing might as well be made of tissue paper. The cold seeps through the fabric and into my skin, but it’s his touch that makes me shiver.

“You’re not mine?” he whispers, the words curling against the shell of my ear. “Is that what you’ve been telling yourself?”

He trails his hand down to my hip, his thumb brushing the curve just above my thigh, a path too practiced, too familiar. My entire body goes rigid, stomach turning as I try to will my voice into strength.

“Don’t,” I manage to say, just loud enough for the word to exist.

But he smiles. Not wide. Not obvious. Just that little curl of the mouth that used to make me blush, the one he used to disarm me when I was younger and too eager to be loved by someone who seemed to have all the answers. Only now, I know better. Now, I see the weapon behind the smile.

“You used to love it when I touched you,” he murmurs, his palm sliding slowly over the curve of my stomach before I slap it away.

That’s when his mask cracks.

The smile fades. His eyes flatten, and his jaw tightens just enough to expose the pulse ticking at his temple. The pleasantness disappears, and I see what’s really underneath. The man who manipulated me for years. The man who gaslighted me into silence. The man who has spent every second since I left trying to rewrite the story so that he is still the one in control.

“You think I don’t know?” he snaps, and for the first time, the edge of something ugly slips into his voice. “You think I haven’t been watching? I’ve seen the way you look at him. That doctor. That pathetic excuse for a man who thinks he can take what belongs to me.”

I flinch, but he doesn’t stop. His hands are on me again, grabbing my wrist, then my shoulder, shoving me back against the car so hard I cry out this time. The sound echoes in the lot, sharp and helpless. I twist away, panic closing in, but his grip is like steel.

“Daniel, please?—”

“Oh, now you beg?” he says, teeth flashing. “Now you remember who really owns you?”

I close my eyes, my mind flashing not just to the baby but to Ethan. To his hands. To his mouth. To the way he looked at me like I was something worth protecting, not controlling. To the feel of his lips on my stomach, to the steadiness of his voice when he asked me to stay. I should have told him everything. I should have let him in.

But I never get the chance to spiral into the guilt because then I hear the sound of gravel shifting. Shoes against asphalt. A voice, sharp and low, slicing through the haze of dread in my mind. “Let. Her. Go.”

I freeze. Daniel stiffens, his head snapping toward the source of the voice. His hand is still locked around my arm, but his body goes as still as a statue.

And then, like a shadow stepping out of fog, Ethan emerges from the shadows, his eyes locked on Daniel with the kind of fury I’ve never seen in him before.

22

ETHAN

Ido not weigh consequences or consider restraint. The moment Daniel’s voice cuts through the night, when I hear the threat curled in the shape of her name, something primal ignites deep inside me, burning hotter than fury, older than reason. I move before the sound even finishes leaving his lips, my body driven by something far beyond instinct, and in the space between one breath and the next, I am on him.

He doesn’t have time to react. Not a flinch, not a word, not a single self-satisfied grin. My fist crashes into his jaw with a force that rattles through my knuckles and into my spine. I feel the jolt in every bone, every tendon. He reels back, stunned, a smear of blood already rising along his lip as he staggers into the side of the car.

But I don’t stop there.

I grab the front of his coat and slam him backward again, the sound of his body hitting metal sharp and unforgiving in the stillness. He tries to swing, tries to catch me off-guard, but he is too slow, too soft, a man who has spent his life ordering violence without ever tasting it himself. I duck the punch easily, bury myshoulder into his chest, and drive him back again, pinning him hard against the hood of the car as my forearm presses into his throat.

His eyes are wide now. The arrogance has started to crack.

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