Page 22 of While She Sleeps

What if he knows I’m looking into him?

What if I’m going to be his next victim?

I take the steps two at a time until I reach my floor and fly through unlocking it. Once I’m inside, I slam the door behind me and secure the three locks I had installed when I moved in before finally allowing myself to breathe.

If the Hunter is the one who killed my brother, the worst thing I could do is follow in his footsteps, but then, maybe dying wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

Maybe then I’d finally know peace.

I swallow down the sob that rises in my throat as I move toward the bathroom. I strip out of my dress and shoes, onlyallowing myself a second to breathe in Orion’s scent all over my clothes before throwing them into the hamper.

Not seeing him again is for the best.

I turn the shower on as hot as it will go and watch as the small room fills with steam before something catches my eye, causing me to drag in an unsteady breath.

Even as I reach for it, I know I shouldn’t, and when my fingers wrap around the small razor blade I can’t bring myself to throw out, my stomach clenches with guilt and urgency to make the pain go away.

I close my eyes and swallow heavily before resting the blade against the top of my thigh beside the littering of other scars that came from the same blade.

Slowly, I press it into my soft flesh and hiss out a breath when it breaks through. But the pain is good.

For once, it’s not because my brother is dead, and I have no one in the world. Or the fact that I have no free will because of a debt I owe a man who took advantage of two kids that had no one. It’s because I chose it.

I chose the pain, and I revel in it as blood trickles down my thigh slowly.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

ORION

Sitting outside Ember’s apartment forty minutes after she disappeared inside is a new low I didn’t think I would sink to. But I can’t get her out of my head. Her distress, her pain, her devastation. I refuse to leave her when she’s like this, even if that just means watching her through the cameras from my car.

The problem is she’s been in the bathroom, the only room I didn’t put cameras in, since she first walked into her apartment. Which means I’m actually just staring at empty rooms, hoping to catch a glimpse of the woman who has me by the balls and doesn’t even realize it.

I brush a hand down my face and lean my head back against the headrest, trying desperately to hold on to the sliver of composure that still lives in my body when it comes to this woman.

I knew from the first time I saw her that she would be mine. There wasn’t a single doubt in my mind that I would do whatever it took to claim her. But up until now, I didn’t realize just how much she was going to destroy me, and how much I was going to fucking love it.

Movement in the camera catches my eye, and I click into the frame to see how she looks, but the black-and-white footage dulls her emotions.

Fuck.

I wonder if I can scale the fire escape and peek through the window to get a better idea of how she’s feeling.

Jesus. I haven’t done something like that since I was a teenager trying to survive in the world on my own. Long before I built my empire, I was a scared kid with nothing to my name. But soon I’ll have everything, because soon, Ember will be mine.

A phone call cuts the cameras from view, and I growl out an irritated breath. Who the fuck is calling me at this time of night?

I almost laugh at myself. I’m a fucking crime boss who controls every drug that crosses the borders into the Americas. There’s no time of day I’m without someone calling me.

“What?” I bark into the phone.

“Boss, we have a problem,” Killian says.

“What kind of problem?”

“The Lucas Trainer kind.”

I rub a hand down my face and sigh. That motherfucker is the bane of my goddamn existence, and seeing how he treats my girl has only made me loathe him more. If it were as easy as killing him and moving on, he would have been dead years ago. But alas, I can’t take out one of the most useful organizations I work with, no matter how much I may despise their leader. “What’s he done now?”

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