Page 114 of You Owe Me

Rumor has it, he's plotting his revenge from a kiddie pool.

Maverick

The water in Ainsley’s ridiculous kiddie pool is barely deep enough to cover my thighs, but it’s the first time in weeks I don’t feel like I’m drowning.

Three days post-op, and my heart’s finally beating like it’s supposed to. Not sprinting. Not skipping. Just steady, clean precision. It’s unnerving, honestly—like driving a car you rebuilt yourself and waiting for the damn thing to explode.

But it won’t. I know it won’t because I can feel the difference. Every beat is controlled. Measured. No more chaos in my chest, no more electrical storms threatening to flatten me when the pressure builds. For the first time since I was nineteen, my body isn’t trying to kill me.

Which means I can focus on killing other things.

Ainsley’s curled against my chest, legs draped over mine, bikini straps clinging to damp skin that smells like vanilla and coconut. Her hair’s a mess—sun-dried and tangled—but she’s soft, warm, and mine.

I run my hand over the curve of her thigh, letting it rest just below the tie of her swimsuit bottom. Not pulling. Not teasing. Just claiming. A reminder that every inch of her belongs to me, the same way every beat of my repaired heart belongs to her.

She doesn’t flinch. She never does. Not with me.

That’s the difference between Ainsley and everyone else in my world—she doesn’t fear my touch. Doesn’t calculate the cost of letting me close. She just melts into me like she was built for it.

“You’re thinking,” she murmurs.

“Dangerous habit.”

More dangerous than she knows. Because my mind is clear now, sharper than it’s been in months. No heart rate spikes to cloud my judgment. No medication fog. Just crystalline focus and the kind of cold calculation that’s about to make Carter Mills very, very sorry he ever said my name.

My beer bottle sweats against the wood, and I tilt it just enough to let the rest drip through the slats in the balcony. Down below, someone yells a protest. I don’t care.

The sound of liquid hitting pavement is satisfying in a way that has nothing to do with annoying neighbors. It’s control. It’s choosing where something lands and watching it happen exactly as planned.

Ainsley follows my lead, tips her glass over, and pours pink wine into the air like it’s a toast to chaos.

“Now we’re definitely getting evicted.” Her voice is lazy. Loose. She’s relaxed. I’m not.

I can’t relax. Not while Carter Mills is still breathing and thinking he has leverage over what’s mine. Not while he’s sitting somewhere believing he backed Ainsley into a corner and forced her to choose between me and my family’s destruction.

He has no idea he just handed me the perfect excuse to destroy him completely.

“I’ve got bigger problems than pissed-off neighbors.”

Her body shifts slightly. The tension’s subtle—barely there—but I feel it. She knows what’s coming. Part of her has been waiting for this moment since Carter first put his hands on her in that restaurant.

“Carter.”

I nod, fingers trailing up her spine. “He’s not dangerous. But he’s ambitious. And ambition without boundaries? That’s a problem.”

The truth is more complex than that. Carter’s not dangerous to me—never has been. He’s a mid-tier threat, but he made the mistake of targeting Ainsley. Of putting his hands on her. Of threatening my family.

That’s not ambition. That’s a death wish.

“You said he’s just noise.”

I lean forward, press my mouth to her shoulder, and bite gently—just enough to make her shiver. “He was. Now he’s a loose end.”

And I don’t leave loose ends. Never have. It’s one of the fundamental rules that built my empire—every threat gets neutralized, every enemy gets buried, every challenge to my authority gets answered with overwhelming force.

Carter Mills is about to learn why people whisper my name in hallways.

She exhales. “What do you need?”

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