Page 68 of The Madness Within

I didn’t say anything. I just stared at him, feeling the war inside me get louder.

Because I believed him.

And maybe, just maybe… I wanted to be caught.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

??The Price of Freedom

Dorian

I loved watching her.

There was something about the way she moved now. Cautious at first, like she’s still waiting for the trap to spring.

But every day, her steps grew steadier. Her hands no longer shook when they brushed along the banister, her shoulders no longer flinched when I entered a room.

She was opening.

The way her eyes lingered on the small gestures, fresh flowers in the study, books I left on the windowsill with her favorite ribbon as a placeholder, a warm robe folded at the end of her bed before sunrise.

She never asked for these things.

But I watched her fingers trace the silk curtain like it was velvet spun from heaven. I heard the little breath she took in surprise when I handed her a box of loose-leaf tea, the exact blend she mentioned once, barely above a whisper. And I felt it, that moment when her walls dipped low enough to let me glimpse the woman beneath the fire.

She softened. For me.

And it undid something in my chest every damn time.

That’s enough.

For now.

But soon, I was going to have to show her what I was trying to keep her safe from. She got a glimpse of it when she caught me in the act, but there’s nothing like seeing it in person to really get your point across.

I had taken on a new case. The kind I usually avoided. A man namedLyle Vesterbute, a name that rolled off my tongue like it was something filthy.

He was a monster. A true predator. He’d been accused of raping and killing seventeen men and women, leaving nothing behind but broken bodies and shattered lives.

No remorse. No care. Just pure, coldevil.

I met him in an old, decrepit office building in the middle of the city, and the first thing I noticed was his eyes.

Empty.

Black. Like there’s nothing human left in him. He was a predator, yes, but not in the way most people thought.

There was somethingoffabout him, something unnatural, somethingwrongin the way his presence filled the room.

But I wasn’t here to analyze him. I was here to take the case.

“You’re good at what you do,” he said when I sat down across from him, his voice a low rasp that sent a shiver down my spine. “I’ve heard the rumors. The things they say about you. You get people out of trouble. You get them off the hook.”

“Yeah,” I answered, my voice calm, detached. “I do.”

“I’ll pay you well,” he added, leaning in, his eyes glinting with something dangerous. “You get me out of this. And you’ll never have to work again. You’ll have everything.”

I smiled, but it wasn’t a smile. It’s a mask. A mask I wore every time I met with clients like him. The ones who thought they could buy their way out of anything.

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