Page 204 of His To Erase
“You think she’s lying to you?”
“I think,” I growl, “she’s been lied to so many fucking times, she doesn’t know what the truth is anymore.”
All I hear is the typing he’s doing in the background.
“He knows something.” My fingers curl into a fist. “And if he lays one hand on her, I’ll bury him next to the last man who thought he owned her.”
Travis lets out a low whistle. “That bad?”
I don’t answer. My eyes stay locked on the last message she got, glowing on the screen.
You know who you really belong to.
“She’s been marked,” I say finally. “Before any of this started.”
“How does he tie into this?”
I exhale through my nose. “I think he’s trying to finish what someone else started. Or maybe he doesn’t even know the full story—maybe he’s just a pawn. But if she’s in his hands now, it means one of two things.”
“And neither of them’s good.”
“Exactly.”
There’s a pause, and I can tell he’s trying to be careful, “You think she’s keeping it a secret?”
I rub the side of my jaw, eyes flicking across her screen again. The hidden messages, the silent spirals, the dreams she wrote down.
“And what happens if it’s true?”
I grip the edge of the desk hard enough for my knuckles to turn white. “That depends on whether I get to her first.”
“Steven—”
“I’ve let her believe too many lies,” I snap. The words tear out of me. “I let her walk straight into the mouth of a fucking lion while I sat here watching. Waiting for what?”
My voice drops. “No more space. No more waiting. She wants to play house with a monster, fine. But I’m the one who knows what’s hunting her. And I’m done playing nice.”
There’s a long silence on the line. The kind that feels like the calm before something shatters.
“Tell me where to be.”
I sigh, rubbing my hand down my face. Knowing he’s going to have his attention split. “Eyes on the restaurant.”
“You sure you’re in the right headspace for this?”
“No,” I answer flatly. “But I’m the only one who knows how this ends.”
And I’ve already made one mistake with her—I won’t make it twice.
The house is too fucking quiet. The blanket she curled up in still sits crumpled on the couch, and her mug rests by the sink, half full and cold. I drag the knife from my duffel and slam it into the butcher block. The sound echoes through the room.
I don’t do rage. Not like this. Not since I buried the last man who deserved it.
But Ani makes me forget the rules. She’s in there now—to the bone. Threaded through the wreckage like she belongs there.
I sink into the chair I haven’t used since the day I opened the file that led me here. Frank’s name is still stamped across the top. I stare at it like a fucking bull seeing red, while I go over them again. It’s a list of shell companies, an inheritance tied to property in Puerto Rico with the name scratched out in every file except one.
I open my laptop and pull up the encrypted drive Travis sent over weeks ago. I’d skipped this file before because it all looked like the same shit we already had on him.
