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Light exploded into my vision. I flinched, my eyes burning, my head jerking to the side against the sudden exposure. The room swam in a dizzy blur of gray concrete, metal beams, dim buzzing lights.
A warehouse. A bad one.
The walls were damp with condensation. Rust streaked down from bolts in the ceiling. The air reeked of oil and wet wood, like we were near water—maybe a dock.
The man standing in front of me was tall, broad-shouldered, dressed in dark tactical gear that screamed military but wasn’t quite right. His stance was too loose, his expression too smug. He was ex-military, maybe, but not one of the good ones.
He was a mercenary.
And behind him?—
My stomach dropped.
Evelyn Hart.
She stood just beyond my captor’s shoulder, wrapped in a pale gray coat that cinched at the waist, her blonde bob sleek as ever. Her lipstick was flawless, her nails pristine.
Like she had just walked out of a campaign event. Like this wasn’t happening. Like she wasn’t standing in a goddamn warehouse, watching me like I was aninconvenience instead of a kidnapped woman tied to a chair.
I swallowed hard, forcing my spine straight.
She tilted her head, eyes sharp. “You really should have stayed in New York, Ms. Dixon.”
I lifted my chin. “Go to hell.”
Hart’s lips curved in something like amusement. “Now, now. No need to be rude.” She took a step forward, her heels clicking against the concrete. “You’re quite the troublemaker, aren’t you?”
I didn’t answer.
She sighed, almost like she pitied me. “You must be scared.”
I was. But I refused to let her see it. I held her gaze, steady and silent.
Hart hummed. “Tell me, Ms. Dixon. Do you think he’s coming for you?”
A beat of silence.
Marcus’s face filled my mind—fierce and unrelenting, the way he had looked at me that first day at the pier, the way he had touched me in his bed, the way he had roared my name when they took me.
I squeezed my eyes shut, my breath hitching.
I didn’t want to think about him. I couldn’t think about him. Not here, not now, not when I was trapped in this darkness, held by people who wanted to break me. But I couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t stop him.
Because there was no part of my life that he hadn’t already reached into and rewritten.
I thought I had known obsession before. Thought I had known desire, attachment, need. But Marcus had taken all of those things and shattered them, built something new out of the wreckage. Something that terrified me as much as it consumed me.
Because I didn’t just need him. Ilovedhim.
The realization cracked through me like a bullet. A sharp, painful, undeniable truth I had been circling around, maybe from the moment I had met him.
I had fought him. Resisted him. Hated him at first, the way he towered over me, the way he made me feel small and seen all at once. The way he pushed, threatened, got under my skin in a way no one ever had.
But then—then he had touched me.
He had looked at me like I was the only thing in the world worth protecting. Held me like he didn’t know how to be careful but was trying so hard not to break me. Laid claim to me with his body, his hands, his rough, possessive mouth, as if he had been waiting for me before he even knew I existed.
And now? Now, I was locked in this suffocating dark, stolen away from him, and there was only one thought cutting through the fear.