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I’d thought back then it would trigger me and make me worse if I kept her, my little redhead.

Keep, kill, maim her beyond the point of wanting her? Talk to her?

One of those needed doing. Red’s plane swept overhead, roaring toward the nearest airport. The contrails from the engines prettied the sky.

I rose from the chair and strolled into my study. All the doors to this upper story were rolled back exposing the rooms to the breeze and the morning sun.

This was my ritual. It kept me in check and sane.

All of these things before me reminded me of that day when I was barely a mesmer and could recall what it was like to care for others, to empathize. Twice daily, I forced myself to remember.

Knife.

The written story.

The unsullied blister pack of capsules. Wolfe had given me that – a drug that could help dull the power and the aggression. I hated drugs. Artificial shit.

The photos of her after I had her, and before.

Who needed luxury settings when you had your first collected girl?

I remembered the alley between tall buildings.

One photo of her freshly brought to heel. Eyes wide, pupils dilated, her back to the grubby brick wall. Tongue in mid-sweep across her red lips. That dark yet sexy pantsuit with the thin red tie. Her neat short hair. I could see the swell of her breasts beneath the cloth, and her hips.

Red hair. Red lips. Red tie.

CIA? I saw only a thing I could have.

Have. Keep. Fuck.

Outside, Vitor made whacking noises as he slammed into the girl. Seagulls screamed. The girl gurgled and gasped incoherently like an animal caught in a delicious trap. My nostrils expanded, smelling the sex. My cock livened, swelled.

The monster pumped with searing rawness in my veins, same as it had then. It desired all of me. Sometimes I could almost see it – sucking on me, flowing like raw and bloody sex in my veins. I wrapped my hand over my forearm and felt the swell of muscle, the bump of my pulse. I was a bigger, bulkier man than I was then – a mesmer side-effect.

The monster could never be allowed full rein. I wanted to remain me.

Hence my ritual.

What if I didn’t need it anymore?

I fingered the second photo of her – kneeling on the pavement, her head angled up, my cum splattered on her face and dribbling from her swollen mouth.

Wolfe: “Take her, put semen in her, touch her, make her orgasm, and you will have her fully.”

I’d done that.

She couldn’t tell tales about us. Couldn’t orgasm by herself.

I’d kept her a few days but I’d not let her or myself come again, just to prove I could be that restrained. Then I let her go with a smile.

I’d leaned on the corner of the hotel and waved. Bye bye.

So smart, I’d thought. Restraint was my answer.

And the ritual.

Carefully, I drew the knife across my arm. The pain yanked the room into startling focus. I bled. Red leaked through the hair, dripped onto the timber of the desk top. I’d heal from this quickly. I picked up the worn pages, the small digest of that day, to relive what it was to be Isak Bain, a man who cared.