Page 63 of At Your Mercy

And my stomach plummeted.

It was Ro. But not Ro as I knew him—this was him on a floor I didn’t recognize, his body bruised, used, broken. His eyes—Christ, his eyes—were eerily blank like he wasn’t even inside himself anymore.

Like he wasn’t alive.

With my teeth clenched tight and my chest pounding, I swiped to the next photo.

Then the next, and the next, and the next.

Each one was worse than the last, each one a knife sliding between my ribs. Some were recent. Some were older—too old. My breath stuttered. He’d been just aboy.

“Jesus Christ,” I rasped, barely recognizing my own voice. I braced a hand on the sink, afraid my knees might give out.

That fucking monster had documented everything—every time he’d hurt him, every time he’d used him like he was just a doll that he could patch back together.

The world tilted. My vision blurred, but I couldn’t stop swiping, couldn’t stop myself from witnessing his pain. My chest ached like someone was driving nails into my sternum.

“Fuck. Oh fuck.”

I’d assumed—stupidly—that Ro’s scars were from work, and that he’d been forced into some ugly situations, had to do certain things to survive. And that wasn’t okay… it was just easier for my mind to rationalize. But this? This was something far darker than I had imagined. Torture. Rape. Systematic. Years of it.

I clenched my jaw so tight my teeth ached. A helpless, broken sound left me before I even realized it, tears sliding down my face.

“Fuck.”

Finally, the gallery shifted from Ronan to files of victims, rows of strangers reduced to inventory. My pulse thundered in my ears as I scanned them, realizing exactly what Elias wasrunning. But even that—horrific as it was—didn’t hit me half as hard as what I’d already seen.

Becausefucking hell.

The phone shook in my hand. I wanted to put it down, to pretend I hadn’t seen, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t unsee it, couldn’t erase the truth now burned into my brain.

Ro had carried this. Alone. For years. And he’d let me touch him like it was nothing—like I wasn’t pressing against wounds that had never healed.

I shut the phone off, chest heaving. My reflection in the mirror looked foreign—eyes bloodshot, jaw locked, a man balancing on the edge.

I couldn’t catch my breath, couldn’t shake the images burned into the back of my skull. Every muscle in my body screamed to break something, to tear through walls until I found Elias and put my hands around his throat.

But when I closed my eyes, it wasn’t Elias I saw. It was Ronan.

Ro, curled small on the shower floor. Ro, gasping for me to hurt him because he couldn’t stand his own thoughts. Ro, clinging to me like I was the only tether he had left.

And I’d touched him. I’d touched him, not knowing the full weight of what had been carved into him. I’d kissed his mouth, his throat, pressed my cock into him. I’d hit him. He’d asked me to, but…

My stomach lurched. I bent over the sink, bracing myself as bile stung the back of my throat. I forced it down, shaking, breath shallow.

I should’ve known. He’d given me enough hints. Hell, our first time together, he’d told me he didn’t know sex was something that could feel good. But no. Instead, I’d let him walk right into that fucking house. I’d told him it was his choice, that he was strong enough to handle it, and that nothing wouldgo wrong, because I was so fucking desperate for more proof against Elias. I had been so fuckingblind.I’d practically pushed him right back into his nightmare.

And now I knew what that monster had already done to him, again and again.

For fuckingyears.

I straightened, scrubbing both hands over my face. I didn’t know how to go back into that room. What the fuck was I supposed to say?

I’m sorry?That wasn’t fucking enough—not even close.

I’ll fix it?I couldn’t erase years of damage.

The only thing I could give him was a safe space if he wanted it.