Page 99 of Desperate Crimes

Where that same old hunger lives.

I fold my arms, even though I’m not cold.

“You keep saying I’m yours,” I whisper. “But am I more than that?”

His eyes narrow. “What are you asking me?”

“Do you care about me, Nico? Or am I just some shiny thing you had to win?”

The silence stretches.

He watches me like I’m a riddle he doesn’t want to solve too fast.

Then he sets the glass down. Steps closer.

“I don’t give a shit about shiny things. I care about you more than I know how to explain. I’ve built you gardens. A home. I’ve memorized your coffee order and chased off every man who ever looked at you wrong.”

“What?” I breathe.

“All those fucking wannabes and pretty boys. The businessmen your father brought to the house, parading them in front of you like your own personal buffet of stuffed shirts he could control,” he growls.

“Nico, I?—”

“Every time one of them looked too long. Stared too hard. Thought too much. Who do you think got rid of them? Who told them in explicit detail exactly what would happen if they didn’t get the fuck away from you? Me. That’s who. And do you know why?”

The amber hush of evening spills across the floor in fractured ribbons—molten gold and blood-red shadows slanting through the massive glass wall that overlooks his garden.

My garden, he insists.

Built with a madman’s obsession and a lover’s tenderness.

A hidden kingdom of pine sentinels and black roses blooming defiantly in the heat of summer.

The sun is setting behind them now.

A slow, violent burn in the sky. Everything feels too vivid. Too unreal.

And yet, I’m here.

Barefoot and in my rumpled dress, with no panties, standing in the middle of this mansion that smells and feels like him—cedar and danger and something darker.

But if I’m being honest? It feels like me too.

I tilt my chin, trying to steady myself, and meet his eyes.

“You say these things,” I whisper, “but you still don’t say the one thing I need to hear, Nico.”

He steps closer, brushing his thumb along my jaw like he’s trying to memorize the shape of my bones.

His voice drops, low and wrecked.

A secret pressed to my skin.

“I’ve never said that to anyone. Not like how you want to hear it. Not with the kind of weight you deserve. But I do, Princess.” His forehead touches mine, and his breath is fire. “You own my fucking soul. Don’t you get it yet?”

My throat tightens.

The ache in my chest is a living thing now—sharp, insistent, echoing through every part of me that ever dared to hope for more.